With numerous challenges faced by small business owners, such as constant product inquiries, constrained customer service budget, and limited human resources, the question arises of how to effectively please and keep customers.
In order to be effective, small businesses should consider providing customers with additional self-service options, using help desk software to consolidate issue tracking, establishing rapport, and making thoughtful choices regarding communication channels.
However, there is more to it.
If you are searching for effective methods to develop stronger connections with clients, our comprehensive list of 20 customer service tips and strategies will assist you in getting closer to your objective. By implementing a suitable combination of these strategies, your business will distinguish itself from competitors and attract attention through exceptional service.
Let’s begin by rephrasing the text below while ensuring the same meaning is maintained. We should not introduce any new information or remove any existing information. Here we go!
What is Great Customer Service?
Providing excellent customer service involves helping customers in the moment and fulfilling their specific requirements and desires. However, there is more to it than that. You must possess exceptional customer service abilities such as understanding, patience, a optimistic demeanor, finding solutions, attentive listening, and other qualities.
In current times, customer service has also evolved to focus on empowering customers through self-service and reducing the necessity for agent involvement.
Why is Customer Service So Important for Small Businesses?
Despite the positive associations of words such as entrepreneurship, motivation, or independence with the term “startup,” the actual reality is quite contrasting.
Were you aware that 90% of startups or small businesses end up failing? Research indicates that approximately 21.5% fail within the first year, 30% fail within the second year, and 50% fail within the fifth year.
Poor customer service is a common factor in the failure of businesses, alongside other reasons such as lack of money, targeting the wrong markets, and economic meltdown.
Hence, the success or failure of a small business greatly depends on the quality of customer service provided. By delivering exceptional assistance, you can expedite customer resolutions, promote increased purchases, and generate additional customers through positive word-of-mouth advertising.
11 Customer Service Tips to Help Your Small Business
1. Hire Customer Service Superheroes
When customers contact your business by phone or email, they desire to engage with an agent who possesses all the necessary qualities. This is crucial because, despite having impeccable products or services and advanced technology, unknowledgeable or discourteous service representatives can intensify customer annoyance.
Approximately 33% of individuals hold the belief that conversing with an affable and well-informed customer support representative is the foremost factor in customer service.
When hiring candidates, you must address specific questions as a priority.
- How many people do we need for every communication channel?
- What will be the ideal roles and responsibilities of new hires?
- What specific skills should we look for?
- How long do we need to train them?
- What metrics or KPIs will we use to monitor their performance?
During the interview process, it is essential to seek candidates with excellent interpersonal skills, such as active listening, leadership, flexibility, empathy, and patience. These skillsets will guarantee that your service representatives can excel in any demanding situation.
2. Invest in the Best Customer Support Software
Do you track issues via email for your small business? Are your agents tired of repeatedly performing monotonous and manual tasks? If so, there is an answer for you.
Good technology cannot be replaced. With the best customer support software, you can streamline your process and handle multiple communication channels from a single platform.
Instead of toggling between various tools, your agents will have the ability to monitor tickets from different channels, including email, live chat, help center, web forms, and more, all in a single location. Furthermore, you can utilize advanced automation features to automatically assign tickets to agents, distribute automated surveys, and send email notifications.
Customer support tools are designed to assist managers in obtaining a comprehensive view of support operations. This includes tracking metrics such as ticket resolution time, response time, ticket backlogs, customer satisfaction, and other pertinent data.
3. Handle Difficult Situations With Empathy
Is treating customers with empathy just a buzzword or does it hold genuine meaning? What exactly does it entail to be empathetic in customer service?
Empathy in customer service involves comprehending a customer’s issues, displaying sensitivity towards their emotions, and connecting with their potential experiences.
In simpler terms, it means empathizing with your customer’s perspective. To illustrate, suppose a customer expresses dissatisfaction about not receiving their package they had ordered a few days prior. Rather than just telling them to be patient, you can respond with more understanding and empathy.
Rephrased: By thinking sequentially and empathizing with the customer’s frustration, you can rephrase the following text without altering any information. Using empathy statements such as “I understand, this can be extremely frustrating. I would feel the same way too,” won’t solve the problem instantly but will convey that you respect and comprehend their emotions.
4. Build Rapport with Every Customer
As opposed to Fortune 500 companies, your advantage lies in having a limited customer base, enabling you to easily engage with each and every customer, dedicate your time and attention to them, and establish a strong rapport.
Regularly reaching out to your customers, getting to know them by name, and personalizing interactions are essential tasks for small business owners in order to make customers feel valued and special.
To establish a good relationship, you can initiate a conversation with customers regarding their hobbies or interests. These interests do not have to be directly related to your product, but can encompass diverse areas such as outdoor activities, culinary pursuits, or film viewing. The purpose is to ensure that individuals feel at ease discussing their personal preferences and consequently develop a sense of connection with you.
