“If you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will.”
Delivering a poor customer service experience will not just cost you a lot of money but will eventually lead to the demolishment of customers’ trust in your brand.
So it seems crucial to provide customers with an exceptional or say world-class customer service experience.
In this article, we will cover the following:
- What does world-class customer service mean?
- Why should you deliver world-class customer service?
- How to deliver world-class customer service?
So, what is world-class customer service? Let’s discuss this for a moment.
What does world-class customer service mean?
First, let us know what the word ‘world class’ means. According to Cambridge Dictionary, someone or something world-class is one of the best that there are of that type in the world.
World-class customer service definition:
Simply put, world-class customer service includes greatly exceeding the expectations of your customers, reminding them constantly that they are of value and their satisfaction is your main goal, resulting in increased brand loyalty and positive customer response.
World-class customer service can not only help you with the involvement of the customers with your business, but it is going to help you earn credibility and their trust furthermore.
Let’s talk about why world-class customer service is so important for your business to grow:
Why you should deliver world-class customer service?
1. Retains customers:
Providing world-class customer service can help you increase customer retention. And it is no surprise that retaining customers is less costly than bringing a new one.
In fact, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.
2. Generates referrals:
Positive word-of-mouth referrals come straightforwardly from existing customers that have had an amazing experience with you.
In fact, 72% of customers will share a positive experience with six or more people. They tell their family members, partners. Thus, urging them to invest in a brand that they already trust.
3. Builds credibility and trust:
The customer service team is responsible for building the credibility and trust of the customers in a business.
Almost 90% of customers trust a company whose customer service they rate as “very good” while only 16% of customers trust companies that they rate as “very poor”.
Clearly, by providing world-class support, customers will gain a lot of confidence and trust in your business.
4. Creates and maintains a positive business image:
The customer service team deals with customers representing your business image. So, how they interact with your customers and how the customers feel about it is going to directly impact customers’ perception of your business.
Now that you have an idea about the importance of providing world-class customer service, let’s find out how to deliver such a high-quality customer service experience to your customers.
8 best practices to deliver world-class customer service?
Here are 8 simple yet effective practices that you should use to deliver a world-class customer service experience:
1. Listen:
Listen to your customers carefully so they don’t need to repeat themselves. It will give them a sense that their opinion is being considered and they’re being valued.
In fact, 86% of your customers will be quick to switch to another business if they feel they aren’t valued and have received bad customer service.
For example, say that you have a complaint of slow speed about your ISP, you have called them and the connection and their response is so poor that it took 10 minutes for them to find out that you’re having issues with the speed.
Now, you would definitely feel so annoyed that you might switch to another provider in no time.
Furthermore, listening actively can not only help you understand customers’ issues better but can help you decide your customer service priorities as well.
2. Be proactive:
Being proactive means preventing any issue/need beforehand rather than looking for a cure later.
In fact, 83% of consumers said they want companies to contact them proactively to provide customer service.
For example, suppose a brand’s customer support proactively contacts you to ask if you are enjoying their product or service or not.
How will you feel about that brand? Most likely, you will feel valued.
Being proactive to your customers and reaching them from time to time anticipating any of their future needs or issues is a great way to provide a world class customer experience to your customers.
3. Empathize:
To empathize with your customers is to walk in their shoes or to put yourself in their situation, and then act upon them accordingly. It helps you understand what matters to your customers.
Empathizing with your customers is an important customer service etiquette because customers do not just call customer support to get a resolution to their problem, but they also expect an empathetic hand from the customer support team.
If your customer service is empathetic, your customers will also feel positive about your business resulting in the growth of your business in terms of finance, market, and customer loyalty.
4. Hiring skilled representatives:
In Helplama’s survey, 50% of respondents who ended a commercial relationship cited unskilled support representatives as a cause of action.
Hiring highly-skilled representatives will ease your world-class customer service requirements and improve your customers’ journey throughout.
Truth be told, after the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 58% of surveyed customers said their customer service expectations are higher today than they were a year prior.
Simply by hiring skilled representatives, you are making sure that the requirement for necessary skills required to deliver world class customer service is met.
5. Empower your customer service team:
To provide a world class customer experience, your team needs world class customer service training.
No matter how skilled your customer service team is, empower them and train them for their betterment and to maintain and improve the quality of customer service.
Making them feel valued and important to the company will make them feel positive about the company which will be reciprocated to your customer by them.
6. Be honest:
Be transparent and honest with your customers. It will help you build a positive customer perception.
It can help you win their loyalty, making them ignore your cons if any.
For example, suppose you have an issue with the food quality at a certain restaurant and you asked the waiter to go and check the issue with the chef and they returned with “The food was properly cooked, sir/mam. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Now, let’s take the same scenario but the waiter returned with, “We apologize, sir/mam, the food was slightly less-cooked, we ran into problems with our oven. Let us cook it properly and come back to you asap”
Most probably, you would feel more positive about the latter as they were honest with you and would even let them off the hook for their fault.
7. Must take customer feedback:
Providing a great customer service experience to every customer might not be possible for you. That’s why some of your customers might feel disappointed, and some might feel really happy about it.
“Customer feedback is any information that customers give a company about their experience” — Jeff Toister, CX expert
To provide world-class customer service is not just to provide them with great customer service but also to collect feedback on the service that you have provided them.
Use this feedback to know where you’re lacking behind, then improvise your customer service furthermore, making them feel heard even after their needs and issues have been resolved already.
Going just this extra mile will provide you with their faith in you and will keep them stuck to your business.
8. Stay calm and positive:
Often customers get frustrated and angry, your goal is to first try to calm them down and then find a solution to whatever issue they are facing quickly.
Remember: ‘The customer is frustrated with the issue they are facing and not you.’
Staying calm throughout the interaction will calm them down and will give you the time and opportunity to look into their issue in detail. This goes without saying but always stay positive, no matter what the customer is saying. Just know that the customer is always right.
Conclusion
Companies that grow exponentially in terms of their business and customers’ loyalty know how to keep their customers happy and satisfied.
Starting with hiring a skilled and enthusiastic team of representatives makes their customers experience world-class and delightful.
To be really successful, your business has to pay great attention to your customers’ needs and especially complaints.
Solving their issues, resolving their complaints quickly, and taking an extra step to do something unexpected for them will result in a much happier customer than before.
If you are low on time or budget, you can always delegate customer service to Helplama within a few hundred dollars per month.
