Today’s environment of social media and the ability to leave comments on review websites means that you must pay close attention to the relationship between customer service and revenue.
Treating customers well should be at the forefront of everyone inside your organization. In fact, 86% of people are willing to pay more when they experience excellent customer service.
Let’s take a look at ways your company can increase revenue by improving its customer service efforts.
Make an Excellent First Impression
Customer service often involves helping a person that is unhappy for some reason and moving them into feeling better about the situation. Make sure that everyone on the front lines handles these issues with politeness and grace.
Instead of getting aggressive with customers, train your team to listen first. Then, each customer should be treated with respect as the challenge gets resolved. This simple first impression of being heard and treated with dignity will go a long way in keeping the customer happy.
Improve Response Time
Sales will improve when your team moves quickly in solving issues. A prospect experiencing a fast resolution to any upfront concerns will more willingly purchase and become a customer. An existing customer will buy more in the future.
Amazingly, a recent study revealed that 62% of companies fail to respond when customers email them for help. Focusing on answering each customer and improving the speed at which you do it will set your company apart in a positive way.
Know Your Target Market Well
The better your customer service and sales teams understand who your best prospects are, the better you’ll see conversion to initial and repeat sales. Knowing your target market and your products will increase the overall productivity and performance of the company, especially in a jobs to be done framework.
Know the Product
Knowing the product’s features and benefits is a big step toward showing customers that you know them well. There’s nothing worse than a customer asking for product specifics and realizing that the person they’re speaking to doesn’t have the answers.
Don’t be Afraid of Challenges or Problems
Every company, brand and product runs into situations where customers become unhappy. Embrace these situations and teach your customer service representatives to admit when things might need improvement.
Your customers can be a source of ideas and valuable feedback that allows for improvements over the long-term. Use the data sourced from challenging situations to help you and your team handle those situations better in the future.
Personalize the Customer Service Experience
It’s been proven that 79% of customers prefer personal and customized experience when dealing with your customer service process.
Instead of chat bots, your customers want to speak to a real person. Only another human being can assess the situation and help personalize the help your customer receives. This is one simple piece of the puzzle that encourages positive online reviews, better social media engagement and increased revenue through repeat sales.
Provide Upsell Options
While you don’t want customers to feel as though more product options are being pushed on them, the customer service process is a good place to insert upsell opportunities. When done correctly and professionally, helping a customer fill a need with a new product option after having their service issue resolved helps increase sales.
Be Thankful
It’s easy to deal with customers on a daily basis and forget how powerful a simple thank you is with most people. Always make sure that your team is thanking your customers for their time, patience and business. This is goodwill that pays itself forward with future revenue.
It’s not difficult to improve company revenue by focusing on a great customer experience. Use the above tips to help your team listen more effectively to customers. Help your team understand how their efforts help the company thrive through increased sales.