In order to establish rapport, you have the option of providing authentic and heartfelt compliments to your customers. You may choose to praise their wristwatches, hair, eyewear, or any other noticeable features. Nevertheless, it is crucial to maintain a professional demeanor and avoid being perceived as flirtatious.
5. Know What You Sell
Support teams are finding it challenging to keep up with the rapid expansion of small businesses today. In a few months, these companies can transform from offering only one product to having hundreds or even thousands of products.
Regardless of whether your business sells toothbrushes or AI-powered software, it is crucial for every support agent to have a comprehensive understanding of the product or service.
Ensure that your customer service team receives comprehensive training whenever you introduce a new product or implement a new feature. Following this valuable tip for excellent customer service will enable you to assemble a team equipped with the necessary knowledge and information to address all inquiries.
Along with that, it is important to motivate your team to utilize your products and gain practical experience. This will enable them to better understand the difficulties or issues that customers face regularly.
6. Use Positive Language
The way a customer feels about the interaction can be greatly enhanced by utilizing positive language.
Positive language in customer service is about emphasizing what your business is capable of doing for the customer instead of what it is not capable of. Utilizing positive expressions like safe, free, imagine, amazing, new, etc. can have a significant impact.
When a customer asks about a product that is currently unavailable, there are two possible ways to provide a response.
The product is not currently in stock, and we regret to inform you that it will be available only next month.
Positive Language: “Rest assured, you can expect to receive this product within the next month. I am able to promptly place the order on your behalf and guarantee swift delivery as soon as it arrives at our store.”
By observing the previous examples, it is evident that shifting the conversation to a more optimistic tone has the ability to completely alter the narrative.
7. Save Time with Canned Responses
As a small business, you are likely receiving numerous product or service inquiries from customers. Consequently, it is increasingly challenging to develop individualized, comprehensive responses for each chat or email. Therefore, what could potentially resolve this problem?
Canned responses are pre-written message templates that are stored for various situations, such as customer greetings, feature requests, order deliveries, returns, refunds, and more.
When customers make a feature request, using canned responses can aid your team in promptly responding to customer chat or email messages and thus decreasing your ticket response time. Here is an illustration of a canned response that can be employed in such cases.
It’s important to understand that merely copying and pasting these templates will not be effective. To have more fruitful conversations, it’s essential to personalize the message, use optimistic language, and regularly update the content to cater to evolving requirements.
8. Choose Your Channels Wisely
Startups or small businesses are unable to offer a variety of customer service options like large corporations can. Consequently, it is crucial to exercise caution when selecting your channels.
A Statista report states that when it comes to resolving their customer service issues, 42% of US customers prefer using the phone, while 20% opt for email, and 38% choose digital channels.
US customers’ preferred customer service channels are sourced from images.
If you are uncertain about the channels to maintain or avoid, certain questions you should consider exploring are the factors like costs, time, labor, and infrastructure that can influence the channels you provide to your customers.
- What channels do our customers prefer?
- How much manpower do we have to handle the support channels?
- What types of support issues do we typically receive?
- How can we automate our process to reduce the call volume?
- What content or topics should our knowledge base cover?
9. Update Your Knowledge Base Content Regularly
If you look up customer service tips for businesses, one common theme that you will come across in every search result is the suggestion to promote self-service.
A well-managed knowledge base can offer several advantages for small businesses, including reducing agent workload, saving time, empowering customers, and most importantly, lowering support costs.
Below are some established tips and techniques to ensure your knowledge base remains thoroughly updated.
- Organize Your Content: Customers will end up contacting your business if they are not able to find what they are looking for. To meet your self-service goals, you must divide the knowledge base articles into proper categories and display them as large icons.
- Identify Topics that Demand Frequent Updates: There are certain topics that might require frequent updates. For instance, as you develop your products, you will have to update the “New Features” section regularly.
- Review Common Customer Queries: Monitor your support ticket history and identify the queries or issues that appear repeatedly. Create new content around these common topics and share them with your customers proactively.
10. Be Approachable
One more effective tip for providing the best customer service in retail sales is to present yourself as more approachable to your customers.
When entering your store, customers do not anticipate you to sing welcome songs or host an extravagant celebration; they simply desire to engage with service representatives who possess a cheerful, positive, and approachable attitude.
Here are some suggestions on how to present yourself in a manner that is more welcoming to your customers:
- Greet Customers with a Smile: The first time you see eye to eye with a customer who has visited your store, make sure you greet them with a warm and welcoming smile. The same applies when you are speaking to a customer over the phone, as people can easily hear a smile in your voice.
- Ask Relevant Questions: Instead of asking customers irrelevant questions like who they have come with or how many times they have visited your store, you should ask more meaningful questions. For example, you can ask, “ What size are you looking for? ” or “ Is there a particular price or budget that you have in mind? ”
- Focus More on Helping Instead of Selling: Customers can sense when you are trying to overtly sell them something just to meet your sales targets. As a service rep, your aim should be to help customers make the best purchase decisions.
