What kind of customer service experience do you deliver?
Are you offering exceptional, functional, or dismal service?
Improving your customer service can offer a whole range of benefits.
Benefits that will increase customer satisfaction and help you boost sales.
But it’s hard to tell how you’re doing by intuition or estimation alone.
Here are some ways to assess your customer service and see how you measure up.
Business Touchpoints
Where do you interact with your customers?
On social media, in weekly emails, in person, on your podcast, or on your YouTube channel?
Every touchpoint is an opportunity to connect with customers and learn more about their needs.
If you have limited points of contact with your customers, consider adding more.
For example, use Instagram Stories to post a poll.
Schedule an “Ask Me Anything” on Facebook Live.
Post a quick video on YouTube with a ‘hot take’ and ask viewers for their feedback.
Get creative, and make time to engage your customers every week.
Can Customers Contact You Easily?
Is it easy for customers to contact you?
How can they reach you?
How soon can you respond?
Provide people with different ways to contact your business, to suit all preferences and needs.
Consider adding a 24/7 chatbot to answer questions when you’re not available.
Upgrade your FAQs to cover as many topics as possible.
‘Time to Resolution’
How many of your customer service issues get resolved in one contact?
If your answer was, “all or most,” you’re doing well.
If it takes a series of follow-ups to resolve an issue, consider tightening up your responses.
Track your interactions from first contact to resolution and see how long they take.
Identify the problem that is causing delays and solve it.
Customer Complaints
If you’re experiencing a high number of customer complaints, you need to discover the cause.
Customer complaints should be very rare, and generally easy to resolve.
If you receive many complaints about the same thing, this tells you that the issue is on your end, not the customers’.
Seek Feedback Directly
A great way to assess your service is to contact customers directly.
Create a short survey and ask key questions about a customer’s experience with your business.
If you have the resources, arrange one-on-one interviews or focus groups as they can provide more detailed insights.
Now Improve Your Customer Service
Are you ready to make improvements and learn new skills that will take your customer service to a whole new level?
Now that you have identified potential weak points, you’re ready to make some changes.
