We have all been on the receiving end of poor customer service and we all know how it feels, and you want to make sure that your business gives great customer service each and every time in the customer journey. But what does that look like and what do our customers expect?
Each customer will have different expectations around what it looks and feels like, making sure your customers get that great experience to make them want to shout about it and tell friends and family is key to then helping you carry on your growth.
Here are a few tips to help you achieve this great customer service.

1. Keep Smiling
First of all smile, be it face to face or on the phone, your customers will hear that smile in your voice, there is nothing worse than picking up the phone and somebody answering in a monotonous and unfriendly way. Making sure customers can hear that smile in your voice will make them feel valued as an individual and if you have got some changes going on in the organisation tell your customer facing staff, if something hits the customer before your staff know it is going to raise more queries internally, when a customer calls with a query and your staff can answer the issue straight away it makes you look great.

2. Understand their needs
If you have a difficult situation, and we have all been there, were someone is getting frustrated or cross, keep the situation calm, if you and your team can maintain a sense of calm in your voice it will then help the person on the other end of the phone start to calm down, especially if you can relay to them the problem that you understand they are having. Too often this is because we have not given the customer exactly what they needed or expected based on promotional information.

3. Keep you promises

Next, if you promise to do something for a customer make sure you follow through on that promise, the last thing you want is someone saying ‘Joe was going to ring me three days ago’ and actually they’ve not done it. You need to make sure that that customers’ expectations are managed and if you promise to do something and you can’t achieve it, give them a quick call and tell them you will be on it but it’s going to take another day, they will recognise that you have taken that time out to try and rectify the situation earlier.

4. Listen to your customers
If you track complaints as well it helps you see what is going wrong and where it is going wrong and helps to develop the process of continually improving your service especially if your staff can help give you feedback in that area.

5. Feedback to staff
Finally, when you get compliments share them with everybody, put them on the website, share them with the staff, give people a bottle of champagne if they have got several in a month, celebrate that positive experience you are giving to customers, it helps the team and you make sure that that customer journey is great from start to finish.

Don’t forget that people development is key to all of this, providing regular training and 1:1’s helps motivate staff, for more information see http://www.propolis-ps.co.uk/staff-development/