Excellent customer service is the backbone of any company. Businesses with average offerings can elevate themselves above the competition simply by taking excellent care of their customers. People like to know that their concerns are important to the companies they do business worth, and they give high marks to those organizations that listen and take action.

If your business already puts your customers first, kudos to you! You’ve likely had some powerful customer service ideas in the past and put them into practice. But there’s always room for improvement.

This article will discuss methods for how to improve customer service. Whether you already offer stellar customer care or you’re looking to improve lower-performing operations, you’ll find examples of good customer service skills that you can implement with your teams. Customer service innovation can be game-changing, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. It just requires thinking about your customer relationships differently. 

Integrate Empathy at Every Touchpoint

When you empathize with your customer, you work to see the situation from their perspective. If they’re calling you upset about something that’s happened to them, and they’re yelling, it can be tempting to get defensive. But this is never good for your customer relationships.

Instead, have your staff practice empathy on every call. Have them consciously take a step back and imagine why the caller is upset. Your agents can avoid getting pulled into negativity by putting themselves in the caller’s shoes. When an agent considers how they might react in a similar situation, they gain an appreciation for the customer’s reaction. Suddenly defensiveness gives way to compassion, and compassion motivates caring. 

Offer Omnichannel Support

We live in a connected world. Consumers aren’t satisfied with limited support options. Twenty years ago, you could get away with only offering time-limited phone support. Today your customers would be put off that they can’t reach you when they need an answer.

Omnichannel support means that your service professionals are available wherever your customers might look for you, whenever an issue strikes. To service your customers effectively, you should offer 24-hour phone, email, social media, and live chat support, as well as in-person support where applicable. 

Striving for this level of accessibility will show your customers that you value their input and genuinely care about the service you’re providing them. You’ll never again suffer the wrath of a disgruntled customer upset that they can’t reach you. 

Accommodate Unreasonable Requests

Every customer is different, and while most are happy to mold their preferences to your standard offerings, some will insist on having things their way. When this happens, you have a decision to make. Either you can stick to your guns and disappoint your customer, or you can work to accommodate their request.

Accommodating unreasonable requests is a culture change you can make with your support personnel that has lasting value. Consider a restaurant that refuses to make accommodations for customer preferences. They’d enjoy far more return customers if they allowed substitutions and menu changes even when the requests pushed the boundaries of what’s reasonable. 

It’s easy to satisfy your compliant customers. It’s much more taxing to delight the difficult ones. But that’s the area that separates good customer service from great. 

Send Handwritten, Personalized Thank You Notes

Sending cards may not be practical if you manage a large company with hundreds of thousands of customers, but for smaller organizations, this can be a great way to show your customers that you care.

People rarely receive handwritten cards anymore, so when one arrives, they’re almost sure to open it. And when they see that you took the time to send such a personalized message, they’ll become avid fans. 

Handwriting cards may seem like a significant time commitment, but you don’t have to write them yourself. You can let Simply Noted create your cards on-demand using our state-of-the-art handwriting machines that use real ballpoint pens. We can accommodate any size order and can adapt templates with individual customer names and addresses.  

Consider having your service personnel trigger Simply Noted to send a thank you card each time they complete a service interaction with a customer. It requires minimal effort on their part, but that small gesture can dramatically increase customer satisfaction.