Ideas for Excellent Customer Service – ZoeTalent Solutions

Complaints mostly aimed at insufficient customer service

Twitter and Facebook explode from customer complaints. It seems 90% of these complaints are aimed at insufficiently pleasant or professional treatment by customer service and not at a bad experience with a product.

Positive experiences are hardly shared

A positive experience is not or hardly shared, because isn’t that what you can expect by default? However, a negative experience / complaint is immediately shared with colleagues, friends, during a birthday or via social media. And there are a number of customer service training and customer service courses were available in online nowadays.

But how do you make an indelibly positive impression with your customer service? Here clear tips for customer services

1) Turn your employees into ambassadors

An employee will only be able to talk positively about his company / product with passion and sincerity if he has experienced how this product or service works and if he has ties with his company / department. Just being friendly is not enough. You can achieve this by providing the products and / or services to your employees for free or with a discount. They will experience for themselves how the customer feels and can therefore provide better and more focused advice. “I have it myself…”.

Also involve employees with a flexible contract with your organization. For good customer service, it is therefore not enough to provide an A4 sheet that states what the company ‘does’.

2) Affection right with existing customers

A frequently made mistake in the field of customer service is insufficient attention to existing customers. A disproportionate amount of attention is paid to the new customer being brought in, while the ‘loyal’, returning customer is taken for granted. If an existing customer places an extra product, service or even a daily or weekly order, thank them explicitly for the choice he has made. It strengthens the bond with the customer and ensures long-term loyalty.

3) Transfer

The biggest annoyances in transferring are caused by:

• having to repeat the story several times

• waiting a long time

• transferring more than once

• internal customer data not (properly) passed on

• internal customer incorrectly passing on the name of the customer.

By simply paying attention to minimizing call connections and waiting times and ensuring that a customer only has to tell his story once, you will soon be able to exceed customer expectations.

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4) Take every complaint seriously

Customers nowadays expect a counter reaction to a complaint. Surprise them once and give each customer the attention they ask for. After all, a complaint is a complaint as long as the customer feels that he has a complaint. Often this simply has to do with a ‘feeling’. And precisely with this feeling too little is being done. The actual, actual complaint is dealt with too quickly,

5) Unreachable = unloved

Nobody likes it if a call to a customer service is not answered. The customer has no message that it ‘happens to be very busy’ in customer service. So clearly state when your customer service will be available. If this accessibility cannot be achieved (for example in the case of a large supply at peak times), call in additional colleagues as a back-up or a company that can accommodate these peak moments.

6) A customer thinks in terms of benefits, not products

A (potential) customer wants to see a need met. He therefore does not think in terms of a specific product but in terms of the interpretation / solution of his question / problem. Only when a customer realizes that the product offered can fulfill his needs will he be satisfied.

As a customer service representative it is therefore not sufficient to be able to name all (technical) characteristics of your products or services. Immerse yourself in the needs of the customer and talk in terms of benefits and solutions. Do you succeed in this? Then sales will increase significantly.

7) Appointment = appointment

Are you making an appointment with a customer? Then make it concrete and comply with it. Whether it concerns a delivery or the sending of documents and contracts, agree in concrete terms when or before when the customer can expect this from you.

8) Working proactively to exceed expectations

Managing customer expectations is the theme for 2013 and 2014. Is ‘meeting expectations’ the benchmark? Then you are satisfied too quickly! Go exceed expectations. Call a customer back after he has been in contact with you (for a purchase, service or complaint) and ask if he is satisfied (after-sales). Do not send standard e-mails or letters, but ask employees to make a personal message (personalize). Write a handwritten card with a (replacement) product that you send to the customer.

9) Cross-sell: ‘force’ or ‘think along’?

Delivering more products or services to an existing customer is easier than recruiting new customers. The misunderstanding in cross-selling is that ‘products must be forced upon’,

10) Complaints via Twitter or Facebook?

Take a complaint via Twitter or Facebook just as seriously as a complaint via telephone. Contact us directly and discuss how to get started. Post a tweet or post in which you thank the customer for the message and ask him to communicate with you through a private message.

– ZoeTalent Solutions