Any business aiming to make a success of itself in present-day society needs to have a focus on customers. From the moment that you launch a product or service onwards, your relationship with your customers will be fundamental to your (hopefully) continued success. So it makes sense that businesses make a point of focusing on customer service. In so doing, they’ll often count on the things we all know about customer service.
However, what if the things we think we know about customer service turned out to not be as accurate as they once seemed to be? The truth of the matter is that we’re often left proceeding on the basis of old intel when it comes to trying to make a business work – and if we were to look a bit deeper, we might find out some interesting information that could help us out going forward. So if you want to get customer service right, it helps to know the following cliches about customer service aren’t true…
Your customer wants you to exceed expectations
This is actually a quite strange thing to assume. Your customer has set expectations, and they want you to meet them. Those are the only expectations that matter here. Exceeding them, whatever that means, isn’t what the customer has asked for. Yes, you want to get things right, but going out of your way to overdo it is entirely pointless. Your customer wants a product or a service delivered correctly and on time. They don’t want it a day later but with a beautifully-calligraphed Thank You message.
Do what the customer has asked of you. Don’t go off on your own initiative with extra ideas. If you can meet expectations – and then throw in a little extra without inconveniencing someone – then do that. But it’s the “meeting expectations” part that matters.
Your customer wants to speak to a person
Hmm. Certainly, this is what a lot of customers say, but in the main that’s because, if you speak to an actual person, you can reason with them. It’s not because it brightens their day to speak to a living, breathing human. Indeed, Live Chat services are increasingly more popular than phone conversations. In addition to the many reasons for this that you’ll learn should you visit Click4Assistance for more information, is the simple fact that people don’t feel under pressure to fill a silence or have to repeat their story to several different members of staff.
Your customer is always right
Literally nobody is always right. The chances, statistically, of the customer being correct on every call that is made to your business, are close to zero. The idea behind this statement is that we should always treat a customer as though their complaint has inherent merit. We should be polite, apologetic, and ready to put them at their ease. However, it might be argued that we should be polite and do our best to make the customer feel listened to anyway. If the business always comes down on the side of the customer, then it will mean the operator they have steamrollered over to get to this conclusion is left feeling demotivated.
A miserable workforce is of no benefit to the majority of customers who genuinely have a cause for complaint. While maintaining that you will always do your best by every customer, it is important to signal that you will stand by operators who are browbeaten by customers who do not have a case.