2021 – Customer Service Mediator

The 10 Commandments of Customer Service

December 14, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by siteadmin

Customer service is an integral part of our job and should not be seen as an external extension of it. A company’s most vital asset is its customers. Without them, we would not and could not exist in business. When you satisfy your customers, they not only help you grow by continuing to do business with you but they will also recommend you to friends and associates. The practice of customer service should be as present on the showroom floor as it is in any other sales functions and pertinent in the overall company environment.

The 10 commandments of customer service

Be a Good Listener: Take the time to identify customer needs by asking questions and concentrating on what the customer is really saying. Listen to their words, the tone of voice, body language, and most importantly, how they feel.
Identify and Anticipate Needs: Customers don’t buy products or services. They buy good feelings and solutions to problems. Most customer needs are emotional rather than logical. The more you know your customers, the better you become at anticipating their needs.
Make Customers Feel Important and Appreciated: Treat them as individuals. Always use their name and find ways to compliment them, but be sincere. Customers are very sensitive and know whether or not you really care about them. Thank them every time you get a chance.
Body Language Is Key: Be sure that your body language conveys sincerity. Your words and actions should be congruent.
Understanding Is Crucial: Your organization may have the world’s best systems for getting things done, but if customers don’t understand them, they can get confused, impatient and angry. Take time to explain how your systems work and how they simplify transactions.
Appreciate the Power of “Yes“: Always look for ways to help your customers. Look for ways to make doing business with you easy. Always do what you say you are going to do.
Know How to Apologize: When something goes wrong, apologize. It’s easy, and customers like it. The customer may not always be right, but the customer must always win. Deal with problems immediately and let customers know what you have done.
Give More Than Expected: What can you give customers that they cannot get elsewhere? What can you do to follow up and thank people even when they don’t buy? What can you give customers that is totally unexpected?
Get Regular Feedback: Encourage and welcome suggestions about how you could improve. There are several ways in which you can find out what customers think and feel about your services. Listen carefully to what they say.
Treat Employees Well: Employees are your internal customers and need a regular dose of appreciation. Thank them and find ways to let them know how important they are. Treat your employees with respect and chances are they will have a higher regard for customers.

Credit: the balance

3 Strategies to Improve Your Customer Service Standard

November 24, 2021/0 Comments/in Article/by siteadmin

credit: ngDesk.com

Customer service is as important as anything that has to do with your business/organization. Here are the best 3 strategies to help improve your customer service standards:

1. Seek Customer Feedback

To provide excellent customer service, you first need to understand their needs and experiences. For these, you need to ensure that you provide your customers’ multiple ways to share their feedback. You can do this through surveys, feedback forms sent via email or even establish a complaint system.

This will let you know all about their good, bad, and ugly experiences when interacting with your brand. Through this, you gain real insights into what you’re doing well, and which areas require improvement. This can help to establish trust, and may even prevent them from sharing their concerns or negative comments on social media.

2. Strengthen Your Customer Service Team

Improving your customer service begins with building a strong customer service team. Here’s how you can strengthen your service performance.

Hire and Train Professionals with the Right Skills: No tool or AI element will compensate for the lack of a skilled workforce. When you hire people for your customer service team, you should look for individuals with the right skills.
Organize training sessions for them to improve their skills once they’re on board: Some notable skills every customer service representative needs to have are: Empathy and Patience, Good Communication skills, Knowledge of products and services.

3. Leverage Multi-Channel Servicing

Customers should be able to switch between multiple channels yet enjoy a consistent quality of service. This can help boost your brand’s reputation and credibility.

Here are some excellent multi-channel services for your customers.

Mobile Devices –You need to ensure that your customer service and support pages are mobile-ready to meet their expectations.

Social Media – Many consumers are turning to social networks for customer queries and complaints. You should utilize the power of social media to bridge the gap between you and your consumers.

Self-Service –Many customers expect brands to help them fix minor issues by themselves, and they’ll often look for such solutions on your website’s FAQ pages.

