Ultimate List of 101 Customer Service Tips

Taking care of and providing superior customer service to your existing and potential clients is the ultimate goal of any B2C company.

Superior customer service has for a while been a battleground for success among businesses.

Almost 90% of companies have been competing with each other to secure exceptional service!

We are aware that in these unpredictable times, delivering the best support can be challenging and time-consuming, but it is essential for running a successful business.

The research has shown that 70% of clients who come with a complaint and have their issue resolved by service providers decide to purchase from the same business again!

So, ensuring superior customer service can bring many benefits to your company. It is vital for securing client loyalty, retention, and profit.

Providing excellent customer care should be a top priority for companies to secure long-lasting success and a good reputation.

Every business should strive towards developing and improving their service and engaging with the clients.

Continual training of your employees to provide the best assistance to the consumers will also go a long way in securing your company’s success.

It may sound like a difficult task to implement into your busy schedule, we understand. However, we have a solution!

We have prepared for you the list of 100+ ultimate customer service tips to help you achieve the best results effortlessly and efficiently!

Check out the list and apply the best strategies we have selected to accomplish all of your goals and become #1 in the business world!

Superior customer service with artificial intelligence (AI)

AI has proved to be a useful asset in client support, both in boosting customer care and reducing costs.

Chatbots are an amazing way to streamline your business. Did you know you can build your own chatbot?

They’re for more than just superior customer service.

Chatbots are also great for driving sales. Certainly helped a client increase ecommerce conversion rates by 400% by using a chatbot as a gift guide.

Oracle pointed out that 80% of companies are currently working with or intend to introduce chatbots soon.

You can utilize AI for various needs, which can incredibly benefit your company:

• AI can improve communication with customers through messages

• It can coordinate email requests and inquiries

• AI will improve consumer phone calls

Send a handwritten thank you card

After you’ve onboarded a new customer, going the extra mile to write an old-fashioned “thank you card” allows you to stand out.

Considering nobody writes snail mail thank you cards, it’s incredibly likely that your small gesture will stand out in a good way.

You don’t even have to write it yourself – there are services that allow you to have someone write a thank you card on your behalf:

• Handwritten
• Punk post
• Postable

Make superior customer service a core value

We have probably encountered an uninterested and perhaps even slightly impolite customer service employee who made our encounter with the brand an unpleasant one.

It is not a secret that adding a little extra to your customer care is crucial for your brand’s prosperity and exceptional service.

Superior customer service matters for earning consumers’ loyalty and increasing revenue.

There are several things a company can do to secure a great experience and achieve customer excellence, and we have narrowed it down to the most important ones:

• Introducing AI technology (Certainly’s chatbot-building platform is an excellent solution for ensuring superior customer service)

• Product personalization

• Using language that your clients can follow

• Clear and friendly conversation

• Answer to the incoming feedback

• Always try to over-deliver

Put your clients first

In today’s busy market, securing an endless number of new clients requires you to be great and unique.

To stand out from the crowd and make sure to deserve customers‘ loyalty, companies need to make their customers a priority!

Your consumers are a valuable asset who will bring you long-lasting business success.

Here are five tips on how your company can put the clients first through exceptional service:

• Target your audience
• Create the client’s persona
• Personalized experience
• Engage in client feedback
• Encourage real-person client care departments
• Offer exceptional service

Give your team the right tools

If you make choosing the right tools a priority for your customer care team, then you’ll see the profit.

These tools not only boost efficiency and motivation but also boost clients’ comfort and happiness.

Enabling the right tools to the client support employees and giving them adequate training is a starting point for ensuring good and trustworthy service.

However, you shouldn’t overlook some other points :

• Set clear instructions about responsibilities and expectations.

• Give the employees who work from home all the necessities they need (data, guidelines, technology, etc.).

• Enhance time management skills.
• Train your employees to use every system.

• Assure that customers can always reach you.

Meet your customers where they are

A recent study by McKinsey and Company showed that, unlike in previous years, this year, clients have become too unpredictable.

Therefore, it is your time to seize this great opportunity and make your brand seen by different audiences!

We offer you a list of tips to help you understand what your consumers want and what you can do to improve your brand’s visibility on the market!

• Offer support across all channels

• Train your sales team on how to impress new clients digitally

• Give employees the freedom to make on-spot decisions

• Stay true to your company’s values

Customer inquiries should be taken care of fast

Replying fast to your client’s inquiries is a quality that every client greatly appreciates.

A study on customer service satisfaction showed 62% of businesses do not reply to their emails.

As a direct result, customers opt for better quality service elsewhere.

This gives you a unique chance to emerge from the unresponsive crowd and offer your clients exceptional service.

We have prepared a list of tips to help you improve your speed:

• First in First out (FIFO)
• Use software to improve client care
• Autoresponders can be useful for email responses
• Introduce real-time alert notifications
• Assign priority level
• Use templates

Finally, attempt to reply to your customers in one hour or less!

Utilize client feedback

Keeping your clients informed on what you do and what you can do for them is a crucial step in securing successful cooperation with them.

If you want to keep in touch with them, the best way to do this is to seek regular feedback on how you are doing.

Surveys are a tool to gather feedback, but you can also turn to social media and consumer review sites.

Compiling and evaluating customer service feedback is beneficial for retaining a steady relationship with clients, which will result in their happiness and loyalty.

Feedback is a powerful directory for empowering your company and securing client satisfaction and loyalty.

Feedback can be compiled in various ways. However, we have narrowed it down to the most effective methods you can use!

