5 Ways to Improve Your Customer Service

Customer service is the pulse of life for companies large and small. Without proper organization of it’s ins and outs, sales slump and the way forward can quickly become a murky mess.  Consistent customer service gains is not a mystery however, for those who’ve managed to whittle their customer service game down to a few crucial essentials.

1. Invest in a powerful contact management software system

Today’s smartest companies have realized that contact management must go beyond Outlook in order to meet the challenging needs of an forward-moving company.  With the variety of choices available today, it’s worth it to research top contact management systems and determine which will work best for your company’s present and future needs. A good  software system will organize your contacts, grant shared access to calendars and facilitate email marketing.  An excellent contact management software system will track sales, provide detailed customer analysis and statistics, automatically connect contact information with data from any source within the system and more.

2. Create Visible Success Markers

Your customer relations efforts need a swift pace and pulse to get things moving forward consistently. What better way to achieve this than to set visible and realistic markers for success among your customer service workers. For instance if your goal is retaining customers, give rewards for workers who successfully achieve present numbers over sales cycles.  If consistency is also key, be sure to reward workers who may not have the numbers but can be counted on for recurring accomplishment.

3. Realize You’re in the Education Business

Injecting the notion of constant education into your CRM never fails. Customer service departments with a good grip on practical and informal ways to educate customers about the product and train them a little bit with each conversation on how to use it and its unique benefits repeatedly excel beyond the competition.  No matter what the nature of your business is customers will appreciate and emphasis on education and so will your bottom line.

4. Employ only the Best

Keep in mind that the definition of “the best” has changed in today’s modern markets.  What used to be the go-to criteria, the familiar “at least five years experience” is not necessarily the most effective – especially in customer service.The same five years of experience that made the grade in the past could be what’s holding back your team today as workers used to the routine are less welling to connect with customers in new ways. It may be risky, but an alternative is to hire fresh outlooks and positive, upbeat character and train for skill later.

5. Deepen Your Customer Perspective

Do you know what it’s like to buy one of your own products or what it’s like to chat with one of your customer service reps? One of the biggest customer service pitfalls companies make is being completely out of touch with their customer base.  Surprisingly, it takes more than full attention to the bottom line to keep customer service ticking. An in-depth analysis of customer obstacles, beliefs and opinions about your company could be an invaluable resource you have yet to tap.  Try reaching out to your customers with a blog comments section on your website or conduct an survey to ascertain where you customer’s interests lie.

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Top 5 Customer Service Standard Guidelines

No matter how great your company’s mission statement or how qualified your executive staff, your business simply cannot thrive and prosper consistently without a solid customer service standard.  All the service-related conferences, seminars and workshops rolled into one can’t deliver the one that’s right for your company.  A customer service standard must be tailored specifically to the unique and special characteristics of your particular company.

Acknowledging this, here are a few guidelines to try on for size. Feel free to creatively shape and hone those that stand out the most for your business until just the right fit emerges.

1. “Success is in the details.”

It’s always good to start with a few good customer service values like the familiar ‘success is in the details’ to get a solid foundation for developing more specific customer service standards.

2. “If you call or visit a branch office, you will find…”

Try developing standards based on the various customer relations scenarios that a customer might encounter.  For instance, determine what level of customer service a customer will find if they were to write to one of your facilities, call or visit a branch office or visit your website.

3.  “You can expect…”

Developing a standard based on what the customer can expect in terms of service provides a clearly communicated, shared service objective.  This results in mutually agreed upon criteria that sets the pace for your customer service team and grants an added sense of security to customers. Customers just may be more open to sales tactics and strategies when they know what level of service they can rely on.

4. “We’re committed to providing service according to the following standards…”

A clearly stated and well-defined customer service commitment can work wonders.  Employers gain added confidence with a clear cut standard that focuses their intentions and customer service aspirations.  A stated commitment can also boost morale among teams. A shared customer service belief system that teams can easily stick to begins with a realistic commitment statement.

5. Timeliness, Accuracy and Appropriateness

These are the three key elements can help define customer service standards like no other.  They form the backbone of any successful customer-company relationship and just so happen to be a close description important service issues. Try setting basic standards with these elements in mind. Broad strokes at first can develop into more specific definitions tailored to fit your company’s unique characteristics. Starting with key elements that keep customers happy will get your company well on its way to standards that produce solid results.

 

 

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Taking Stock with Contact Management Software

Often back-end activities like taking stock of inventory and order management need complex arrangements and multiple database management software systems in order to run smoothly on a day-to-day basis.  Companies need business software that can streamline front-end service like email management and calendar coordination with back-end essentials.  Contact management software has the ability to do just that and more.

A complete contact management solution has the ability to track all vital information associated with an account including inventory statistics, order details and other back-end information.  Because this information is also automatically linked with contact information, a tremendous amount of time and energy is saved for managing your activities.  With contact management software, it’s also easy to pool information from a variety of different sources within the system for comparisons and annotated contrasts. The document management features make it possible to create detailed reports of fundamental business practices.

The best strategy for management of business activities that form the backbone of a company is integral organization. This software not only delivers integral organization, it defines it and lets you customize and tailor it to your company’s changing needs.  Every shift and transition affecting back-end procedures can easily be updated and tracked using document management features as well as added pluses like task management and even remote office integration, a feature that allows employees and contract workers alike to remain in the loop and stay on task.

The heart of any business sometimes lies not in what can be seen on the outside, but in what is done and successfully accomplished on the inside, where employees and executives strive to remain as productive and organized as possible. Contact manager software meets these needs and exceeds expectations, managing much more than contacts and keeping emails in order.  Give it a try as soon as possible to learn more about its dynamic features for taking stock and staying on top of the back- end.

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