What Are the Best Ways to Provide Excellent Customer Service?

by Guest Contributor 

Customer service is a bit of a lost art. Not everyone is trained in how to provide it, but we all know it when we experience it. Sometimes it is bold actions that are required, and other times small gestures show that you care about your customer.

Here are some of the best ways to deliver customer service.

​Pay Attention to What the Customer Needs
It should be noted that we didn’t say, “Pay attention to what you can sell to the customer.” This is very different. When you pay attention to the customer, listen or ask what their requirements are to learn how you can help them. It may turn out that selling them a product or service is what’s needed, but by focusing on the customer first, you’ll be able to better assess how they can be helped.
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Get Personal with Individual Business Cards
It’s great to have a business card to hand out, but it’s even better when you have a personalized one that fits you and the business you work for. Using a business card creator, it’s possible to design a new card and get it printed out easily. Simple customizations to add relevant contact information and a business email address that goes direct to your inbox is a good way to provide a more responsive, personalized service.

When handing out the card, you can point out that it’s got your direct line or business email address on it, which makes it faster to reach you. This kind of thing will be appreciated by customers who see this as relevant to them.

Know Your Products/Services Intimately
For a customer, there is nothing so irritating as staff who represent customer services or the sales team who do not know the products or services of their company. Customers must be able to ask relevant questions about what the company offers and receive knowledgeable responses back.

It’s very common to see staff standing around or messing about on their smartphones in full view of customers who clearly have the time to research the products or services, but fail to do so. When they don’t know the right information, and are unable or unwilling to go find it out, then a sale is lost. From the customer’s perspective, this is poor customer service, doesn’t encourage them to make the purchase, and they’re likely to go elsewhere in the future too.

Provide Training Where Needed
When staff are inexperienced in their roles, there’s no shame in arranging training programs to plug the gaps in their abilities. Whether that’s presentation skills, improved communication or another area, taking the initiative to improve what they can already do leads to better results for the company later. No one is ever too old to learn if they’re willing to do so.
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Providing better customer service is all about knowing the customer, helping them to get what they need and doing so in a polite, helpful manner. When sticking to these basics, it’s difficult to go too far wrong.