• Feedback surveys (Qualaroo, SurveyKing, Alchemer, Qulatrics)
• SMS surveys
• Contact forms
• Send customized reports
• Social networks (Twitter is an excellent platform for collecting feedback!)
• Instant feedback from your website
• Client interviews

No negative language, please!

Negative language can often lead to client dissatisfaction and misinterpretation.

It is vital to know which phrases to avoid when talking to a customer and replace them with useful and acceptable alternatives.

Assign a time to coach your team about positive phrasing and make sure to implement it into your company’s emails, social media, and chats.

Good words go a long way!

Certainly’s NLU engine offers you a unique technology that will help you personalize and achieve superior customer service by analyzing customer’s messages and replying in the right manner!

Get ready for some customer excellence!

Show clients that their criticism matters

Negative feedback can be a hard thing to hear, we know.

However, receiving negative feedback doesn’t always mean a setback for your business.

Quite the contrary, it can be a useful tool to make the most out of your business and improve all the weak spots regarding your customer care.

Instead of taking criticism as an attack on your company, try to use it to show your clients that you truly care about them and you want them to have superior customer service with you.

Some things you can start practicing include:

• Showing appreciation for the clients’ time and feedback by thanking them
• Focusing and listening to every complaint (there is validity to some of these)
• Trying to keep the conversation positive
• Recognizing what your client values
• Apologizing for the inconvenience and showing empathy and consideration for their inconvenience
• Finding a reason for their dissatisfaction and a way to fix their issue
• Following up with the client and ensuring that they are satisfied with the solution
• Aiming at acknowledging the mistake, solving the problem, and following up with the client (a hand-written ‘Thank you’ card is always a nice gesture)

Introduce client support on various channels

Introducing online and offline client support through different channels gives clients a wide range of options to get in touch with your business.

The advantages of introducing client support on different channels include individualized client support, as well as the ability to gather valuable facts and insights about your clients and their purchasing habits.

Aside from traditional channels such as email, phone, and social media, some channels to consider include:

• Certainly Chatbot builder
• Forums
• Live chat
• Self-service
• On-page support widget

Enable clients to assist themselves

Answering client inquiries and resolving their complaints can often be time-consuming.

The more automated your methods are, the less human input is required.

Thus, by simplifying processes, you are saving your employees’ time and energy and are enabling clients to help themselves.

What are the methods to enable your clients to assist themselves?

• Introducing AI technology to assist the customer service representatives offered by the Certainly AI Chatbot building platform
• Identifying the frequent client inquiries
• Using quality onboarding
• Defining the most usual questions and solutions
• Displaying facts and information in an understandable way
• Developing a consistent reply to the top issues
• Promoting online self-service option
• Making responses available on multiple channels
• Producing videos responding to the most frequent questions
• Featuring inquiries by sending emails to clients

Create incentives and Loyalty rewards

Companies are in constant pursuit of new clientele. Hence, they often aim at innovating their brand and gifting their potential and existing clients with various perks to secure their loyalty.

Reward plans are one of the popular and profitable methods to gain new clients and secure retention.

Besides increasing the number of clients, reward plans can also contribute significantly to increasing revenue!

The benefits of reward plans are numerous.

Client info
Sign-up forms for a reward plan will provide you with the info on your clients that can help you create a more personal and relevant experience.

Maintaining clients
Reward programs offer customers the reason to come back.

Personal relationship
Personalized experiences have been shown to increase revenue by 6 to 10%!

Need more? Check out some reward program ideas that you can implement into your business model.

Make Loyalty programs easy

Confusing and hard-to-navigate websites are clients’ worst nightmares. For this reason, potential clients can decide to go to a different company.

For a client to sign up for a reward plan, it is imperative that all the information and steps of the plan are clear and easy to follow.

Some of the common mistakes made by companies include:

• Adding new rules and conditions that are hard to understand
• Taking a long while to collect points and rewards
• No smaller milestones and incentives to keep users engaged

Instead, you can try:

• Creating a step-by-step guide for signing up for the reward plan
• Updating your reward plan regularly
• Promoting a plan
• Personalization
• Experimenting with client offers and discounts

Anniversary gifts

In order to maintain a long-term connection with clients, companies must be dedicated to making them feel valued.

Great product quality and even superior customer service are sometimes not enough.

Luckily, everyone loves receiving a gift. It’s fun and exciting, and it reminds people that they’re appreciated.

Gifting your clients on anniversaries can be a fruitful method for securing their loyalty!

There is a long list of gift ideas that you can use to surprise your valued consumers and also promote your brand.

Thoughtful gifts are hard to forget, so your clients will appreciate the gesture and remember it for a long time.

Plus, you will become a master of customer excellence and show them what superior customer service feels like.

Use Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for better customer service

In today’s digital age, calculating and assessing your client support effectiveness is crucial for retaining clients and benefiting the company.

The advantage of using client support KPIs is that it gives insight into what is happening with your company’s online cooperation with clients.

Not following the measures will disable you from knowing which areas work smoothly and which need some improvement.

Some of the main benefits of collecting data via KPIs are improved team performance, increased number of loyal clients, and increased satisfaction rates.

Some KPI metrics are extremely necessary since they enable tracking of the company’s good and bad practices and help retain satisfied customers.

Event invitations and free tickets for clients

One of the best ways to keep your clientele happy is to make them feel recognized and valued by your business.

And the best way to make them feel that way is to give them the best quality products and superior customer service you possibly can.

Additionally, organizing or inviting clients to events is another useful method to make them happy and appreciative.

Building dependable, long-term connections with clients is vital for your success.

The finest way to deliver on this is to strengthen your relationship by inviting them to events.

