Despite the rise of social media, live chat services and chatbots, email is still one of the most commonly used communication channels for businesses and individuals all over the world. In 2017 alone, over 269 billion emails were sent every single day. When it comes to your business, the chances are that you communicate with your customers using this traditional method. In fact, as many as 46% of customers will choose email as their preferred method of communication. So, as a business, what emphasis do you place on making sure that these emails are of the highest quality? Thanks to the level of connectivity that we all share, thanks to the internet, your customers now expect the very best service possible. They want to feel special. They want to feel valued. They want to feel like you care about them as individuals.
Continue readingTag: customer service tips
Customer Service Cheat Sheet for Live Chat Operators with Examples of Responses
Chat etiquette plays a huge role in customer service. Professional and authentic interaction with clients goes far beyond the opportunity to make a sale. It helps to build a lasting relationship with the customer, inspire future communication and create fans and advocates of your brand. How to treat the customer to be able to appreciate all these benefits and escalate your service to a more professional and human level? Customer service training is the most important part in achieving these goals. Professional line of communication is not that obvious to expect your service agents to get at it intuitively. It is especially true with new employees who often need help finding the proper style of communication which would stick with your business objectives and allow them to maintain their authenticity. Below are some guidelines on how a service agent can best handle the major key points in a live chat conversation.
Continue readingThe Anatomy of a Customer (Infographic)
One customer can change the fate or course of your business forever. Just take a look at the United Airlines incident. We’ve all heard and saw it. It was very disturbing and we just can’t help but get angry and despise United Airlines. I won’t share the facts and other information anymore since I assume that you’ve already read a lot of articles and watched a number of YouTube videos about it. So instead here are two lessons we can all learn from this incident: 1. Social media can make or break your business This goes for all – whether you own a small or big business – social media can make a big impact on your business. What does this mean to you? Everybody is on social media, if you do something good, it may be shared to the whole world. If you do something horrible, it may also get shared to the whole world.
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10 ‘Must-have’ Skills for Being Awesome at Customer Service
When it comes to providing outstanding customer service, it’s the people who make all the difference. While it certainly takes time, training, practice and dedication to become a rockstar in customer service, it doesn’t have to be that hard when you know where exactly to focus your efforts on. Here’s the list of 10 must-have soft skills that matter most and that everyone involved in customer service should master and use in their daily interactions with customers. # 1 Effective Listening Listening is the key to effective communication. Without the ability to listen carefully to what a customer is saying, a message could be easily misunderstood and misinterpreted. As a result, communication breaks down leaving a customer frustrated. Listening isn’t just about hearing. A good listener will not only listen to what is being said, but also what is left unsaid or partially said. Luckily, if your listening skills are weak, there are certain techniques for improving them.
Continue readingKeeping Customers Happy: 4 Tips to Improve Customer Service
What, truly, is happiness? Is it the central purpose of human life? A mere byproduct of luck? Is it a psychological state, or a positive evaluation of being? For businesses, the answer to all of the above questions is, of course, who cares. The only definition of happiness that matters is the one that applies to customers, and a happy customer is one that’s loyal, that keeps coming back for repeat purchases, and one that recommends you to family, friends and social media followers. A happy customer is one that represents excellent customer lifetime value, and happy customers as a group represent a big impact on your bottom line. According to a Gartner Group study, 80% of a company’s future revenue comes from a mere 20% of existing customers. Furthermore, it reportedly costs six to seven times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. The way to amass these all-important happy customers, then, is to focus on customer retention by improving your customer service. Here are few tips you might just want to consider:
Continue readingCustomer Service Tips. How to Close a Conversation
“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” – Mother Theresa The way you respond to your customers shows how you respect them and their business. In one of my earlier blog posts I offered useful recommendations for greeting your customers. Today I decided to talk about a proper conversation closing. This idea occurred to me while I was writing an email to a customer and was thinking about the proper closing.
Continue readingThe Words to Avoid in Live Chat Communication
While communicating with customers over live chat there is always a risk to spoil the impression of the conversation by writing something inappropriate. However, not all customer service representatives realize this risk and understand that there are phrases and words to avoid in live chat communication. The words you use to communicate can convey a lot of meaning. That is why it is important to set the right tone of the conversation from the very first minutes. In this blog post I would like to share some useful customer service tips that will help to improve your overall customer service experience and avoid awkward situations. Drop the Jargon Quite often customer service representatives over-estimate customer knowledge about their products or services. And as a result use professional jargon while talking about their offering. To avoid misunderstanding try to provide detailed explanations and descriptions of what you are referring to.
Continue readingCustomer Service Tips. The Secret of the Right Greeting
The first impression comes after the first greeting. Your customers like to be liked and to feel they are important. The first greeting may become a decisive factor for your website visitors to stay and continue purchasing or to leave. It tells customers who you are and how you feel and what kind of service to expect from you. A kind greeting can become a competitive advantage for your business. After all, everyone likes to do business with a friendly sales person. If you want to stand out in a crowded market where consumers have too many choices, you need to go above and beyond with your customer service. In this blog post I would like to offer four customer service tips to greet your customers. Here they are:
Continue reading8 Steps to a More Productive Live Chat Support on Your Website
If you are already offering live chat support service to your customers, you may have been thinking how to optimize your live chat procedures so that the tool brings the most benefits both to your company and your clients. This post is for you. If you have only been considering to add live support to your website, you may also find this blog useful to outline for yourself what steps will be needed to make this tool efficient and worth having. A survey by Software Advice concluded that a majority of U.S. adults have used live chat at least once. Many clearly express a preference for it over more traditional customer service channels for the simple reason that it offers many benefits that other channels don’t.
Continue readingWant Happy Customers? Start by Making Your Employees Happier!
A truly great customer service and customer experience can only be provided by the employees who feel happy and engaged at work. When your employees are happier, so are your customers. And when your customers are happy, they become more loyal to your brand, spend more money with you while your business makes more profits. But the fact is that only 13% of employees worldwide are actually engaged at work, according to the Gallup’s study on the State of the Global Workplace. In other words, about one in eight workers are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations. 63% are ‘not engaged’ and 24% are ‘actively disengaged’ indicating that they are unhappy and unproductive at work. So how do you make them happier and more engaged? Besides improved compensation packages, there might be other ways to encourage long-lasting employee satisfaction. Here’s 5 basic steps to increase engagement in the workplace and make your employees happier.
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