You should consistently focus on improving your customer service standards. Great customer service can help you build trust, improve brand awareness, gain customer loyalty, drive sales, and attract new customers through valuable recommendations.

Consumer Bias: The Mere Exposure Effect

November 18, 2021/0 Comments/in Article/by siteadmin

In a 1968 study, Oregon State University Professor Charles Goetzinger ran an experiment in his classroom. Without informing the rest of his class, he had one student come to each meeting in a black bag with only his feet visible. Goetzinger then observed the reaction of other students. Initially, his students treated the “black bag” with hostility. Over time, however, as they kept seeing the black bag in class every day, their hostility turned into curiosity. Eventually, classmates developed friendships with the student in the black bag.

Goetzinger’s experiment only proved the efficacy of a theory that has been posited long before: familiarity breeds content. You can use that.

How to Use the Mere Exposure Effect to Boost Your Sales

Leverage retargeting to boost sales.

When trying to advertise your products or services, retargeting people who have visited your website before will yield significantly better results than targeting raw prospects. In fact, a particular study found that the click-through rate of a retargeted ad is 10 times higher than that of a display ad and that website visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert.

Repurpose and distribute existing content.

You can also boost sales by significantly expanding the reach of your content by repurposing and distributing it. A simple blog post can be turned into an infographic, video, podcast, slide presentation, and so much more. When distributed across other channels, some people are likely to see it more than once – and that’s good for your sales!

Reshare existing content on social media.

You can also leverage the mere exposure effect by resharing your existing content on social media. Buzzsumo researched this effect by analysing 100 million articles and found that constantly resharing articles on social media can increase reach and engagement by 686%.

Credit: WordStream

Consumer Bias: The IKEA Effect

November 10, 2021/0 Comments/in Article/by siteadmin

In a 2011 study, researchers observed consumers as they assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built Lego pieces. They found that participants saw their “amateurish creations” as similar in value to the creations of experts. More interestingly, the participants expected others to share this view of their work.

Based on these results, the researchers concluded that people tend to value a product more if they were involved in its creation – even if they were originally uninterested in being involved. They termed this the “IKEA effect.”

The IKEA effect has a clear application in your marketing strategy: when you involve users in the process of creating your product or services, they are more likely to convert when you sell it to them.

How to Use the IKEA Effect to Boost Your Sales

Involve consumers in the process of building your products.

Consumers can be involved by committing time to product development, by giving input in the process of its creation or improvement, or by investing money. An example of this in action is crowdfunding campaigns: when people contribute financially to the development of a product even before it is made, they are more likely to do everything to ensure it succeeds. While crowdfunded projects were massively successful, researchers have attributed its success not to the funds raised but to the community and sense of ownership the crowdfunding fostered.

Give users the option of having your products customized for them.

Whether it’s the packaging or certain parts of the product itself, offering a customizable option involves your customers and potential customers more personally. A notable example of this is Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign. When Coca-Cola launched this initiative and allowed users to have their own customized version of the Coke, sales exploded. And the results were almost instant. Just within the first year, Coca-Cola saw significant, measurable success:

The Share a Coke campaign was one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever in Coca-Cola’s history.
Over 500,000 photos were posted online using the #ShareaCoke hashtag.
Coca-Cola users created over six million virtual Coke bottles.
Coca-Cola gained 25 million Facebook followers.

Credit: WordStream

The impact of internal communication on customer experience

November 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Article/by siteadmin

Communications with individuals and groups outside of your organization can directly impact brand loyalty, visibility, reputation, and revenue. Effectively managed internal communications creates a ripple effect that can positively influence external relationships with customers, third-party vendors, business partners, and even competitors.

Effective internal communication enhances customer relationships

While there is significant value in prioritizing employee satisfaction alone, it also tends to organically translate into more effective interactions with customers. It’s not hard to understand why: Happy people naturally exhibit more positive attitudes, and others are more likely to respond in kind.

Employees’ opinions about their company can also influence customer relationships. There is a growing public interest in how well companies treat their employees, and customers often look to employees’ opinions to inform their own buying decisions.