The list of different attractive events that you can try out is a long one, and deciding on the right one will undoubtedly attract your potential clients into signing up with you and choose your brand as their preferred one!

How to invite your clients? Make sure to invite your customers through different channels to ensure the best reach! Some common channels to use are:

• Email
• Direct mail postcard
• Social networks

Clients as case studies proving superior customer service

Case studies proved to be the very best method for increasing sales.

According to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs 2020 B2B content marketing reporting, 69% of companies say case studies are more powerful than blogs, videos, and web seminars.

The best method to convince a new client to purchase your products is another client vouching for them.

Still, it can often be challenging to convince your clients to share their experience with your brand.

Thankfully, there is a solution to every problem!

The tips below can give you an insight on how to convince clients to become case studies without pushing them and making them feel uncomfortable!

• Happiest clients first – they are the easiest to convince
• Proactively fix client pain points – try to think in advance why your client may hesitate to take part in a study
• Write a compelling pitch – Thank your clients in advance, share why you are conducting the study, and keep it short
• Be good with timing – reach out to clients when they are still excited about your product
• Treat it as a mutual opportunity – show them that you both will benefit from it
• Don’t take too much of your client’s time – 30 minutes to 1.5 hours

If you are interested to know more about Certainly, make sure to check out what satisfied customers had to say!

Surprise treats and Candy for better customer service

Everybody loves treats and candy! So, why not surprise your clients with a nicely wrapped, branded, edible treat?

If your company wants to introduce something unique into your campaigns and events, a box or bags of some delicious candy with your logo on them would be a perfect marketing choice.

Giving out treats can promote your brand while remaining within budget.

Go for it- everyone loves sweets, chocolates, candies, cookies, etc.

Product Knowledge and Training

Everyone has experienced a situation where a newly bought product doesn’t work, or the instructions on how to use it are not easy to follow.

Unfortunately, the client support representatives did not manage to fix the problem but confused us even more.

To prevent this from happening, all companies should ensure that their customer care employees are trained to answer any clients’ inquiries effectively and be able to provide detailed product facts and a guide on how to use them.

Compiling frequent questions and complaints you receive from your clients can help address your client’s issues.

Combined with the correct information on the product, this should create a good base of possible questions and answers to use at any time.

Some of the most common questions asked by clients are:

• About waiting times being too long (Certainly’s platform provides a no-code AI-driven chat bot building solution to this issue, by enabling fast and personalized responses)
• About customer service inability to address their needs or failing to solve their problem
• Not having contact with a real person and the process is too automated and robotic

All companies need to ensure that their customer care team can answer the questions their clients have effectively and grasp all the facts about products. The best way to secure this is by training them!

Finally, personalize your customer care to the metrics of your company.

Body Language in Customer Service

When interacting with others, we usually focus on what we are saying rather than on how we stand, move, or how loudly we talk.

However, the studies show that almost 90% of our interaction with people and their understanding of the message we want to convey goes through our bodies and tone of voice.

As surprising as this is, it leaves only 10% of what we say heard!

For this reason, how we use our bodies to interact with clients can greatly influence how they feel about interacting with us since most likely, most of what we say will go unnoticed.

There are some other things to keep in mind when you are interacting with your clients:

• Avoid excessive movement
• Keep an open body stance
• Make use of gestures
• Be loud, clear, and concise
• Avoid crossing your arms

Provide ongoing development opportunities to your employees

According to Forbes, almost 70% of employees are actively disengaged.

Therefore, offering your employees continuous training and development opportunities can greatly benefit your company.

The excited, motivated, and engaged staff makes companies money. Their energy and enthusiasm are contagious and contribute to their well-being.

Happy employees will positively influence the people around them, including customers.

Here are some ways to engage your employees more effectively:

• Online training sessions and webinars
• Manager coaching and mentorship
• Classroom style learnings
• Peer coaching
• Cross-training
• Stretch assignments

The benefit? Having happy customer care representatives is a sure way to secure superior customer service!

Allow employees to show what they know

After you have trained your employees to be excellent customer service providers, empower them to execute the training. Let your team know how they are doing.

Take time to evaluate whether the process is working as it should and whether there is room for improvement.

A follow-up is a way to ensure that employees stay in the loop and don’t forget any knowledge or skills they gained from your training.

This ensures that what was learned isn’t lost and that your customers are getting the best possible service.

Have a defined phone protocol

For superior customer service, answering phone calls is the critical factor for leaving a positive impression on your clients.

It is necessary, however, to differentiate between answering professional calls from private calls.

That is why you need to ensure that you have taken the right approach when answering a professional call.

Here are the top rules of 2021 to always provide superior customer service at a call center!

• Be fast to answer the call
• Introduce yourself
• Be confident and clear
• Listen actively
• Be professional and use positive language
• Smile on the phone
• If you need to transfer the client to another call let them know
• Be honest if you don’t know the answer
• Keep your voice calm

Prepare role-play scenarios

Client support teams need to continuously be trained and be provided with possibilities to develop their communication skills.

Your team has to be ready for everything! One common practice among companies is compiling a script of possible scenarios that a client support employee can come across when handling client complaints.

Role-play scenarios can secure faster problem-solving in real-life situations and secure client satisfaction.

For these reasons, introducing them into your training program is essential for successful management.

With business becoming more and more dominated by the customer service industry, there are plenty of excellent client support scenarios that can help you get started with your training!

Emotional intelligence is a necessity

Sufficient to say, dealing with clients can be an exhausting task. However, leaving clients dissatisfied with your service can greatly contribute to losing profit and lead to numerous struggles within a company.

It is understandable that in today’s crowded market, clients look for more than just fast service.

