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We all now how important customer service is to the success of a business. In fact, many of the most beloved companies out there owe their success in large part to the quality of their customer service.

With this in mind, more and more businesses are looking for ways to improve upon their customer service and give their clientele the experience they are seeking.

If you are a business owner, you might find yourself in the very same boat as so many of the modern businesses who are looking to provide the highest quality customer service. This aspect of your business will only become more important as your company grows. Therefore, it is a good idea to address the quality of your customer service as soon as possible.

As you search for ways to improve upon the service you are offering your customers, it is important that you remember to stick to the basics. Your customers don’t expect you to give them elaborate options when it comes to the support you offer. They do, however, expect companies to provide a certain level of basic consideration.

Unfortunately, many businesses get too wrapped up in the elaboration of their customer service departments and glaze over the most basic and most important parts of quality customer support. Still others give no thought at all to their customer service offerings.

Either way, companies who fail to offer the basic considerations people are looking for tend to receive poor feedback and little return business.

Because poor reviews are the last thing a growing business needs, and because return business is crucial to the success of almost any business out there, it is highly important that your business gets things right in the customer support arena. Therefore, we have taken it upon ourselves to compile a list of six ways to ensure you are meeting the basic expectations of your clientele and offering the best customer service possible.

#1: Be Real

People want to talk to people. Providing your customers with opportunities to do so is sure to start your communication off on the right foot.

Therefore, it is best to avoid phone recordings and automated email replies, and hire enough staff to connect with your customers as people. Instruct your staff to make a true attempt to connect with customers by offering empathy and truly listening while staying on the task at hand. This alone will work wonders by helping your customers know they are truly valued.

#2: Make Contact Easy

Nobody enjoys seeking out contact information, especially when they are upset about something or trying to solve a problem. Keep your customers from getting even more upset by making contact information easy to find and offering plenty of modes of communication.

This means maintaining a phone line, email account, mailing address, and as many social media pages as you can manage, and including all of this information on the footer of your website and on any media you may send to customers.

#3: Stay Consistent

Make sure you create a very clear set of standards and rules. Communicate these to your employees, and make sure they know to follow them closely. By doing this, you can help ensure that no customer ever feels they are being treated poorly when compared to other customers.

That said, there are always special cases. Therefore, employees should be reminded that some tickets may need to be resolved in such a way that doesn’t adhere to company guidelines. Be sure a supervisor is always close at hand in order to approve the unusual resolution these special cases may require as they come up.

#4: Provide Self-Service Opportunities

Although it may not seem like it when you are the person handling phone calls or answering email messages, most people actually prefer to help themselves whenever possible. Providing customers with opportunities to take care of their own problems can help keep them happy while also reducing the workload of your staff.

This can be done by providing a comprehensive FAQ page on your website. Additionally, building and maintaining an active community—either on social media or via a business forum—can help customers answer questions for each other in a more efficient manner, solving a whole host of problems.

#5: Encourage Workplace Communication

Staff members who fail to communicate with one another are often less efficient than those who make time to keep others in the loop.

For instance, if a ticket is being passed from one employee to the next, the first employee should communicate what steps have been taken to help the customer in order to avoid repeating steps unnecessarily. Not only will this keep customers from becoming frustrated with the slow process, it will also save your staff valuable work hours which could be spent helping the next customer in line.

#6: Provide Employee Incentives

Everyone works more effectively when there is something worth working for. Therefore, customer service staff incentives are crucial.

Unfortunately, this is one thing many customer service departments are lacking. Something as simple as the gamification of the work these individuals do can be enough to make work more interesting for them. Be sure to take this into consideration when planning the changes you will make to your customer service department.

By putting yourself in the shoes of your customer, it is pretty easy to see that these basic things will take you a long way when it comes to customer service. So what are you waiting for? Why not implement these ideas right away? Vision Helpdesk makes it incredibly easy to completely revamp your customer service department and ensure all of your customer service basics are covered in no time at all.

For more insights read : How to Revamp Your Customer Service Department and Software in 9 Steps