What’s a great way to earn loyalty from people? Always show them you love and appreciate them. In his article, Jeremy Watkin draws a parallel between showing appreciation to loved ones in your life and the relationship companies can have with their customers. While romance isn’t a part of the customer/company relationship, there are many lessons companies can learn from successful personal relationships. Watkins provides the following six ways companies can show their customers that they appreciate them.
1) Listen Attentively
It’s one thing to let a customer talk and vent, but it’s another thing to truly grasp what the customer is saying and how they feel. Showing empathy towards a customer’s pain will make contact center agents more likely to be able to help with the issue at hand. In addition, taking negative feedback and reading it daily to try and develop better service methods can go a long way.
2) Admit To And Learn From Your Mistakes
You want to lose your customers’ trust quickly? Try lying about or covering up your company’s mistakes. Companies are comprised of people and people make mistakes. So too will your company inevitably make mistakes. When you make a mistake, admit that you screwed up and do everything you can to make up for it. Learning from your mistakes and using them to improve your customer service will ultimately help build or restore your customers’ trust.
3) Do The Chores
There are basic but essential tasks that need to be handled consistently when it comes to a company and their customer service. Projects and tasks come and go, but companies should always maintain their ability to respond quickly and accurately to customer inquiries, keep proper records of customer interactions, and staying up-to-date on security regulations, certifications and compliance.
4) Spend Quality Time Together
The reality is if customers are calling your customer service representatives, they’re probably not happy about doing it. Agents should try to make the call a pleasant experience, but the goal should be to resolve the issues on the first call and provide self-help outlets to enable customers to solve their own problems and avoid wasting their time on frustrating calls.
5) Invest In Improvements
Growing with your customers to meet their requirements and needs is important. Companies should evolve with technological evolution in the customer service industry with artificial intelligence (AI) and omni-channel solutions. In addition, companies should always be taking customer feedback and utilizing it to better your services.
6) Love Your Kids
Watkin says that a successful marriage of companies and their customers depends heavily on the “kids”, i.e. customer service agents. Agents should be treated as a significant part of the company and shown the same respect that companies expect them to show to the customers. If agents know that their managers and the company as a whole appreciates them, they’ll be more likely to show the same respect and appreciation to the customers.
This blog post is based on an article from ICMI. To read the original article, please click the link below:
6 (un)Romantic Ways to Love Customers – Jeremy Watkin
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