Providing the Best Customer Service Like Amazon or Apple

Providing the Best Customer Service Like Amazon or Apple

Companies like Amazon and Apple are known for their outstanding customer service because they invest in it to improve customer retention, increase customer satisfaction, and create more up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. Customer service best practices can sink or swim an organization, so it’s imperative to consider how your company approaches this vital component of its business. It’s also beneficial to have customer service and marketing teams work together to streamline the entire communications process, from lead to loyal shopper.

Hire Dedicated Customer Service Representatives

Helpful, cheerful, outgoing, and patient are a few of the qualities you should look for in customer service representatives. These individuals represent your brand to the public more than managers or executives because they spend their entire workdays engaging with dozens of customers. Representatives should be level-headed problem solvers who know that an angry customer is looking for a solution, not an argument.

Personalize the Customer Service Experience

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Insightly make it easy to personalize customer service messaging. Additionally, these tools provide simple methods for tracking customer preferences and histories, so customer service representatives are fully-informed when fielding calls or messages for people. The more your customer service reps know, the better they can handle incoming inquiries.

Prioritize Quick Responses

It’s outstanding if you have the resources to provide 24/7 customer service but that’s not an option for many businesses. For those companies, make sure customer service messages are answered within 24 hours or less, including weekends. Users expect immediate responses to customer service inquiries, and while that’s not feasible for every business, responses within a day should be the operating standard.

Aim to Exceed Expectations

A person contacting customer service is most likely already a bit upset. When they end their call, email exchange, or chat with your customer service rep, they should feel that not only was their issue addressed, but they were offered an even better solution than they could have imagined. Order arrived late? Provide free overnight shipping on their next order. Product was damaged in transport? Send the replacement items via two-day shipping with a coupon for a discount on their next purchase.

Keep It Simple

Customers shouldn’t have to dig through your website to figure out how to contact customer service. The process of getting in touch with customer service should be straightforward with no loopholes to jump through to find answers. Simplify the customer service process so users aren’t further frustrated by overly-complicated websites or forms.

Provide FAQs

Your customer service reps receive many of the same questions over and over again. Get your reps to share their most frequently-asked questions and put together a dedicated FAQs page, so users don’t have to submit numerous inquiries about the same topic. Yes, some customers will ignore the FAQs and opt to contact customer service anyway, but providing these answers easily on your website makes it so people don’t need to take the extra step of speaking with someone to find a solution.

Ask For and Analyze Feedback

After someone has worked with your customer service department, ask them to provide feedback. A simple survey allows your business to gather information quickly so you can improve customer service to meet your shoppers’ needs.

Also, examine the analytics generated by your CRM software to see where your customer service is succeeding and/or needs improvement. This data holds crucial insight into your customer service operations.

Marketing and Customer Service Should Work Together

Marketing generates leads that eventually convert into customers. Customer service assists those with questions or concerns after making a purchase. If your brand emphasizes marketing without valuing customer service, people will take notice and be less likely to continue to be a customer. The high-level of content provided throughout the marketing funnel should be consistent throughout the shopper experience, which means investing in the best quality customer service resources.

Marketing and customer service should have an open line of communication so messaging is consistent throughout the shopping experience. This collaborative approach means both teams are responsible for metrics such as conversion rate, retention rate, complaint-to-resolution rate, and customer survey data.

Interested in developing marketing and customer service assets hand-in-hand? Contact Alt-Creative now to discuss how to develop a strategy that converts leads and keeps customers coming back for more.