Steven Odzer Looks at the Importance of Great Customer Service and How to Deliver a Consistent Customer Experience
Even if you have a fantastic product, you need superior customer service to retain customers and, more importantly, revenue, according to serial entrepreneur Steven Odzer.
Investing in your customer service policies and procedures can pay off big in terms of long-term business success. How can you help ensure that every customer has a fantastic experience? Excellent customer service includes having a good attitude, valuing your customer’s time, and providing helpful information so they can make an informed purchase decision, according to Steven Odzer, an entrepreneur focused on meeting customer needs.
Keep reading for ten great ways to deliver consistent customer service.
Ways To Exceed Your Customer’s Expectations
If you want your customers to return and buy more products and tell their friends to do the same, here are some of the tools you’ll need to make that happen.
- Know your product.
Customer support agents and sales representatives answer product questions that help buyers make their final purchase decisions. With the right training, everyone who deals with customers or clients can develop expansive knowledge about your customer’s products and services. Use a feature/benefit approach to describing your products and what they can do for your customers. Plus, address any concerns they have about how the product works.
It’s also important to clarify how your product gives customers true value for their money. Therefore, recommend uses for the product to improve your customers’ lives, says Steven Odzer.
- Maintain a positive attitude.
Having a positive attitude can help your customers feel excited about your product and services. These days, most interactions come in text messages, chats, and emails. It’s essential to train your team on the importance of online, voice, and face-to-face etiquette. Positive language and an upbeat tone make a world of difference to a customer who needs help, Steven Odzer explains.
Sometimes, live chat and email can seem cold, even if you’re trying for the opposite effect. Without body language and facial expression, the human brain can hard interpret written communication. While it’s important to stay true to your brand, if it makes sense, use humor and warmth to put customers at ease or to diffuse a tense conversation.
- Think outside the box to solve issues.
Most customers who defect to your competitors have had a bad experience with the product or with someone who works for you. To keep this number down, it’s important to train your sales team to take a problem-solving approach.
Once you establish a positive, problem-solving culture, it’s time to find out how you can go above and beyond to exceed customer expectations. This could take some brainstorming, and you might want to enlist the help of your most loyal customers to identify your strengths. You can also reach out to dissatisfied customers to find out how you can do better. With this information in hand, form a team to look into improving your brand image and customer service.
- Respond quickly.
Steven Odzer says that it’s important to help customers as quickly as possible. This means resolving their questions in the most straightforward manner. There are two types of issues regarding online chats, customer service calls or in-person interaction. More minor issues might involve providing product information and answering simple questions about product use.
But what about the more complicated issues? This goes back to the problem-solving approach discussed earlier. Customers don’t want to wait days or weeks for a resolution. Sometimes, you only have moments before they are gone for good. Therefore, your people must know the strengths and weaknesses of the product so that they can appropriately instruct customers.
- Personalize your customer interaction.
Customers want companies to understand their personal needs. That means giving better human service than the competitor. Often, customers become angry or annoyed if they feel they are just a number on your sales sheet. So, first contact resolution becomes a priority. Shuffling customers from one department to another does not leave a good impression.
Whether you need to reorganize your website, or work on providing the appropriate prompts in your call scripting, get customers to the right people as quickly as possible. Additionally, expanding product knowledge can eliminate transferring to subject matter experts. If everyone who deals with customers becomes a product expert and customer advocate, customers will feel like they matter.
- Give customers the tools they need to find their answers.
Not all customers want to talk to a representative or chat with a salesperson. Provide the information they need to research products and services online. This can include separate service pages for your products and blogs and easy-to-understand navigation on your website or e-commerce store.
You can make them happy and save money by providing information directly to customers. Then, if they can’t find what they need, your customers also have the confidence that help is a click or call away, Steven Odzer notes.
- Focus support efforts on customer needs.
Everything starts with your customers. If they don’t buy your products, you can’t make money or expand your business. Therefore, treat them like they matter more than anything in the world. When it comes to your business, they do. According to Steven Odzer, you can get to know your customers with great people and the right technology, and the difference will show in your customer loyalty results.
- Be proactive.
Customers remember companies that go out of their way to provide outstanding customer service. By anticipating your customers’ needs, you provide valuable insight and solve issues before they become a customer service miss, advises Steven Odzer.
Additionally, if you want to make your customers feel special, offer small gifts or promotional codes even if they haven’t bought anything in a while, says Steven Odzer. This kindness encourages further spending and lets them know that you are still there for them when they need your products and services
