Delivering customer service excellence is not only what customers want, it’s what they expect.
Understanding the needs and preferences of customers and having a customer-centric mindset is becoming increasingly important for small businesses. Business is more fast-paced than it once was, so streamlining operations to reduce times is what customers want and expect.
In order to be proactive rather than reactive, create a customer service plan with detailed information that covers almost every scenario. The service plan should include the following guidelines.
-Create customer personas. Ask yourself what type of client you want to sell your products or services to. Then, create a chart that illustrates the demographics, needs, and preferences of your ideal clients.
-Identify what your objectives and goals are with your customers. Create SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Based
-Define your service standards. Outline the service standards your company commits to maintaining. This can include the following and can also be written into your mission statement.
-Response times/speediness
-Quality expectations
-Professionalism
-Customer service team training and development is paramount. Each team member must understand what your company strategy is and how you will deliver customer service excellence. Emphasize the value of ongoing learning and skill improvement.
-Create communication channels for your clients, whether it’s phone, email, SMS, social media private messes, AI chatbots or all aforementioned. Statistics show that speed is as important as price when making a buying decision. Customers perceive speed as caring. Being faster than customers expect creates strong feelings and loyalty. 30% of customers prefer to use chatbots for communication because of the speed of the response. Know your customers and what their communication preferences are.
-Determine what your process will be for handling customer complaints. Emphasize the quick resolution time. Describe your approach to service recovery when a problem occurs, including how you will make amends and ensure it doesn’t happen again. Embrace customer complaints and improve your processes because of the feedback you receive.
-Send customer surveys and explain how you will collect and analyze customer feedback and conduct surveys to gauge satisfaction. Explain what your process will be for continuous improvement and the evolving needs of your customers.
-Define team member key performance indicators (KPIs). What metrics will you use to measure the success of your customer service efforts, such as customer satisfaction, response times, and first-contact resolution? Utilize employee recognition incentives when team members meet your customer service expectations.
-Take advantage and showcase positive customer testimonials and success stories. Use real quotes and images as long as your customers give consent. These testimonials and shoutouts should be shared on your website, social media, and marketing material.
-Review and update your customer service plan as often as needed to stay aligned with your company’s mission and evolving customer needs.