Consistent internal communication improves partner and vendor relationships

As effective communication practices become a regular part of your everyday internal operations, they will naturally begin to extend to external communications with groups such as third-party vendors.

Consistency, in particular, is key to nurturing these relationships. Consistent, on-brand communication naturally fosters a sense of leadership and authority that will encourage other companies and third-party vendors to trust in and collaborate with your organization.

Communication is a means of protecting your company’s voice. If you do so in a way that evokes respect and admiration, this will increase the perceived value of a partnership with your brand—which in turn will increase your brand reach.

How to improve team communication

No matter the company, there is always room for improvement in internal communication. Here are a few steps you can take to start improving this for your team and company today:

Define your expectations clearly regarding tone, language, and the use of various channels. A brand style guide can be especially helpful in sharing these expectations and maintaining consistency across all communications.
Make it easy for team members to connect. Offer multiple channels and allow employees flexibility, whenever possible, to use the channels that best suit their communication style and preferences.
Clarify each person’s role within the team. Teams work most efficiently and effectively when members know which individuals are best equipped to answer general questions or troubleshoot certain types of problems.
Lead by example. Make sure management models good communication practices by being transparent, honest, direct, and respectful of others’ time. Avoid spamming workers with unnecessary messages and always include a call to action that clearly defines what response you expect to see.
Have open discussions with your team about current communication practices, how they can be improved, and what benefits they can expect to see from doing so. Be willing to listen to feedback and ideas, and be ready to offer solutions to common or recurring challenges.

Credit: Grammarly

Internal Communication: Impact On Your Business and How To Improve It?

October 20, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by siteadmin

Internal communication refers to the ways you and your colleagues share information, whether in person or remotely, verbally, or in writing. While external communication with customers, clients, and the general public is critical, internal communication is the backbone of a successful business.

According to Gartner, effective internal communication improves productivity by as much as 10% and can increase profits by up to 29%. Avoiding misunderstandings and contradictory messaging also is key to boosting employee morale and satisfaction.

Challenges of internal communication across different channels

Today’s workforce uses a variety of communication channels to stay in touch. In addition to traditional face-to-face conversations and phone calls, your team now likely uses several digital channels to communicate, including email, instant messaging, video conferences, texting, and interactive work platforms like Google Docs and Google Sheets.

It is important to choose the right channel for your communication. To do this, consider the following:

The type of communication you’re engaging in—whether upward, downward, or lateral.

This is often worth considering when choosing which channel to use. For example, it might be fine to send a quick, casual text to a fellow manager or a direct report when you have a question that needs answering. But when asking a CEO for advice, it may be preferable to send a more formal email or even meet face to face.

Your communication style—and that of your audience.

Individuals with personal or intuitive styles, for instance, tend to prefer connecting in person, whereas analytical and functional communicators often respond well to written communications.

Choosing the best channel for a particular task and audience helps maximize the potential efficacy of your message. It means faster responses, fewer misunderstandings, greater levels of engagement, and better relationships between individuals and teams.

Advantages of good internal communication

Here’s what good internal communication facilitates:

Promotes effective collaboration and project management by preventing information silos
Improves employee morale by minimizing misunderstandings and empowering employees to ask for what they need to succeed
Fosters innovation by providing employees with a safe environment in which to speak up and express novel ideas
Encourages a culture of communication by promoting honesty and transparency
Streamlines remote communications with guidelines to prevent unintentional overcommunication

Of course, the opposite is also true. Poor internal communication can have a significant detrimental effect on productivity as well as employees’ morale and mental health. This is why improving internal communication must be a top priority for your organization.

Credit: Grammarly

The Power Of Good Customer Service

October 6, 2021/1 Comment/in Article/by siteadmin

Good customer service is essential for every business to attain its customers. Offering customers a positive welcome, helping them resolve their questions, and responding quickly will satisfy them and keep them happy. When you can keep up a good relationship with your customers, you will likely gain their loyalty, which will translate into regular sales and profit. For more on the power of good customer service and how to achieve it, here’s more.

