Customer Service Week // 5 Great Lessons Learned Overtime

Customer Service goes way beyond what we have always thought it to be, here are a few lessons we have gathered over time.

This week marked Customer Service Week, as more and more companies embarked on campaigns to make their customers feel more appreciated, one thing that we realized is that customer service goes beyond having a mantra or simply smiling when a customer walks in.

At Nairobi Garage, we dubbed our Customer Week as the ‘Yes! Week’ where we tasked our team to say yes to all our customers’ needs as long as they were in line with our policies. We realized that customer service often is about embedding a customer service mentality throughout the organization.

Many of today’s most successful companies have figured out how to make their customers elated—and keep them coming back for more.

As we come to the end of this special week, here’s a look at seven of the best practices of companies known for providing great customer service.

No Automation Required

Most companies today are automating most parts of their businesses probably to save on cost as it helps them reduce the workforce. However, the economics of service automation isn’t universally rosy.

You can easily recall, when banks introduced online banking, customers who adopted it began visiting and calling the bank more, increasing costs and decreasing overall profitability & despite having customer service options online, customers literally chose to call or even go ahead & follow the long queues in customer service centres.

The same applies to the introduction of ATMs. When people adopted the use of ATMs more and the teller less, their overall level of satisfaction with the bank went down

Similar dynamics were observed in health care. When the whole telemedicine aspect was introduced, patients still adopted it but they actually began showing up at the doctor’s office twice as often & the list goes on.

One explanation for this pattern is that current technology is functionally limited, requiring people to seek out in-person help in addition to using automated services. But as innovation progresses, functional limitations are bound to fall by the wayside.

Another explanation is that humans are inherently social creatures who get emotional value from seeing and interacting with one another. Research shows that taking away the opportunity for this kind of connection can undermine service performance.

The Time Is Now!

As much as we celebrate Customer Service Week annually, Customer Service should be part & parcel of our day-to-day operations.

The way the organization and every individual engage customers today and, in the future, even if the past proved disappointing, can change the customer experience.

How a customer feels about a company over time & the perception that customers have of their interactions with an organization always go a long way.

7 ways tech is changing customer service in businesses

There’s no better time to take a step back to take a step forward when it comes to your customer than now.

That customer feedback you’ve been meaning to analyze and initiate action on? Now’s the time.

Get together with front-line customer service staff to compile the top disappointments or requests that could improve customer service and the customer experience and begin action items for as many as you can.

Share all of your customer feedback analysis with the entire organization. Ask employees what could be done to improve the customer experience, from policies and personnel to products and pricing.

Go undercover as a customer to request service or information and ask the same question across multiple service channels. Did you receive consistently satisfying service and responses wherever, whenever and with whomever you engaged?

It is therefore important to gather, analyze and share the information from your customers and the picture presented by the ghosts of customer service past and present to justify and get support for future change.

No Two Customers Are Alike

Your customers are different from each other. Personalizing their experience when they use your business will result in more loyal clients that feel appreciated by your company and that feeling will create a strong bond which is fundamental for improving customer experience.

There are various ways of giving a personal touch. It can start with a smaller scale such as greeting your customers by name and smiling more as well as having a non-formal and friendly conversation with them.

However, it can also be taken to a bigger scale like predicting their needs and suggesting products that would be relevant to them with the help of technologies and customer data.

Empathy is Key!

The boom of social media resulted in a lack of real human interaction between people. Today, having a human interaction is seen as very genuine.

As soon as you show those attributes and empathize with your clients, you will win them over.

Perfect customer service must feel human as it will show your customer that you really care about them.

Make sure your customer remembers you positively and carry this positivity every time they talk about your product or user it. You might not always solve your client’s problems, but you can always make them feel important!

It is not Static

The main concept of customer service is to keep improving through learned lessons and keeping up with the innovations.

Even though continuous improvement might seem like an easy and self-explanatory term, it might get complicated.

You must understand that today there is more competition going on than ever, which is a good thing. This enables us to enhance and upgrade our product that will benefit the customer’s needs.

One of the main ways of improving your customer service is through learned lessons. And it is possible to learn your lessons through information. You can have this information online, where your customers leave their certain purchasing behaviour patterns or through innovative tools that give you insights into your consumer preferences and habits.

You have to understand that regardless of the superb customer service your business is providing, there is always room for improvement and in order to outperform your competitors you should continuously be searching for those improvement possibilities.