Have you ever walked into a store and immediately felt welcomed and taken care of by the employees? That’s the power of excellent customer service. On the flip side, have you ever had a negative experience in a store that left a bad taste in your mouth and made you never want to return?
Providing great customer service is more vital than ever in today’s hyper-competitive business climate. It’s what distinguishes you from the competition, fosters client loyalty, and eventually generates sales. But how do you ensure that your store provides excellent customer service?
In this article, we’ll look at seven innovative ideas to improve customer service in your store. These aren’t your normal “smile and be friendly” suggestions. We’re talking about cutting-edge tactics that will elevate your customer service and set your store apart from the competition.
5 Ways To Make Your Store’s Customer Service Better
Does anyone remember a time when businesses didn’t prioritize their customer’s needs? Well, in the 21st-century customer well-being is without question the most important consideration of all.
The adage ‘the customer is always right’ has never rung more true, with customer service being at the heart of every great business.
Without a loyal customer base, it’s difficult to be successful.
A company’s reputation smeared by negative feedback can stunt the progression of businesses. This is why customer service is so important, but that doesn’t mean nailing good customer service is an easy feat. It’s anything from it.
This is why we’ve collected some pointers on the route to making your store’s customer service better:
1. Be reachable via phone
Computers have gradually become the main communication hub for most businesses, but that doesn’t mean telecommunications should be neglected entirely.
Live chat certainly serves a useful purpose, however more advanced questioning often needs the reassurance of someone’s voice. A service that gives ample opportunity to ask everything on the phone can put you in a position to deliver the best customer service you can.
Telephone contact is far more personal, enabling customers to communicate with businesses instantaneously.
When emails aren’t prioritized, and live chat continues to spew out basic, albeit useful advice in the right context, companies can expedite queries and ultimately provide more responsive customer service. Putting the customer first will ultimately translate to better business results. Establishing a positive customer sentiment that increases the chances of them interacting with your business.
A consumer that’s left satisfied by a positive telephone call is much more likely to become a loyal customer and share their positive experience with others.
This is the ultimate goal of customer relations.
Ensuring you’re reachable via phone isn’t an easy task, especially when business operations scale up and you’re in greater demand. Utilizing mobile phones is a great way to remain reachable. You can allow calls to be transferred to various phones around the office.
What’s great about mobile phones is customers can reach employees from remote locations. A
2. Utilize live chat
Though live chat once had a bad reputation, you’d be surprised by how rapidly technology is advancing.
If you haven’t already installed a live chat feature on your website you’d be surprised by how capable it can be. It can deliver simple solutions for common queries, one of the biggest reasons why consumers appreciate access to this feature.
You only have to look at the eDigital Customer Service Benchmark survey for evidence of how customer satisfaction is greatly enhanced with the presence of live chat.
Of the 2000 consumers surveyed, 73% were satisfied with live chat. This is in stark contrast to the 61% happy with email support and just 44% with traditional phone support.
This suggests customers tend to return to businesses that provide live chat, with elevated confidence in those that make customer support easy.
As a business, you should focus on offering an elevated live chat experience to instill confidence in your audience with a hassle-free service. What’s great about live chat is you can give quick answers to questions about products.
Also, while offering peace of mind and the ability to solve customer queries quickly. Be there for your customers when they need you most, with a recipe for boosting customer loyalty.
3. Use a ticket management software
Most businesses continue to operate a fairly rudimental ticket-based email system.
This works fine if you’re part of a small business that can handle your current capacity. But what happens when business operations expand?
Well, fortunately, you can take advantage of the expanding range of technological solutions at your disposal. Having a robust ticket management software is the future for many reasons. Mostly because of its ability to meet the ever-increasing demands of consumers (and your team!).
For instance, you can tools like Heroic Inbox to seamlessly manage customers’ emails, keep conversations organized, and assign queries to the right team members. This plugin allows you to:
- Centralize customer emails in one place for better visibility.
