Business
Episode 8: Why Is Customer Service So Important? We hope you enjoyed the eighth episode of the Back To Business podcast! This week we talked about all aspects of customer service - why it’s important, how you can make steps to improve the value you give customers, and what should you be avoiding. The points we covered were: Service and product based environments can vary the interaction you have with your customer. If you’re providing a service, the customer service will be your image, whereas selling a product to someone can shift the customer service to solely being focused ‘complaint management’ - as this is likely the interaction you will mostly be making with your customers. You have to make more of an effort to add value to your customer - whether that’s following up with them after their purchase, including a flyer in their package or handwritten note of thanks, or creating a video series showing them how to make the most of their product. Dealing with disgruntled customers can be very hard because you have to get what you’re saying right the first time, this can take a lot of practice. Dealing with it correctly can be the difference of retaining a customer and losing one. There are automation softwares out there that you can use to create email sequence follow ups to check in on a customer. Bots can be installed on the website to take details of complaints for you and escalate them if need be. But an automation software should not form the basis of your complaint handling. One-to-one contact is always best to handle complaints, don’t underestimate the intelligence of the consumer as it’s usually obvious that you’re dealing with a bot. Too much automation in a small company can lead to you not engaging with your customer, you need the feedback so it’s important to engage with them. This can help you compete and set you apart from bigger companies - as it’s difficult to maintain a personal touch when you’re a larger company with lots of orders. Retention is much cheaper than acquiring a new customer. So look after your customers and give them good value. Incentivising a customer to leave a review or shop with you again by giving them a special offer. Refer a friend discounts may work if your product is more of a one-time purchase - make it really easy for them to claim incentives, such as using QR codes. Not everyone will love your product, but more often than not people will tell you about a bad experience they’ve had than a good one. If you have direct face to face contact with your customer, you can get direct feedback. Consider also using surveys if you have a good customer base to find out anything they might not be telling you. Resources We Discussed In Today’s Episode Are: ManyChat: https://manychat.com/ MailChimp: https://mailchimp.com/ Back To Business is a podcast documenting our own navigation through the business world, and where we have come from as a team. We’d like to bring you along for the ride, so don’t forget to hit the subscribe button to stay up to date with the latest episodes, available every week.