Sales success in the long-term is not just about signing up new clients. To be successful in the long-term one not only has to be able to close business, but also provide excellent customer service. Customer service and a customer’s ongoing experience is what’s going to keep them coming back.
Recently, while working for a client, one of their customers called me quite upset at the service they had received. They were considering switching to one of my client’s competitors. I was able to talk to the customer for a while, determine where the challenges were, and solved them promptly.
This situation made me think about what could have prevented the situation in the first place. From this experience, I was able to come up with the list below. These are the key issues the customer had raised to me.
- Lack of understanding or empathy of their situation – the customer worked in an industrial “turnaround” environment and felt that the customer service staff did not understand this
- Conversational tone – the customer indicated that the customer service rep sounded “put off” by their requests
- Billing challenges – the customer indicated that in some instances they were overcharged and when this was brought up to the customer service rep, it was not investigated
The points above, were enough for this customer to look to make a move to another service provider, taking with them $30,000 annually.
A few things you can do to ensure your teams are providing great customer service include:
Be a Good Listener
Customer service staff should be trained on being good listeners, taking notes if required and if a situation is escalating, recognize it and have strategies to solve the problem.
Be Empathetic
Build rapport and ask probing questions. Understanding your customers situation, their stresses, job demands and job schedule will allow you to manage their needs more effectively.
Remember the Long-Term Goal and Value of the Client
Never take a challenging client situation lightly. Without long-term customers, there is virtually no business. In the example above, one client’s annual revenue almost paid for a team member’s salary. In addition, these situations give you the opportunity to solve the problem and make the customer happy. They could have simply said nothing and left.
Your Tone of Voice
Tone of voice and how well you listen are all tied together. Be kind to your customer and utilize a tone that emphasizes you care. A cold and harsh tone or a tone of indifference, will only make matters worse.
Be Solution Oriented
Empowering customer service employees with the ability to help alleviate a challenging situation is critical to customer retention and long-term success. This could be offering to reverse a charge or it could be sending something as simple as a thank you card.
If Unsure, Ask
There will be some situations that require a team approach to manage. Your customer service rep should feel comfortable passing along the issue to someone if they need to.
If you are in need of assistance from a sales and marketing perspective feel free to contact me. I would be happy to see if we can help. Alternatively, if you are simply looking for a source of excellent sales and marketing information, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter.
