What is the most important thing you can do to improve the relationship with your customers? It goes without saying that the answer to this question is improving the customer service being provided. Regardless of how impressive your company is, how effective your product is or how talented your staff are, one of the things that customers are most likely to remember is the direct interaction they have with your company. If they are treated unfairly or unprofessionally, than they are mostly likely not to use your services again and might also spread a bad word about your company. At the end of the day the customer service team is usually the face of your company and the customer experience can define if your business is a success or not.
Commonly, a strong company will have great customer relationships, and most organization ensure they have a good customer service training program for their employees and the ‘smart’ companies will be asking constantly ‘what is good customer service’ and they will always make sure the correct training is implied within the work place. With that said though, how do you get the correct training for customer service? At the Institute of Customer Service, it’s guaranteed that you’ll be given the efficient training and be awarded the customer service qualification giving you the ability to make a positive impact in your career throughout your remanding future.
The main priority is making sure that your customer service team has the right skills for managing your customers’ needs; let’s identify some of the key elements that will strengthen your customer service skills:
- Empathy, patience and consistency: some customers will be irate and very awkward to handle, others may be full of questions, where as some might just be chatty. Being versatile and knowing how to handle these different forms of encounters will push you above the rest and will allow you to consistently provide the same level of service every time.
- Adaptability: again, like the previous bullet-point every customer is different and it’s essential you are able to handle surprises whilst at the same time, being able to sense and predict the customer’s mood, adapting to it accordingly.
- Communication: always make sure that whatever you are putting across to the customer- it is clear and concise. Bad communication can lead to confusion and miss-lead information which could leave the customer feeling messed about and therefore gaining a negative view on your company.
- Thick skin: no matter what, you always have to go by that golden rule of the customer being right, even if they’re wrong. You need to have the ability to swallow ones pride and accept the blame. To argue or create conflict will only make matters worse, at all costs whether you’re working directly with the customer or by looking through feedback pages, you always have to keep the customer’s happiness in mind, bite your tongue and finds solutions to resolve whatever situation has occurred.