The Benefits Of Good Customer Service

Many benefits come with offering good customer service. Not only does it do wonders for your brand reputation, but it also:

1. You can build relationships with your customers

Good customer service will help you create more personal relationships with your customers. You will be able to build relationships through good customer service as you can keep up a conversation, ask them for feedback to improve your business, and ensure that they feel respected.

For instance, whether you offer quick responses or handwritten thank you cards, good customer service will go a long way and help you build more connections with your customers.

2. Increase sales

Happy customers will likely lead to an increase in sales. If you satisfy them, then they will be happy to make a purchase.

An increase in sales is common in businesses that offer great customer service. When you offer good customer service as a business you will boost your brand reputation, which will attract new customers. New customers and happy current customers will guarantee to turn into more sales.

3. More profit

If you can offer good customer service and make your customers feel happy, then they may be more willing to pay more money for the product.

Let’s say you have a business that is looking to increase its prices due to demand, production, and competition, then your loyal customers will be happy to pay more money if you ensure to maintain good customer service. Increasing your prices does not need to be a worry for your business. Instead, you will attain more profit.

Credit: New to HR

ETHICS OR PROFIT: 9 Questions to Ask Yourself

September 29, 2021/4 Comments/in Article/by siteadmin

The race to make money is more heated than ever in direct response to the economic crisis caused by the lockdown last year. Corporations and SMEs seem to be more concerned with ROI than customer satisfaction, and the old argument between ethics and profits has become a daily struggle for managers.

Ethics and Profit

Ethics is a system of moral principles that guides a person or business’s behaviour or way of conducting activities. While profit is simply the net revenue generated by a business enterprise minus the cost of production.

While profit is the main motive behind any business venture, the matter of ethics will more definitely determine the long-term profitability of that venture. If you sacrifice customers’ satisfaction, excellence, and integrity for profit, you will end up losing more. Because when people do business with you, they are indirectly signifying their trust and endorsement of your services. Satisfied customers are the best form of free promotions and referrals.

An ethical business demonstrates respect for its employees by valuing opinions and treating each employee as an equal. The business shows respect for its customers by listening to feedback and assessing needs.

An ethical business respects its vendors, paying on time and utilizing fair buying practices.

What to Do

Sometimes the lines get so blurred that as a manager you get confused on which path to follow. In times like this, ask yourself these questions:

What are the company’s mission statement and values?
Do they align with the decision you are about to make?
What is the company culture? Or what is the company protocol concerning matters like this?
What is more important to the company, profit or reputation?
If you were the customer, what would you want?
Is there a solution that can satisfy both the client and the company without incurring unnecessary expenses?
Do you need to consult your superior before making a decision?
Would you be satisfied with your decision and be able to defend it later?
Do you have proper documentation for all the processes and activities leading up to your decision?

Once you answer all these questions satisfactorily, then go ahead and make your decision. Doing what is right for the business all the time is not an easy task, it requires intelligence, corporate awareness, grit and experience. If you succeed in making the right decision, the rewards will be worth the stress.

Ethics may cost you more in production, but it will bring you more long term profit.

Important Customer Service Skills For Your Staff

September 16, 2021/22 Comments/in Article/by siteadmin

In our last post, we talked about important customer service skills (communication skills) that your team should have. The truth is that, for you to achieve excellence in your customers’ experience, customer service cannot simply be a department in your organisation. Customer service should be the culture.

Every member of your staff is a potential customer service representative whether that is their role or not. Your staffs are your brand ambassador, therefore, it is best that they develop these important customer service skills. You never know where your next client will come from.

4 Important Customer Service Skills

#1 Empathy

Communicating with empathy is a crucial element to deepening customer engagement. Whether a customer comes to your team with a particular issue or concern, expressing empathy builds trust and a foundation for relating to one another.

