While Stop Bad Service Day isn’t necessarily a national holiday per se, it does serve as a reminder that customer service is at the backbone of what small businesses do. Companies help people. They address pain points. They provide the kind of service that makes people want to keep coming back. Stop Bad Service Day, if nothing else, is about understanding the importance of having a seamless and effective customer service protocol in place for your business. It’s about reassessing how you handle customer concerns and complaints, how you follow up with your clients to ensure satisfactory service, and how ultimately, you make your brand one that people want to keep purchasing from.
It’s Time to Evaluate Your Customer Service
As mentioned, today is a good day to look at how your company handles customer service matters. Even when outsourcing your customer service, you should analyze the results from your out-of-office team. Among the different aspects of customer service that you might assess are:
– The overall way your employees address customers.
Showing respect for the customer is imperative. Regardless of the type of interaction, an employee must understand that they should be respectful when dealing with a client. Sometimes this is difficult, especially if the situation is rather tense. Tense situations, however, call for even more tact and more respect.
– The personalization level of customer service.
Each customer is different—this goes without saying. Respect is one thing. Personalization is another. Therefore, every customer must be treated according to their specific needs and wants. Taking the time to understand individual customers really can go a long way.
– The level of empathy your employees demonstrate.
To be empathetic is to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This enables you to understand better what they may be feeling or experiencing. This gives you a different perspective of your company. Are your employees being empathetic? Are they showing that they care about the customer experience when it comes right down to it?
– The amount of patience your employees have.
For a customer service professional especially, patience is most definitely a virtue. There are going to be issues that arise. They are going to be challenging situations. Offering only knee-jerk or emotionally fueled reactions is the exact wrong way to deal with such problems. Here is where patience pays off.
– Problem-solving skills among your employees.
In handling various customer service issues, problem-solving skills most definitely come in handy. There often is no clear-cut answer; there are usually creative solutions. Customer service specialists should be able to think outside the box. And without question, they should be adept problem-solvers.
– Employee communication skills.
Perhaps the essential skill for any employee, customer service or otherwise, is communicating clearly and effectively. When you are dealing with customers, the capacity to communicate effectively will be central to a smooth interaction. Even during more challenging scenarios, the ability to communicate concisely and tactfully will always help to facilitate the situation.
On Stop Bad Service Day, one thing you want to do that could certainly help your company is to try and look at it from the customer‘s perspective. That is to say, how do the people who purchase from you perceive your business? What sort of reputation do you have among your customers? Is it such that they are going to be returning customers? Doing everything you can to discover what people think of you and how they view your customer service capabilities can only help you.
You might try social listening. This is where you use your various social media accounts to gauge people’s opinions. How is your brand faring on Facebook or Instagram? You could talk to the people who frequent your business. Ask them straight out what might be improved in terms of customer service. What are they happy with, and consequently, what are they not so pleased about? Your customers are the reason you are in business. This is a day to keep this in mind.
First Union Lending Can Help
We work with small businesses throughout the US. Our job is to get you the cash you need to grow and thrive. We have short-term loans, SBA loans, and merchant cash advances, among other solutions. The resources at our disposal enable you to get things done. Call today and let’s get started.