11. Keep Company Website Updated
Your website, as a small business, serves as the representation of your company. It is highly likely that individuals will browse your website initially prior to visiting your physical store or making a purchase from elsewhere.
Your website should provide comprehensive details about your offerings, the reasons behind your work, and, significantly, the products or services you offer.
In order to ensure maximum effectiveness, it is important to monitor your website traffic and track conversions. If there is a significant disparity between the number of visitors and the number of successful conversions, it undoubtedly indicates that customers are encountering difficulties in locating the appropriate information prior to completing a purchase.
To enhance the quality of help articles or FAQ pages on your website, it is essential to include feedback surveys specifically on these pages. These surveys can consist of inquiries like, “Were you successful in finding the information you were seeking?” or “How can we enhance our website content?”
Customer Service Software for Small Businesses
In the present times, it is possible for consumer requests to be overlooked due to the use of different communication channels by clients to contact your organization. These channels include email, social media, in-app chat messages, contact us forms, and others.
Customer service software will transform the manner in which you communicate with your clients and aid you in accomplishing the following:
- Quicker responses
- Focus on your loyal customers
- Simplifies reporting and analysis.
- Provides transparency into your sales pipeline
- Connects your teams internally (sales, marketing, and support)
- Provides a central system to share data
- Can scale as your small business grows
- Prioritizes requests
Our Recommended Top 9 Customer Service Software
Let’s examine each of these software options in greater detail and determine which one is most suitable for your business.
1. Freshdesk
Freshdesk offers multi-channel customer care, bringing together all of a client’s conversations into one interface. This assists the client care team in handling and resolving inquiry tickets created by customers.
Freshdesk provides client-facing features such as a self-service portal, information base, and community forum. This enables clients to view the status of their tickets, find solutions online, and share ideas. With support for 26 distinct dialects, Freshdesk is one of the most comprehensive customer service software options available.
2. HelpJuice
Helpjuice’s self-service client software allows you to skip frequently asked questions and provide customers with immediate answers. The software is easy to use and can be easily implemented by your team due to its cleaner interface compared to other software options.
HelpJuice goes above and beyond in terms of software analytics. It enables you to tailor the internal configurations of the software, providing you with the desired analytics directly on the dashboard. With its sophisticated analytics, your team can identify the strengths and areas for enhancement. When these features are combined with its user-friendly and outstanding design, HelpJuice stands out as an exceptional solution.
3. Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer care software that aims to enhance the client relationship. Key features of this software include knowledgebase management, multi-channel communication, email coordination, IT resource management, and more. It is distinguished as one of the leading customer service software options for both small and large businesses.
By utilizing Zendesk, businesses can establish an online platform whereby their clients have the ability to submit inquiries and engage in an ongoing conversation thread. Additionally, Zendesk provides the option to customize the customer support pages with business logos, themes, and brand visuals.
4. Hubspot Service Hub
While HubSpot is famous for its advertising and sales software, it also provides a comprehensive set of customer care software. HubSpot’s customer care tools include various features that enhance your interaction with customers.
Service Hub provides a shared inbox to streamline communication with clients on a large scale. It incorporates innovative automation to direct messages to the most suitable channels and enhance efficiency. Additionally, you have the option to employ bots for prompt answers to frequently asked questions.
5. Bitrix24
Bitrix24’s CRM software offers organizations the ability to manage and track interactions with potential or current customers. This software allows businesses to monitor customer connections, capture and store lead data, generate sales reports, and create audience segments.
Depending on your requirements, this customer service software can be either advantageous or disadvantageous due to its abundance of features.
6. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a live chat software designed for small to medium-sized e-commerce businesses. It provides a ticket management system which includes all the interactions (chats, emails, and calls) between the client and the company’s support staff.
The software provides various applications such as live chat, ticket management, an online self-service platform, and change & permit management. These applications can be bought either together as in-suite or as independent ones.
7. Front
Front is a software that is suitable for managing all of your private and team emails, as well as other communication channels such as social media, calls, and chats. The Front team is committed to improving the software based on client feedback. The recent updates to Front CRM have included new services, such as 50+ app integrations, which enhance its suitability for communication workflow.
8. TeamSupport
TeamSupport is a B2B customer service software that offers assistance in eliminating miscommunication, enhancing client response time, and promptly resolving urgent client issues. Additionally, it can be utilized for effectively managing client tickets individually, allowing clients to save time and effort by generating a ticket for personalized communication rather than relying on calls and emails.
9. AirCall
Aircall is a cloud-based system designed for client service and sales teams. It enables small and mid-sized businesses in 30 countries to receive telephonic support, configure their numbers for customer care, and efficiently forward calls to the designated help agent. Clients can make and receive calls using Aircall’s application, which is accessible on PC, Mac, or mobile devices.
Aircall is a call support software specifically made for businesses with client assistance teams consisting of 5 to 50 members. Furthermore, Aircall integrates with well-known CRM solutions such as Zoho and Salesforce, enabling you to bring your sales personnel onto the support platform.
