Attempting to stand out in this 21st century
In the 21st century, with competition at its peak, the next frontier of differentiation for companies is clearly customer service. With advances in technology, the world has become a global village and has equipped almost everyone with similar standards. This has made it hard to get a clear and wide differentiation in terms of products. Increasing incidences of corporate espionage, poaching of employees and blatant copying of strategies has worsened the case. Companies also interact on the backdrop of a truly global world wide web where customer complaint and support forums as well as apps are prevalent. Clearly, the next untapped resource to focus on is customer service as a means of differentiation. When customers receive excellent support, they are more likely to become repeat customers. There are various reasons to focus on providing excellent customer service to clients.
The truth about customer service
Customer service is a very important touch point between customers and the organization. Customer service is crucial to every touch point for potential and existing customers- be it an ad, a customer service call, sales call or shop display. These points of contact or touch points enable organizations pitch to new customers and also retain an existing customer. The most important touch point is customer support. Customer support interacts with clients throughout their whole experience with the company and can generate huge positive returns for the company. Companies easily attract new customers when customer service is done right. Your existing customers become more loyal. They become your ambassadors who spread the good word about the company.
Nowadays, consumers conduct research about a company or product before they even get into the store or make an order. Negative reviews or complaints about your customer service can be detrimental to even the best of products. It is very important to ensure that customers or potential ones receive positive glowing news about the company.
On the other side, there are devastating consequences to poor customer service. Everybody has a horror story of a curt, rude, unprofessional customer support person who turned them off a great product. A disastrous customer support call can have serious repercussions. It is an unassailable fact that the conduct of customer service staff can cost the company valuable customers. Some customers may even choose to switch to an inferior product because they were treated badly by a support person. They may never patronise the company’s service again after such an ordeal.
Teamwork makes the dreamwork
Companies that have paid attention to and developed their customer relations department can boast of tremendous success in gaining and retaining customers. A strong professional customer relations department is very important. This team helps customers through difficult times. They build up your customer base. These customers are abreast with new products as well. It is not a stretch to say the customer relations department is at the core of a business. It aims to satisfy all the needs of a customer. They can find out customer needs and opinions and feed the information back to product developers. Product developers can then create intuitive offerings. Customers who feel valued will patronise the products offered more and recommend it to others.
Be different
This clearly highlights the crucial role customer service personnel play in an organisation. It seems logical that companies would pay much attention and devote resources to customers. Unfortunately, the reality on the ground is much different. Conventional tradecraft focuses on the product the company offers, technical expertise and groundbreaking advancements. Instead of marrying this with world class customer support, most companies try to get by with the bare minimum. They believe the technical qualities of their product are all that is necessary in selling the product. As we have seen, technical expertise without excellent customer service is not a recipe for success. Dissatisfied customers are likely to switch.
In this modern business world, your customers’ voices are louder or more heard clearly. It is therefore prudent to ensure their voice sings loud praises about your company. Their praises should not only be about your product but your customer service to future potential customers.
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