That’s why companies need to put more effort into fulfilling clients’ needs and aim at making them feel connected to the customer care provider.

This is where emotional intelligence comes to play.

The advantage of using emotional intelligence is securing good connections with your clients, which ultimately leads to better employee motivation since the issues with clients are resolved more easily and efficiently.

Finally, your clients are left satisfied with your service and your product, and accordingly, no revenue is lost!

Here are the best tips to connect with your clients and avoid any inconvenient situations:

• Focus on facts instead of feelings
• Stay calm
• Offer options to fix the issues
• Be honest with your response
• Use the same service channels
• Lean on your support team

There is a lot more to know about what emotional intelligence is and how to improve it, so make sure to provide your employees with everything they need for the best client support! Need more?

Keep promises to achieve constantly improving customer service

Keeping promises to your friends and family is not the only time when this trait comes valuable.

Maintaining a relationship with a client is an intricate and sensitive process that needs to be trustworthy.

Unfortunately, more often than not companies fail to deliver what they have promised.

As a result, clients are left disappointed and in pursuit of another company that will secure customer excellence.

Therefore, you should refrain from promising too much since most likely you won’t be able to deliver on what you’re known for, and your value will decrease.

Keeping the promises simple and focused is the key to success!

Keeping promises benefits your company in multiple ways – from making clients feel close and connected to the brand to securing their loyalty and retention – the goal of every company.

The best way to ensure that clients trust you is by continuously building relationships with them and always giving 110% to make sure you deliver what you have promised.

It is almost always the foundation of superior customer service.

It would be best if you always aimed at keeping these seven promises:

• Remain open for business hours that are posted
• Be true to your company’s core values
• Answer your phone
• Make sure to have your product available at all times
• Eliminate the wait
• Under-promise and over-deliver

Stay objective

Yes, having an angry customer yelling at you and accusing you of the product’s malfunction or the lack of information is not the best feeling in the world.

And yes, it is hard not to take it personally and react.

However, one important thing to remember is that as hard as it seems, you have to stay objective to ensure superior customer service.

You are your brand’s ambassador, and you need to keep that in mind at all times.

In a situation when you are the one that has made a mistake, try to own up and accept responsibility – you’ll be surprised at how much better customers will respond.

If your customers got it all wrong and they don’t realize it but angrily accuse you of making a mistake, remember that you need to approach them objectively and calmly explain the issue.

These practices will benefit both you and your customers, you will be able to keep on working calmly, and your customers will leave happy and satisfied.

However, if it gets to a point where you are compromising your business standards to meet an abusive customer, it might be time to part your ways.

Transfer button is a NO for Great Customer Service

If your customers have called you with a complaint, that often means that they are probably already a bit angry and irritated.

What will certainly not make them feel any better and happier is telling them you need to transfer them to another call.

When the customer is happy, you are happy. It is as simple as that.

That’s why it is essential to strive to address their concerns immediately and solve the problem on the spot.

However, if the issue is out of your control or expertise, nicely explain to them that you will have to put them on hold and transfer them to another call.

If you can, perform a transfer by first speaking to the person you’re transferring the customer to and telling them what the issue is about.

Let the customer be angry

No business is immune to inconvenience in customer service.

As much as we strive towards perfection and try to provide smooth sailing for our customers, mistakes and malfunctions can still happen.

But, when it comes down to it, and when your customers angrily call you to complain, the way you respond to them can make or break their perception of your brand.

Therefore, make sure always to let the customer express their anger and then win them over using some refined tactics such as:

• Show how well you can listen
• Show empathy
• Talk slower and calmer
• Apologize
• Address your customer by their name
• Avoid negative language
• Pretend to be wrong
• Resolve the issue
• Give them a parting gift
• Don’t take it personally

Take a few minutes for yourself after a difficult encounter

A difficult encounter with a customer can often leave us tired and irritated. That is why you should take a ‘time-out’ and have a few minutes for yourself.

Even if you’ve handled the situation in the most professional way possible, it’s still a stressful experience.

Treat yourself to a favorite snack, or find a person you can talk to and who can improve your mood.

This way, you will refresh and get ready to provide your next customer with the most exceptional service.

Let the feedback help you

We are often so scared of getting negative feedback and of the consequences it may have on our business.

It’s not a pleasant experience when a customer talks badly about something you have worked on for so long.

However, it doesn’t have to mean a disaster.

Feedback can be turned into our advantage, and especially so if it is a positive one!

Although customers are more likely to complain and point out what doesn’t work than what does, there are those loyal customers who adore your brand and are not shy to praise it!

This type of feedback can be a great way to attract new customers and show the world that your product is excellent!

For these reasons, it is important to display this feedback on your website, ensuring new customers of the quality of your products and services.

All of these will ultimately provide superior customer service!

There are plenty of great strategies to compile and utilize feedback for the benefit of your company, so make sure to dip your toes into them as soon as possible!

Use non-generic auto-replies

You have probably experienced the service, or therefore, the lack of it, when you send an email to the company and never heard back from them.

This is surely not an excellent way of handling your valued clients, even though it is understandable that you are busy and don’t have time to reply.

To prevent this from happening, instead of keeping track of who you have replied to, you should start using auto-replies.

This way, you will send a message to your clients that their email has been received, and their issue handled.

Besides making sure that your clients know you have received their message, auto-replies can make emails more interesting and engaging for them by customizing the messages.

Certainly offers an amazing engine for the personalization of client messaging across touchpoints, making them unique and informative.

