Article Contributed by Morrys Sarmiento
Let’s face it: not all entrepreneurs can afford to outsource their customer service necessities to other companies. If you’re one of the business owners who doesn’t have the capability of farming out your customer assistance just yet, we have good news: it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg just so you could. While outsourcing has a lot of advantages particularly in the convenience side of the business, it’s not the path for everyone to take. There are still a lot of entrepreneurs who are willing to take it upon themselves to learn the ropes by doing every imaginable task involved in making their business flourish and one of those is attending to customers.
So the question is this: If you’re bent on providing exceptional customer experience despite limited funding, what are the techniques that require the least financing? You don’t have to look anywhere else for here are five strategies you can employ to boost your customer service department that are proven effective and easy on the pockets.
1. Start with a good product.
Contrary to what you might think, customer support doesn’t begin when your customers tap you for assistance or when something goes wrong with the product they bought. Real customer service starts with producing top of the line merchandise. If you think about it, coming up with products that actually meet the needs of your customers minimizes the incidents where your customers approach you to either fix something or file a complaint.
Make this deal sweeter by ensuring that you have a competent team who does the selling and rendering of customer support. Ensure that everyone is properly trained as knowledgeable crew members are essential to making the whole customer experience complete and satisfactory.
2. Open up a live chat support…
On the other hand, there will still be times when not all odds are in your favor and one or two customers have issues with the product you thought your company has already perfected. This is where other channels of support come in and live chat is one of them. This method involves the installation of a live chat support widget on your website and from there accommodate any concerns your customers might have. You can either run this channel 24/7 or you can simply allot a specific period for accepting customer inquiries.
Though the integration of live chat support in your customer service arsenal may require you to shell out some money, the returns are definitely worth every cent. By catering to your customers this way, you afford them the convenience that phone calls and emails may not be able to give immediately. As such, you don’t risk losing customers just because you weren’t able to attend to them right away. Live chat support also eliminates your need to outsource your customer service arm since you or a portion of your staff can simply do it in the office.
3. …as well as email support.
Despite quicker responses through live chat and phone, sending emails remain a viable means to offer customer support. In fact, this is a proactive method of providing customer service since a lot of business owners adapt the practice of sending their customers’ emails, whether they wish to inform, promote, or answer queries.
Just like live chat, email support can be done while attending to more than one customer at a time, making your investment in technology and labor be commensurate with the yield. The thing with email assistance is that there are some entrepreneurs who are not able to reply to customers immediately. If you must enlist this option in your chosen customer service channels, do your best to answer your customers’ questions or concerns the soonest possible time.
4. Employ your social media networks.
Nearly every social networking site offers free membership and a wealth of features to boot making it a reasonable and practical method to sustain your customer service pursuits. In addition, a lot of people depend on social media counterparts of the brands they patronize to stay updated, make inquiries, and alas, recount grievances.
If you really want to save on providing assistance to customers, social media is one of the best outlets you can find. The mobility feature of social media is also an asset you can take advantage of. If, for instance, you have customers sending questions to you using a social platform, you can easily respond by using your smartphone or a similar device.
5. Put up a blog and FAQ page on your site.
If you don’t have the luxury of time to answer queries the moment they come in, you can still secure go-to pages on your website to take care of your customers while you’re still away. Do this by assigning a resources category in your website and put up an FAQ page that your customers can check for self-administered troubleshooting. Depending on the products you’re selling, you can create a variation of tutorials, user guides, and tip articles which you can compile in the resources section; just make sure that it’s prominently displayed on your site and that you’ve mentioned its existence adequately on social media and email correspondences. Furthermore, you can also write blogs teaching your customers how to maximize the merchandise they bought from you. This way, you can still be of assistance even if you’re offline.
Customer service is all about giving your patrons the best product and gratifying aftersales aid. As such, it’s always best to take in the perspective of customers whether you’re designing for them a whole new range of merchandise or a means to attend to their needs once the purchase is made.
About the author:
Morrys Sarmiento is a business writer whose main interests are small businesses and online marketing. Among his interests outside the profession are football (Andrea Pirlo and Arsenal F.C fan here), theories of personality, philosophy, gaming, and creepy stories. Follow him on twitter @morrysxi