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8/21/2015 Improve Your Customer Service
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About.com About Money Small Business: Canada . . . Small Business Makeover
By Susan WardSmall Business: Canada Expert
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Customer service is truly thelifeblood of any smallbusiness. Small businessesgenerally can't compete withbig box stores and biggercorporations on price, butcustomer service can providesmall businesses with acompetitive edge if you do itright.
So this Customer ServiceMakeover focuses on making
sure that your small business provides the kind of customer service that builds customerloyalty, gives positive wordofmouth advertising, and increases sales in short, the good,better or even superior customer service that consumers want.
Here's what to do:
1) Find out what shape your customerservice is in right now.
Before you can improve your customerservice, you need to find out what it's like atthis point in time for customers/clients to dobusiness with you. The best way to do this isto interview or survey your customers/clients.
Put Some Extra Eyes on your CustomerService provides suggestions for elicitingfeedback from your customers. I've alsodesigned a short Customer Service Surveythat you can use. While it's designed forbusinesses that have facetofaceinteractions with customers, it would be easyenough to adapt it for use with onlinecustomers.
When you're seeking your customers' viewsof your customer service, remember that
customers measure customer service in specifics so you have to, too. That is, a customerdoesn't rate your customer service as "good", "fair" or "poor"; he or she pays attention tohow you answer the phone or how he or she was treated when asking for help.
So when you're adapting the Customer Service Survey form I provide to suit your ownneeds or talking to customers in person, be sure to ask specific questions about specificcustomer service situations.
Not "How was our customer service today?"but "Did the person who was helping youanswer all your questions?"
2) Use the customer service feedback
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8/21/2015 Improve Your Customer Service
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that you've collected to choose one ortwo specific aspects of customer serviceto improve.
In one sense, providing good customerservice is the simplest thing in the world. Allyou have to do is treat all your customers
like you would like to be treated. But in another sense, because customer service involveshuman beings interacting with one another, providing good customer service is quitecomplex.
That's why just deciding that you will give better customer service or telling youremployees to do so doesn't work. You have to be very clear about exactly what you wantthe people providing customer service to do.
One way of doing this is to focus on the different customer service interactions that aremost common in your business. I've chosen to focus on answering the phone, a customerwanting help, and a customer making a return or complaint in this Customer ServiceMakeover because these are three of the most common customer contact points for mostsmall businesses.
Choose to work through one or more of these common customer interactions as part ofyour Customer Service Makeover.
A) Good Customer Service: Answering the Phone
The phone is still often the first point of contact with your customers, so it's critical that theway your business phone is answered gives the person calling a good first impression ofyour business. Read through Phone Answering Tips to Win Business and print the articlefor convenience.
Then use the points in the article to assess how incoming phone calls to your business arehandled. (Note: If you are trying to assess your own customer service performance on thephone, have someone else listen to your side of the call and assess it; you won't be ableto handle the call properly if you're trying to evaluate it at the same time.)
After assessing several calls, you should have a clear guide as to how your customerservice phone performance measures up, and be able to pinpoint specific problems ifthere are any. Use the tips in the article to improve your customer service as needed.
For more on this topic, see 3 Keys to Business Phone Greeting Success.
B) Good Customer Service: Customer Wants Help
This customer service situation, a customer seeking help in person, is the most commoncustomer service interaction so it’s extremely important to get it right.
Read through Tips for Better Customer Service: How to Help a Customer and print thearticle for convenience.
Then use the points in the article to assess how well you and/or your staff are handlingthis customer service situation. (Once again, be sure to have someone else assess yourown customer service performance, as you won't be able to deal with the customerproperly if you're trying to evaluate your performance at the same time.)
After assessing several customerseekinghelp situations, you'll know how your customerservice performance measures up, and be able to pinpoint specific problems if there areany. Use the tips in the article to improve your customer service as needed.
Continue on to the next page to learn how to improve customer service when dealing withcustomer complaints and returns and how to evaluate your Customer Service Makeover.
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The Business Planning Makeover create a Business Action Plan that will provide yoursmall business direction for the coming year or longer.
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8/21/2015 Improve Your Customer Service
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