You can customize the auto-replies in various ways and according to your company’s voice. Some things you can do, include:

• Using your clients’ names
• Thanking them for their message
• Offering them a discount, or an incentive
• Adding a nice, friendly comment to make the message sound more personal

It is always great to use auto-replies to under-promise and then over-deliver through human encounters. This is a sure path to making your customers happy and loyal for a long time!

Automation for superior customer service

In companies that work with clients, handling clients well is what decides the success of their business. This is why these processes need to be seamless.

If your clients come across any issues regarding your product, or if they cannot find some relevant information about your company, they will most likely contact you.

And while that is completely expected, it can often be very time-consuming to deal with the same questions and requests repeatedly.

For all of these reasons, it is smart to introduce automation that will minimize the human element.

Introducing Certainly-built chatbots in your customer service can be a great way of saving time and resources. It will also help to:

• Stay competitive
• Decrease errors
• Increase speed
• Increase efficiency
• Build volume
• Eliminate steps
• Format compliance
• Reduce waste
• Expand capabilities

Twitter as a response platform

It is not a discovery that social media plays a great role in today’s world and not only for social purposes.

Social media can be greatly utilized in improving how businesses work and communicate with their customers.

Different social networks, from Facebook, Twitter to Pinterest, have given us more opportunities to get out in front of our customers and create a direct interaction with them.

So, why not use it to help your company have a faster response time?

One of the popular platforms to use nowadays in handling customers’ requests is Twitter.

Twitter has recently become the best platform to address customers’ complaints immediately.

To be able to reply to your customers faster, appoint one employee to regularly check Twitter or any other network you are using for customer concerns and complaints, and reply quickly.

It’s imperative to always look after your customers’ experience by responding to their concerns as soon as possible.

Make use of technology

Living in a high-tech world as it has become, it is not only a good idea but a necessity to stay up-to-date and keep up with the advancements.

And especially so when running a company!

Not using technology to manage your company and your employees is unimaginable nowadays.

Every company depends on computers, software, social media, etc. Hence, using technology to deal with your clients can significantly help in achieving the company’s goals.

However, as technology is ever-changing, you should keep up and continually modify it to provide superior customer service for your clients and secure their satisfaction.

Ways to utilize technology to achieve your customer excellence goals and help your customers are numerous!

From mobile phone apps that can help your customers access all the needed information to social media for connecting and communicating with customers

The newest technology powered by Certainly offers the most modern chatbots that you can introduce to your customer service and greatly improve your customer satisfaction rates!

Use software and strategies for superior customer service

It can often be a weary and confusing task to search through different programs and metrics to gain useful facts on your customers’ purchasing habits, as well as discern what they want from you.

However, it is impossible to improve your company’s weak spots without that information and get an insight into what your clients are looking for.

Introducing different technologies and strategies can greatly help you collect all the necessary information from your company’s past, current, and future operations, to useful information about your clients.

Business intelligence (BI) strategies are great for personalizing your clients’ overall experience.

BI gives you access to how your clients think, how they interact with you, and what their expectations are.

What’s more, the benefits include:

• Stronger client voice
• Motivated and engaged employees
• Identifying trends more quickly
• Improved client analysis and satisfaction rates

Simplify the checkout process

Every company is aware that many clients go as far as the checkout page and then leave the website without buying the product.

It can be frustrating and confusing for the company. Why do they give up when they’ve gotten so far?

Most likely, the customers get overwhelmed by the process or find it confusing and hard to navigate.

So, instead of going through so much trouble, they’d rather go somewhere else.

To prevent losing customers, it is necessary to make the buying process easy and clear to follow.

By simplifying the process, you are making it accessible and more transparent for customers, which will ultimately lead to boosting your sales!

Introduce modern AI-driven customer service platforms

As your company develops and your work increases, it is important to find ways to be effective and quickly and constantly provide superior customer service.

Client support can be one of the most time-consuming tasks that will use up both time and money.

For that reason, companies should work on providing clients with all the necessary information and guidelines that will decrease their calls and their repeated questions.

One tool that proved to be extremely helpful and time-saving in client support is help desk software. This software shortens the response time and makes finding resolutions to clients’ complaints easier.

What’s more, the software’s features enable you to keep an eye on clients’ inquiries and improve your support agents’ efficiency.

Finally, the software can help in solving clients’ issues and provide them with product guidance.

The benefits of introducing help desk software are numerous, from reducing costs and providing better security to better maintenance!

We selected some of the best help desk software on the market that you should check out!

• Gorgias
• Jitbit
• Freshdesk
• Zendesk
• Happyfox
• LiveAgent
• Zoho Desk
• Help Scout

Surprise your clients and ensure superior customer service!

Every company’s incentive is gaining new clients and retaining the old ones. Still, exceptional service is not always sufficient.

Your clients love to be treated like royalty, appreciated, and thanked for staying loyal to a brand.

What else can you do to ensure them that you are worthy of their trust?

Surprise them! Whether it is a personalized discount code on their favorite product or an extra gift that comes with their latest order, it will certainly make your clients feel special.

There are plenty of ways to show your clients that they are extremely valued in your company.

You can try:

• Reposting their pictures on social media platforms. It is a great way to give special treatment to your clients.
• Featuring their pictures on your blog with an incentive will make them feel in the spotlight, and it also helps in humanizing your brand.

Find mutual appreciation with customers

When talking to a client, completely misunderstanding what one is trying to say may lead to unnecessary and draining situations.

Therefore, mutual appreciation is important for any type of communication, especially when you are establishing it with your clients!

They want to know that you see and appreciate their loyalty and are deeply invested in fixing their issues or clarifying their confusion.

Continuing to maintain an existing client relationship is critical for brand loyalty. Your company depends on the number of clients you have – and the more is always the merrier!