Here are examples of how customer support reps can engage in empathic communication:

Show, don’t tell. Use a personal anecdote to relate, rather than simply saying, “I know how you feel.”
Listen and ask questions rather than immediately launching into an impersonal canned response.
Clarify the customer’s point of view by reviewing what they’ve communicated: “If I understand correctly . . .”
Validate a customer’s concerns and affirm the need for a solution.
Apologize to dissatisfied, distraught, or concerned customers and assure them that you’re there to help.
Thank customers for their time, patience, and business.

Last but not least, customer support teams need to be authentic to showcase empathy effectively. There’s a reason 83% of consumers say they prefer speaking to live agents over chatbots. It’s not enough to parrot empathetic responses; customers are looking for honest representatives that can speak clearly, avoid jargon or clichés, solve problems proactively, and showcase a human touch.

Human touch and empathy are becoming even more important than before the pandemic, so your staff should work on further improving your responses to make sure they come across as sympathetic and considerate.

#2 Adaptability

Flexible, creative thinking is not just a soft skill that would be nice for employees to have; it’s one of the most sought-after skills on employers’ hiring checklists. Every customer is different, and the ability to handle surprises and shifting customer moods builds a solid foundation for top-notch customer service.

There are several ways to cultivate better adaptability in the workplace:

Train agents to adapt their communications based on how internal channels interact. They need to identify the differences between a message that requires a quick Slack to a team member and one that merits a formal email to a manager.
Incorporate role-playing activities during customer service training to expose teams to different scenarios that may arise during a customer exchange.
Establish a transparent chain of command to help with customer escalations. Clarify which channel to use for immediate assistance and how to best share customer information about the issue, whether it’s detailed snippets from the conversation, a transcript of the entire discussion, screenshots, and/or a recording.
Encourage teams to talk through unfamiliar problems and ask questions.
Search for innovative solutions to customer complaints and invite suggestions.
Adopt new customer support technologies as a competitive advantage.

To be continued…

Credit: Grammarly business

4 Customer Communication Skills Your Team Should Have

September 9, 2021/4 Comments/in Article/by siteadmin

You can have all the right processes and procedures in place, but it’s customer communication skills like empathy, adaptability, attentiveness, and consistency that convert and retain buyers. Training your team to recognize these drivers of human behaviour and deliver more personalized consumer experiences can improve your conversion rate by roughly 8%.

“Great customer service is about making the customer feel satisfied and feel as if they made the right decision when they chose our company to solve their problem. In every customer service case, even when we disagree with a customer’s point of view, we seek to make them feel as if we are on their side and that we are committed to helping them.” – Mike Sims, founder and owner of ThinkLions.

Business leaders must prioritize customer communication skills and seek solutions to ensure their teams’ ability to deliver five-star customer service experiences consistently.

4 customer communication skills your team must have:

Empathy

Communicating with empathy is a crucial element to deepening customer engagement. Whether a customer comes to your team with a particular issue or concern, expressing empathy builds trust and a foundation for relating to one another.

Adaptability

Flexible, creative thinking is not just a soft skill that would be nice for employees to have; it’s one of the most sought-after skills on employers’ hiring checklists. Every customer is different, and the ability to handle surprises and shifting customer moods builds a solid foundation for top-notch customer service.

Attentiveness

Attentiveness is a pillar of emotional intelligence. Successful customer support teams are able to set aside distractions and remain fully present during customer interactions.

Customers need to feel understood—especially those who opt for live customer service (versus written communication channels like email or chat). Rather than using canned responses, teams should be encouraged to paraphrase, empathize, and ask open-ended questions.

Consistency

Consistency is essential to a company’s ability to effectively brand, track a consumer’s path to purchase and ensure a cohesive customer journey across platforms. Customers today expect seamless experiences, consistent messaging, and acute attention to detail across all channels.

These four fundamental communication skills can boost customer satisfaction, retention, and even referrals when put into practice. Having a solid customer base not only equates to more outstanding sales and profit margins but also fosters an industry-leading reputation that positions your business as a strong brand at the forefront of its market.

Credit: Grammarly business

Archive for year: 2021