- Assign and track conversations, ensuring no query slips through the cracks.
- Use saved replies to speed up responses while maintaining a personal touch.
Email accounts can be difficult to maintain. Especially when loads increase and there’s a muddled list of messages to navigate through. Ticket management systems bring organization into the fold since you can arrange each customer request according to factors like importance or time.
With organization comes greater efficiency, and before long you’ll be competently responding to customer requests with considerably less effort. Greater efficiency means you’ll make fewer mistakes, an important consideration on route to achieving maximum accuracy.
Maximize the talent and specialties of your team by leveraging their expertise accordingly.
An antiquated email system can easily give off the wrong impression. E
For companies that want to collaborate with you, having a ticket management system is perceived as a competent, progressive initiative that quintessentially promotes your business.
By leveraging ticket management software you can keep customers up-to-speed.
Understandably there’ll be occasions when you can’t respond to customers straight away. In this case, you can use the software to send a notification of acknowledgment. Reassuring your audience you’ll be in touch soon is
You can even use the software to prioritize important customers, those responsible for keeping your business afloat. Responding to key requests first is a great way to allocate your time efficiently. Also while ensuring you please those who should be pleased.
4. Put a FAQ on your product page
With an FAQ page, you can address commonly asked questions.
This is great for consumers who can’t find answers elsewhere. Browsing for direct guidance can be an idea that other people might be put off by. Save your customers time by grouping answers in one location, while separating answers into categories for ease of browsing.
By creating a section for general questions, and another for technical questions, visitors can easily extract the information they need.
An FAQ page has everything to do with leaving visitors satisfied. This is so they can accumulate knowledge to return value to your business. What’s great about an FAQ page is it reduces the tendency for consumers to contact you.
Though responding to customer queries is an essential aspect of any good business, reducing the time you spend replying to people will free up the
To create a successful business you must forge a lasting impression on visitors.
An FAQ page is a great opportunity to establish rapport with your following. It is also an opportunity to inject some real personality. Though your answers should be taken seriously, that doesn’t mean you can’t lighten things up with creativity.
You’ll also be able to incorporate important keywords throughout the section, those which ultimately boost your SERPs. It’s essential to improve your online ranking in today’s day and age. By including long tail keywords you’ll almost certainly generate increased traffic through your website.
Build trust among your target audience with credible answers that cement your position as an influential industry leader.
Showing a genuine understanding of the issues and complications your target audience regularly faces can help achieve this. If you’re willing to help consumers through the storm, there’s a much greater chance they’ll reward you with their custom.
5. Provide a knowledge base
As we’ve discovered, stellar customer service isn’t just about being present–it’s also about empowering customers to solve basic concerns on their own. Along with a FAQ, having a dedicated knowledge base can help with this. With an organized knowledge base, you can help customers find answers to common questions quickly and reduce frustration.
Thankfully, it’s not complicated to set up with tools like Heroic Knowledge Base. This powerful plugin allows you to create a professional, searchable knowledge base right within your WordPress store. It offers advanced features like instant search, category organization, and detailed reports to understand what customers are looking for.
Aside from improving the customer experience, having a dedicated knowledge base is also a win for your support team. Instead of answering basic questions repeatedly, they can focus their time and energy on more complex inquiries, improving overall service and efficiency.
Conclusion
Businesses that prioritize great customer service are the ones that rule today. The competition is stiff, and clients have high expectations. Research shows that 86% of customers are willing to spend more for a superior customer experience.
As a business owner, you want to be the ruler of your domain, which involves offering excellent customer service. But how do you do it? Not to worry, we’ve produced a list of four tried-and-true strategies to improve your store’s customer service:
- Be reachable via phone
- Utilize live chat
- Use ticket management software
- Put a FAQ on your product page
- Provide a knowledge base
Do you have questions about customer service strategies? Let us know in the comments below!