Here you can find some simple strategies that you can use to come to an understanding with your customers that will secure mutual appreciation

Always try to personalize their customer service experience by asking them questions that aren’t exclusively concerning your product.

This is a great start towards creating a good and long-lasting relationship, showing your appreciation and superior customer service.

Similarly, picking up on information about their personality and interests will help grow the conversation and establish a better relationship.

Make sure your mutual understanding is real and not only based on mutual agreement on all the mentioned topics.

Engage with clients on every level

Engaging with clients is the only way to conduct business with them.

However, there are different ways of engagement that help companies achieve superior customer service, both online and offline.

Hearing the same questions and requests repeatedly makes us start automatically replying with what we think our clients need.

However, if we are not active listeners, we can easily misinterpret what they actually want from us.

For a client support representative to fully interpret the message their clients want to convey and provide exceptional service they need to practice active listening.

By advancing the skill to listen actively, you can greatly improve the way you engage with your clients, allowing them to explain concerns and experience a higher level of satisfaction.

Active listening helps make the right decisions on how to treat a client, and it sends a clear message to your clients that they are being heard and their complaints are being fixed correctly.

These are the six skills you should acquire to begin to listen actively:

• Become more attentive
• Withhold judgment
• Reflect
• Clarify
• Summarize
• Share

Cultivate a positive attitude

Serving customers and ensuring their satisfaction is often a stressful and tiring job.

However, letting negative thoughts overwhelm us can only start a chain reaction leading to mistakes, frustration, and finally, customer dissatisfaction.

Maintaining a positive attitude is of crucial importance for happy employees and customers.

And although sometimes seemingly impossible, there are some simple strategies to use to lift your spirits!

Become aware of negative emotions about your job and gain power over them.

This way, you can see difficulties as a great opportunity to creatively find a way to solve them and learn a lesson from them.

Instead of letting the problems get you down, try to see them as an opportunity to fix them and learn a lesson.

Studies have shown that smiling can lift your mood, lower stress, and boost your immune system!

A three-second brain exercise for creating the slice-of-joy moments, developed by Chade-Meng Tan, can help you savor the right moments and lift your mood immediately.

In the long run, this will help you provide your customers with the most superior customer service out there!

A self-reliant staff makes customers happy

Taking care of clients’ appeals usually concerns resolving the issues they are facing.

Your clients want the correct information immediately, regardless of whether you can provide it or not.

Your task is to treat them professionally and confidently.

Being confident and self-reliant is what every client support provider needs to work on to ensure fantastic customer care.

To make your clients satisfied with the service, you need to empower your staff with self-reliance and persuasiveness.

Encouraging your staff through training and securing them with the tools to develop new skills will help them become courageous and able to provide exceptional service.

Confidence is something that you should definitely strive towards and work on continuously!

Be understanding

Relationships with clients are intricate and require a lot of skills.

Understanding what your clients are feeling and showing them that they are being heard is a necessity if you want to provide superior customer service.

Misunderstanding them or not doing enough to meet them where they are can negatively affect your business.

The skill to comprehend where your clients are coming from and assuring them you know how they feel can go a long way in maintaining a long-lasting and stable relationship with them.

Service providers should empathize and make a strong connection with clients. This will provide them with a memorable customer service experience, even when something goes wrong.

The ability to empathize can benefit a company’s financial performance and secure customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The main advantages of showing that you are understanding them include:

• Predicting actions and reactions your clients may have
• Preventing disagreements
• Negotiations won

There are many ways to show you understand a customer’s feelings.

Choosing the best empathy phrases can help greatly in showing your clients that you care!

Respect your customer’s time

We are living in a fast-paced world. Nobody likes waiting in lines or being on a call for hours, and your customers aren’t any different.

Superior customer service requires you to be fast and show respect to your customer’s time.

Customers will not appreciate it if they feel they are just wasting their time.

They need to realize you are genuinely focused on fixing their issues and looking out for their best interests.

Securing customer loyalty and satisfaction can only be done through mutual respect and trust, and being efficient and respectful is the way to succeed.

When working with clients, always try to:

• Focus on their needs, which will show them that you care about what they have to say and that you value their time
• Ensure your customer service is fast and professional
• Enable self-service
• Make service and support easy to navigate and always available

Use analogies and metaphors

Analogies and metaphors encourage visualizing and looking at an issue from a different perspective, which can prevent possible misunderstandings.

However, before using them, it is important to know your customer.

Using wrong analogies due to the lack of information about your client can only lead to more confusion and potentially make them angry.

Instead, make sure that you’ve built a good relationship with your client and are familiar with their personality, interests, etc.

Then, carefully pick the examples they’ll connect with.

Respect people’s physical space

Do you remember the time when your acquaintance started talking to you but stood so close you couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying?

Probably yes, because you felt uncomfortable, and it left an unpleasant impression on you to this day.

To not ever put your customer in this position, it is necessary to understand the importance of personal space and pay attention to the distance between you.

Keeping an arm’s length away from your client is an accepted rule when meeting with the client face-to-face.

Your customer will be able to hear you from this distance, and you will not risk getting in their personal space.

Making your clients feel comfortable is an important part of overall customer satisfaction that also shows great customer care. So, don’t disregard it!

What you should NOT do when in contact with your customer is:

• Hug them, put your hand on their shoulder, or hit them on the back.
• Get closer to your customer, if they moved away from you – moving away probably means you are already in their personal space.
• Touch clients upon meeting them for the first time.

Learn to plan your time

Customer service is a pitstop for everybody who has something to ask or complain about.

However, answering the phone calls is not the only task a service provider needs to get done.

