Customer Service is a beast! Customers' needs are always changing, and our services should always be evolving to reflect those changes and the continuous improvements we are making. Regular intentional listening to our customers is critical no matter how long we have been in a role. Otherwise we risk becoming out of touch with the people responsible for our pay cheques.
Here are 5 tips that tells if you have a better customers service than your competition
#1: When You spend time talking to your customers.
You want to grow your ecommerce business faster? Spend time talking to potential customers.
Have you ever receive a message from an online shop that says,
“We are aware of the issue and are currently working to resolve it.” (Sound familiar?)
This sucks.
The aim of talking to your customers is to solve their problem and it hinges on communication. But talking to your customers is important for other reasons too: It can give you insight into their life and who they are, how they work, what blogs and newsletters they read, and what other products they use, where did they bought similar product the last time.
Spending time talking to your customers goes beyond getting customer feedback. It essentially is building a relationship that will last for years!
Look at it as if you are investing in a long term investment plan.
A piece of advice we get from reddit subreddit rule is this one,
"treat the customer like a human being."
It might sound challenging to treat each customer as an individual human with individual needs. The feedback you’re likely to get from many business leaders is that taking such an approach is “not scalable.”
A funny thing happens when you focus on unscalable activities like talking 1-on-1 with your customers: people notice. Your customers notice, and then they tell other folks about the awesome experience they had.
Of course, we aren’t the only ones trying to make customer communication more human. There are plenty of companies out there doing a great job. But when you are able to communicate in a personal way and treat your customers like real people, it is when you know your customer service is better than your competition.
#2: When Your Spend More Time with the Customer Than Your Competition.
Not only talking but actual meaningful time spent is an investment for your future. Building and maintaining a personal relationship with customers can be the catalyst to your business success. When you always try to find time every week to stay connected to your customers, that's when you know you have a better customer service than your competition. Using social media and answering their questions on an open platform helps promote other customers to engage in conversations.
The gist is to listen and respond to their questions and comments to let them know you are connected to them.
Teach your people/staff to use a combination of social media, support email, website chat, polling your user base, actively reaching out to your most active users, focus groups, account managers, etc.
A sales job should mostly revolve on building rapport and eventually earning trust. When your customers trust you, you are actually looking forward for a possible lifetime connection than just a single transaction. Interacting with customers may also earn you future sales and direct referrals, along with their loyalty.
Remember that word of mouth is still one of the most effective marketing strategies in the industry, and once a satisfied client talks about how happy he was with your service, he is also encouraging more people to give you a shot. This is when you really know you have a better customer service than your competition.
#3: You Are Able To Monitor and Analyze How Your Consumers Buy Your Product.
Marketers and eShop owners have to be more relevant and targeted than ever. And customer information is key. Demographics, intent, sentiment, likes, and dislikes – the more you know, the more personal you can be. Monitoring gives you those insights into customers. This is where a shop analytics comes in handy for every body involve in ecommerce. Having an analytics feature in your webshop is a huge advantage for you. If your ecommerce system does not offer you this kind of feature, you might want to look for one that does.
Some specific ways you benefit from monitoring
Keep track of product and feature requests: You need customer insights.
Monitor launches: Your team works hard on launches; find out how your audiences are reacting and measure the reach.
Benchmark against competitors’ products: You can’t beat the competition if you don’t know what they’re doing.
Monitor specific demographics: If your market spans multiple languages or countries, filtering mentions by language and country can tell you a lot about how well you’re localizing your product.
When you are able to monitor and analyze how your customers are buying products, that is a sure indication you really have a better customer service than your competition.
#4: You Engage your customers in the design of your products.
The right consumer feedback can take your product from a flop to a major success. But remember, the key to engaging customers in the design process is soliciting input and feedback effectively.
Disagreements betweem creative director and managers happens almost every day, but there’s a simple way to settle any argument," said a CEO.
"We take it to the people.”
It is important to remember that even the smallest tweaks made in response to customer feedback can have a substantial impact on sales. While testing should be used to test different concepts, surveys can be more valuable when it comes to fine-tuning.
Here are 3 ways you allow your customers to be involve in the design of your product:
Collaborating – this style gives the customers the greatest power to contribute their own ideas and select components for new products and the best known example of this approach is Open Source software development.
Tinkering – is where customers make modifications to commercially available products, some of which are incorporated into later releases.
Co-designing – a relatively small group of customers provides the majority of the new ideas and the bulk of the customers select which ones get implemented/developed.
Source
Additional resources
How Data Analytics Enhances Ecommerce Business Performance
5 Ways How to Genuinely Care For Your Customers
12 Key Causes of Customer Dissatisfaction That is Bad For You Business
In Conclusion
Customer service is an ever-changing landscape. But one thing is certain, and it is summed up in these phrase:
"treat the customer like a human being."
