Customer support is the golden key to a successful business. So, if you don’t have a thorough customer support strategy to retain your customers, act fast and make it your priority.
Why?
Simply because customers are the heart of every business. They are the reason why your business is still in the market. In order to achieve success, you must make your customers feel like you truly care about their experience.
Even if you’ve just struck the lottery and have an unlimited budget to market your business, it will not be enough. It is important to know that customers will notice your attitude towards customer service and that’s how they decide if they will remain your customer.
Importance of Customer Support
“Customers may forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel”. – Maya Angelou
Adrian D’Ambra, the man behind a proven chat support platform–Tawkto, highlighted this quote by Maya Angelou. For him, when engaging with customers, you must make them feel like you care about them. Additionally, he mentioned that making your customers feel that you want them will lead to success in customer support. But you shouldn’t confuse this with desperation.
Desperation usually causes a bad customer experience for your customers. In return, they will not buy your products and won’t even recommend your products to their friends.
Now the question is, why should you aim to deliver great customer support?
Well, here are some points that Adrian mentioned in his talk.
1. Customers expect high-quality service
When customers go to your site, they are not just looking for something to buy. They are also expecting exceptional customer service. The reason is that they have engaged with customer service from other brands in the past and they are going to compare you to them. So in order to stand out to customers, aiming for great customer service is a must!
2. Retention is cheaper than acquisition
It is much cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. Therefore, providing excellent customer support can also help you save tons of bucks. Yes, you might have set aside a big budget to acquire new customers. However, if you are creative and flexible enough, you can retain customers and increase your revenue just by prioritizing customer support.
3. Generate loyalty
If you are good at taking care of your customers, they usually stay. That is why after-sales service is something that you should also focus on.
Building trust and loyalty with your customer base are achievable. But, sustaining this trust and loyalty is the big challenge.
4. Happy customers = More happy customers
I am sure you are already familiar with word-of-mouth marketing and how important it is to your business. If you keep your customers happy, they will recommend your products to their friends, colleagues, and even new acquaintances.
5. Customers pay more for better service
Customers are, more often than not, happy to pay more for better customer service. Studies show that about 60% of customers would be willing to spend more on a product or service if the customer service is great. Imagine having 100% happy customers and great feedback?
6. Gain valuable insight into your business
Great customer support also helps you to gain valuable feedback about your company. As a result, you get to save some money on marketing, advertising, etc. After enjoying good customer service, customers are more than willing to share their opinions about your products and services. Hence, you will become aware of what needs improvement and what type of products or services to offer next.
How do you deliver great customer service to your customers?
Knowing the importance of offering great customer support is not enough to increase sales. It is also important to know how you are going to implement it.
Let's explore some tips on how to deliver great customer support.
1. Know your products and benefits.
Offering the right products based on your customer's needs is one way to deliver great customer service. If you know your products really well and you know their benefits, you will be sure of how and why the products you are offering will benefit your customers.
2. Help people see success.
Another way to deliver great customer support is to help people see success from using your products. This will let your customers know that you value their goals.
3. Make it easy for them to get help.
There are lots of ways to communicate with your customers. But, you should remember to always make it easy for your customers to get in touch with you. Phone support is one easy way for customers to reach out to you when they have doubts or they have questions about your product. However, each customer is unique. So it is better to have other customer support options at hand.
4. Measure data
How will you be able to measure your customer service? It’s easy!
Surveys are one good way to measure your customer service. Even a simple like and dislike format would be helpful. If you can measure the quality of your customer service, then you can prove to future prospects how well you are doing with it.
5. Respond quickly
Whenever customers visit your site, it means that they are looking for something and they want it quickly. Responding to your customers as quickly as possible can give you that extra edge over your competitors.
6. Make it personal
Personalization is really important in customer support. For better engagement, it is important that customers feel the connection with you. You can use your name, your image and be easily reachable for people to connect with you. Building a rapport is always a great way to have a connection and gain trust from your customers. Once the customer feels that they are dealing with a human, it is much easier for them to come back to you whenever they encounter problems or have questions about your products. Robotic replies and boring scripts usually lead to losing trust and connection with your customers.
7. Set expectations
Setting the right expectations for your products and services is also important to deliver good customer support. It lessens the time you would respond to people who are in a panic because they are not fully aware of the functionalities of your products and services. Setting realistic expectations will lead to more satisfied customers because they clearly understand the limitations and benefits they can reap from your products.
8. Be proactive, not reactive
When something goes wrong, proactively reaching out to your customers will be much appreciated because you are taking initiative and showing that they are important.
9. Do the right thing
“If you are happy to tell your family, it means you did the right thing”. -Adrian D’Ambra
Moreover, if you are doing the right thing and your customers trust your business, no matter how many competitors try to steal your loyal customers, they will stay.
These are just some simple tips to help improve your business’ customer support strategy and increase revenue. Your results will depend on how these steps are implemented and your real commitment to providing exceptional customer service.
Learn more from Adrian at this video down below