The number of tasks that need to be fulfilled during the day may often be overwhelming.

Therefore, learning how to plan your time properly is a crucial skill in customer service that can improve efficiency, organization, and customer excellence.

An excellent choice to help you is using a Customer Relations Management (CRM) tool to help you keep track of everything.

Using CRM and managing your time will help you complete each task on time and satisfy customers.

To faster improve your time management skills, you can also try to:

• Evaluate your perception of time
• Examine your time reality
• Determine the relativity of projects or tasks
• Be realistic about timing

Don’t disregard the importance of great customer service

Loyal clientele that has been with you for a long time should feel valued and appreciated at all times.

They are your brand ambassadors and a great way of promoting your product to new clients.

Paying attention to your loyal clients and giving them special perks is the way to secure good customer relationships for the future.

However, companies often get overwhelmed with finding ways to increase the number of new clients that they sometimes forget to attend to the existing ones.

Instead of focusing only on one, companies should aim at satisfying both the old and new clients.

However, if you want to make your existing clients feel special, here are some tips that can help you:

• Frequent sales and special offers
• Free shipping
• Coupons
• Loyalty rewards

Simple gestures of appreciation such as establishing a partnership and engaging in personal interaction with them can help you ensure clients that they are a valued part of your business.

Have a clear return policy

Almost every company nowadays offers a money-back guarantee and accepts returns on purchased products.

However, it can often happen that the guidelines for the policies are not clear, and clients are often left confused about what they need to do.

Some businesses may not understand that the way the process of returning money or products is handled can make a big difference with regards to retaining satisfied clients and losing them forever.

Here are the tips to help you create a straightforward and easy to understand return policy that your clients will appreciate:

• Always focus on client satisfaction.
• Create a clear, flexible policy that everyone can understand.
• Offer guarantees whenever possible
• Provide detailed information on products

Offer free delivery and return service

Did you know that 88% of clients said that free delivery and return service is an important part of their buying decision?

However, offering free delivery or return on all the products can sometimes lead to losing profit.

There are certain ways to avoid irritating clients and securing their long-lasting satisfaction.

Creating clear policies that straightforwardly state the requirements, as well as offering free returns for specific products only (depending on a budget), are some of them.

Benefits of offering free services are:

• Opportunity to re-engage with clients
• Make clients repeat their purchases
• Boosting sales

Memorable first experience

According to a study, it only takes 7 seconds to form an impression of someone.

For companies, that means you only get one chance to attract clients into signing up with you and show them what superior customer service feels like.

So, what is exceptional service? And, what can you do to make a great first experience and confirm your reputation with the new clients?

Smile – Pleasant and approachable facial expressions are an essential part that will help a client form an opinion about a business. When clients see you smiling, they will be more likely to trust you and buy from you.

Handshake – Handshakes are a professional way of greeting people. However, make sure that it is neither too tight nor too loose.

Introduction – Greeting someone at the beginning of your interaction is a great way to break the tension and leave a nice impression.

Speak clearly – Science has shown that talking in a deep and calm voice is crucial for client success.

Eye contact – Looking clients in the eyes shows them that you are confident and focused.

Final experience

Equally essential as the first experiences, the last ones can show your clients they are not forgotten after signing the deal or closing the client support ticket.

How your client experiences the last minutes of interacting with you is an important part of securing a good review.

For that reason, we have created some tips that can help you make a great last experience and achieve customer excellence:

• Show appreciation for their time
• Appreciate the clients for doing business with you
• Encourage them to call back if they have any requests or concerns
• Let them know about other products you have
• Follow up on negative client feedback

Event-triggered tips for superior customer service

Event triggers let you survey your clients’ behavior when they take a specific action or reach a particular state. There are plenty of opportunities along a buyer’s journey to keep in touch with your client.

The pros of event-triggered client support can be:

• Surveying and gathering feedback.
• Automating your surveying and getting feedback continually.
• Measuring the client journey and learning where your users get stuck.

Some of the event-triggered customer service tips that you can include:

• Series of follow-up emails about how to use a product after a new sale
• Cross-sell emails/follow-ups
• Countdown messages for delivery, for example

What’s more, by setting up JavaScript or Segment, you can choose the events you want to keep track of and make the whole process faster and smoother.

Share feedback across all departments

Having only front line employees going through customer feedback is often insufficient.

Instead, the feedback should be shared through all departments, all the way to managers and employees in senior positions.

More often than not, customer complaints will be related to a problem that only the management can solve.

For this and other reasons, you should encourage managers to go through the feedback and extract the main points and suggestions.

What is the benefit? This way, all your departments will know what your customers expect from you and will consequently have an easier time coordinating their efforts.

Some of the methods to use when sharing the feedback across departments are:

• The notice board
• A big screen
• Monday morning meetings
• Letter from the boss
• The company intranet

Provide a trial period

Trial periods are a fantastic way to let your potential clients learn and try out your product service without obliging them with a payment.

Free trials can benefit your business in different ways:

• They give a product a chance to sell itself
• You can get a competitive edge against similar products
• People are allowed to invest time in your product
• You receive feedback
• Opportunities to offer incentives

However, keep in mind that by offering a short-lasting trial period, you run the risk of keeping potential clients from signing up in the first place.

Test different sales methods

Lowering the price of your products is the best practice to motivate clients to purchase them.

According to Shopify, companies that offer discount codes are eight times more likely to make a sale.

Understandably, you will not be able to offer sales every day of the year.

However, balancing between when and how often your product is on sale can be an enormous help in making the lucrative strategy.

