Did you know that more than 50% of small businesses don’t anticipate returning to pre-COVID operations for at least another 6 months?
With operations and staff running on lower levels, you must amp up your customer service experience.
If you want to maintain customer satisfaction and allow your business to grow, there are methods to try.
Continue reading to discover the best ways to improve customer satisfaction at your company!
Build a Customer Service Team
One of the most effective ways to improve customer satisfaction is to build a customer service team.
Having a team that is dedicated to the customer experience can make a dramatic impact. Customer service teams offer a direct line of communication for customers. This makes them feel more comfortable working with you.
A customer service team can relay the companies strengths and talk about downfalls without losing loyalty. Customer service teams are excellent at influencing customers and maintaining a brand image. If you don’t already have a team focusing on customer relations, you should consider doing so.
Use the Golden Rule
Everyone knows that the golden rule is about treating others how you want to be treated.
Whether you are at home, school, or in the workplace, you should always have this mentality. To build customer satisfaction, your staff must always treat customers with respect. Talking down to customers can lead to dissatisfaction and a loss of customers. Take time to teach your staff how to respond to customers when they are happy or unhappy. Although there will be difficult customers, you must be able to try to find a resolution.
Increase Employee Satisfaction
If you want to improve customer satisfaction, you need to begin with employee satisfaction.
Happy employees provide better service to customers when they are happy at their jobs. Take time to talk to your team to discuss areas of improvement and what helps make them feel accomplished on the job.
Often, customers have a bad experience because the employee they are dealing with is unhappy. Or doesn’t know their job expectations.
Be sure to review job roles and expectations so that each staff member knows what being a good employee looks like. When your staff is happy, they can increase customer data by building relationships and providing support.
Offer Multichannel Communication
There are many business tools that you can use to improve communication with customers.
Webchat and emails are commonly used tools that companies use to engage with customers and improve satisfaction. If you want to take this to the next level, you can use social media and mobile communication.
When customers can get ahold of someone from the company in several ways, they have increased satisfaction. Allowing multichannel communication allows customers to choose how they like to communicate. They can take whichever route they are most comfortable with, whether it be texting, phone calls, or through social media chats.
Another advantage is that if customers have a negative experience with one department, they can speak with someone else.
Send Out Surveys
Many businesses use surveys to increase customer information and knowledge. They can also be used in the realm of customer experience.
Each year you should send a survey to your customers.
Use it to see what aspects of the business they are happy with and which areas need improvement. Allowing customers to share their opinions helps make them feel heard, especially if you act upon their comments. Although not every customer will fill these surveys out, you can still gather crucial information from those that do.
A great resource to get information is at Checkmarket.com, where you can easily measure customer satisfaction.
If you want to increase survey responses for more accurate data, you could provide a discount or promotion for those that complete it. You can send surveys to customers through email or on social media platforms. Depending on what information you would like to gather, they can be as detailed as you want.
Check Customer Reviews
Social media and Google have created a new way of gathering customer feedback.
When people leave customer reviews on your site, or somewhere else online, you can use this information. Most people who leave these reviews either had a really good experience or a negative experience with your company.
Negative reviews can be difficult if you aren’t open to criticism but they should always be considered and addressed. If a specific employee is mentioned in a comment or a situation, you must take the necessary steps to fix the problem.
Simply reading these reviews can be helpful, but to increase customer satisfaction, you must show them how you are fixing the problem. Kindly respond to these customers and ensure them that you are focused on making them happy.
Limit Wait Times
Have you ever been trying to contact a company only to find out that the call wait time is more than an hour?
Having long wait times can lead to customer dissatisfaction because they feel that their time is being wasted. If you are short-staffed, try setting up a system where you can call the person back during a certain window of time. If possible, avoid having wait times by getting your customer service team to respond to people.
Improve Customer Satisfaction at Your Company
If your business has been struggling to improve customer satisfaction, there are many strategies that you can try.
The best way to increase customer satisfaction is by focusing on internal needs first. Having a customer service team and happy employees can improve the customer’s experience on nearly every level.
If you want to improve satisfaction, you can also gather information from customers through surveys. Take time to listen to your customers and review their responses to make the next best step.
Be sure to check out our blog for more articles about the customer experience and improving your company!