Customer service is key! Ensuring that your customer service is superior gives you a big advantage over your competitors. In these trying times, now is a good time to work on making sure your customer service strategies are up to par.
Review Your Framework
Customer service is always a top priority; therefore, you need a predetermined framework for how employees should go about taking care of an upset, frustrated, or disappointed customer. It is essential to have this framework in place ahead of time because there is nothing more stressful than winging it when an angry customer is in your ear. Review your framework today to ensure that your team is prepared all of the time.
Assess Company Culture
Take some time to assess your company culture. Customer service culture can be broken down into two primary elements: how you treat your customers, and the way your company treats the team that oversees taking care of these customers. However, it is important to further breakdown and expand upon these elements. They can be broken down into the following:
- How you treat your customers, employees, vendors, subcontractors on a normal, stress-free day.
- How you treat the above when you are under stress.
The goal is to do well for both sets and both types of situations. Re-evaluate how your company’s culture stacks up. Ask yourself, do your customers sing your praises, but your vendors don’t? Do you treat customers well in less stressful times and get frustrated with them during stressful times? This is important to re-assess and understand if there is any room for improvement.
Develop an Actionable Set of Customer Service Standards
Review your current set of customer service standards. Do you have a solid set of standards for a variety of situations? Make sure you have a standards document for the following:
- Telephone interactions
- Digital communication like email, live chat, and text
- In-person interactions within your office
- Revamp Your Commitment to Talent Management
Now more than ever, it is important to revamp your selection criteria for new employees to focus on the personality traits that are useful for customer-facing work. In addition, ensure that your onboarding process to stress your customer service philosophy. Lastly, engage in frequent, regularly scheduled meetings to evaluate and converse with employees on how you can best advance your employee’s own professional goals and how they can assist in advancing the goals of the company.
Training
Training your employees is always important. Take your standard documents, assessments and framework, and develop a customized customer service training program that you can use digitally or in person.