No doubt about it, good customer service for small business should be an integral part of your business marketing strategies.
When your customers are happy with your business, then you should be expecting them to come back. It’s as simple as ABC!
As a business owner, keeping your existing customers should be your number one priority because it’s the only way you can be able to continue making sales for the business.
SEE ALSO: How To Easily Build Brand Loyalty And Exceed Customer Expectations
So how do you keep your existing customers? It’s easy; just make sure that they are happy doing business with you. We all know that customers are the mainstay of the business, and the happier they are, the better for the business.
Effective customer service for small business
When people do business with you, they want to have a memorable experience of doing business with you. So what are you doing to make your customers come back?
As a business owner, the fact is that if you take care of your customers, they will be more inclined to come back and send you referrals when you ask them to.
Every successful business relies on its customers, and this is why most of the businesses are making a huge investment in customer service nowadays.
Below are some ways to make sure you can always do a good job so your customers will always stay loyal to you.
#1]. Use surveys to get opinions from your customers
Nothing is as good as asking your customers to share their opinions about your business with you. As a business owner, your customers’ opinions will help you identify where your business is doing well and where it needs to make some improvements.
Even though not all the customers will have time to share their opinions with you, but if you can manage to get opinions from 20% of your existing customers, it will go along way in helping you make positive decisions concerning the business. Therefore, when people buy from you, always encourage them to leave feedback for you.
You can incentivise your customers to share their opinions with you by giving out some discount vouchers to them. Surely, this could cost your business some resources, but the fact is that the information you will get back from your customers’ opinions will far more outweigh the resources you used.
#2]. Offer live chat and free helpline
Having a live chat incorporated into your business website will go along way in offering assistance to your customers. The fact is that people are going to have questions about your products or the services you are offering. Some customers will want to know one of two things about the products they are buying, and the best and quickest way to help them is to have a live chat.
SEE ALSO: How Better Customer Interactions Can Improve Business Sales
Your business can also have a direct helpline through which your customers can reach you. But if you are going to have a direct helpline, please don’t charge people to use the contact. This is why some businesses are making mistakes, especially, when they use premium numbers as their direct helpline line. Who’s going to call such a number?
To make it easy for your customers to reach you for inquiries or helps, make sure that your helpline is a free phone or a toll-free telephone number. If it’s too expensive for your business, at least, offer a telephone number that’s charged at local rate.
#3]. Properly explain return policy, terms and conditions
Every business has a return policy, terms, and conditions; your business shouldn’t be left out too. As a business owner, it’s important to properly explain these things to your customers. You should dedicate a page or two to this on your business website.
Your terms and conditions should be precisely written. You have to be clear on your return policy and/or terms and conditions, and make these clearly visible on your site in order to prevent misunderstandings between your business and the customers.
Remember that your goal as a business owner is to ensure your customer experience is great for repeat business and/or referrals. There is nothing bad about letting your customers understand what your return policy is about. This is the only way you can be able to prevent some unnecessary situations.
#4]. Don’t joke with customer complaints
When customers complain about something, it’s your responsibility to look into the issues and try your very best to rectify it. Some businesses don’t always take their complaints seriously. Don’t be like them.
Some customers can be really annoying but as a business owner or manager, you should always devise ways through which you will be able to amicably deal with annoying customers. Companies or businesses that dismiss complaints are doing so at their own peril.
SEE ALSO: Top 10 Customer Service Skills Businesses Urgently Need Now
The fact is that if your customers aren’t satisfied with your business, and you failed to improve their experience, you are indirectly driving them away to your competitors. Remember how powerful the word-of-mouth can be.
#5]. Be more accessible to your customers
For your customers to be able to get in touch, you have to make yourself accessible. It’s an undeniable fact that running a business is not just about the products or services offered, it’s also about the personalities behind the business.
How often do you interact with your customers? Are you the kind of a business owner that stays away from customers? Do you make yourself accessible to your customers? In this digital and social media age, every business owner should always try to make themselves easily reachable by their customers.
Social media has made communication really easy. Are you on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? These are some of the most popular social networking websites that you shouldn’t ignore as a business.
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