There are various methods to employ, and we have narrowed them down to the most efficient ones:

• Trigger new visitors with a special offer
• Reward loyal clients
• Introduce bigger sales on special days
• First to buy a new product gets a discount
• Treat clients who referred you to others
• Offer personalized discounts
• Offer subscriptions
• Follow up with clients

Introduce on-the-spot tutoring

On-the-spot tutoring is also known as micro-coaching. It happens when a manager or supervisor coaches individual customer care or client support provider following a specific interaction with a client.

Some of the benefits of this type of tutoring include:

• Improvement of team effectiveness
• Motivates service providers to self-correct
• Strengthens mid-performers service delivery

Here are some steps for you to follow to make the on-the-spot tutoring most effective:

• Make the framework of the tasks you want to discuss with your employees.
• Use clients’ feedback.
• More targeted teaching is possible only when the correct identification of performance is clear.
• Detect issues.
• Evaluate service calls to gather up-to-date and trustworthy data.
• Have a positive approach

We understand that sometimes it can be difficult to find enough time to provide individual tutoring for the employees.

However, introducing Certainly’s AI Chatbots Building Platform can help immensely in time management and offer opportunities for tutoring!

Train customer service staff to deal with challenging situations

Customer service is often clients’ first stop to get any information, especially so in times of crisis.

It’s a challenge (in this case, more than ever) to maintain high-quality standards.

When companies are facing a challenge, it’s essential that client support providers remain in charge of the company’s day-to-day duties.

Losing control and composure while still being able to deal with the current situation is a practice that distinguishes exceptional service from a bad one.

Employee training is a great way to help people feel appreciated and give them the tools they need to handle client support issues.

Companies need to have ongoing training programs that are customized for each workplace. 

The tips below are great points for any company to impart to new employees. They are also essential elements of effective crisis communication programs and superior customer service.

• Gather all the necessary information about the crisis
• Develop a crisis management team
• Create a database for the crisis
• Prepare general responses to use in times of crisis
• Develop emotional intelligence
• Management should always be reachable
• Ensure omnichannel support

Self-guided learning materials

There are various strategies used to improve the odds that clients will repurchase from you again.

Introducing different software, help desks, using social media, and collecting feedback are just some of the examples.

However, we shouldn’t disregard the fact that most customers will still first call your customer service for help.

In this case, no amount of technology can help your inexperienced employees in dealing with the customers.

However, training your team from day one, improving their proactive behavior, and ensuring superior customer service can! 

Being proactive can more than double the chance for repurchase, increase profits, and secure customer loyalty. That’s why the training should start from the first day of employment.

However, it can sometimes be time-consuming to train every new employee individually. This is where self-guided learning comes to the rescue!

Here are some tips for creating an amazing employee from the first day!

• Prepare a reading list for new starters and make sure the material is ready for their first day.
• Introduce them to your internal documentation, performance tracking tools, and online training materials to avoid confusion and save time.

Adding a Conversational AI Chatbot Software to your customer support is also one of the ways to help in achieving customer excellence.

Certainly Conversational AI SaaS solution is a trusted tool by many companies providing customer support in various languages!

Be calm and patient when talking with clients

Every company will receive at least one phone call from an angry client during the day.

How you deal with them can affect their satisfaction and your ability to fix the problem.

Staying positive and understanding is the best practice when dealing with angry customers. This approach will tone down clients’ anger before it escalates.

To keep your cool, you can lower your voice and talk calmly and slowly, showing patience in the process.

If you get a little frustrated, take a deep breath and try to remain peaceful.

… it means no worries!

Superior customer service means offering to meet with the client

Upon receiving an angry email or a client’s difficult call, suggest meeting with them in person. 

This tactic shows that you want to address and fix the issue your client has. Also, it proves to your clients that you’re confident enough to meet face-to-face with them.

Facing the clients will diffuse their anger and build trust.

Go over the next steps at the end of a meeting

Even though you may be sure that you have explained everything clearly and there was no misunderstanding, following up with the client and making sure you are on the same page is an excellent way to end a meeting.

Ensure that clients are satisfied with your response time and follow-through, and then let them know what to expect next.

A simple short e-mail to keep you both up-to-date on progress or a document outlining all the steps you will take to make things right for the client should be enough to make your customer happy.

Certainly has developed amazing technology that can help you follow up with your customers efficiently and easily.

Finally, ask your customers if there is anything else that you can help them with and thank them for their call.

This way, you make sure that you have ended the call on a positive note and provided superior customer service!

These steps will save you from explaining the same thing multiple times, and it will secure your good relationship with customers.

Try to understand the customer’s point of view

Yes, clients often call to request or complain about your product or service, and you are the one that all the frustration will be thrown on to.

Whether it is their mistake, or yours, it boils down to you to fix the issue.

It is frustrating, we know. However, there are ways to handle it without endangering your relationship with a client.

In case you disagree with your client, it is useful to try to look at the issue from their point of view and understand how they are feeling.

We all want to be heard, and we all want other people to acknowledge our feelings.

By listening to the person’s concern and acknowledging it, you’re not only showing your clients that you care, but you’re also giving them a chance to calm down.

Ultimately, this will help them develop a more comprehensive view of what happened that led them to the point of rage.

When time allows, you can use phrases such as “I understand,” “I see your point,” “I hear your concern,” or something to that effect.

This way, you are acknowledging their point of view and offering a resolution.

Being willing to help and show compassion and understanding to your clients will make them more likely to accept your support and tone down their anger.

And, guess what? You will be providing them with the exceptional service they are looking for!

Make time to address and fix issues

Superior customer service requires quick resolutions, mutual understanding, and overall client satisfaction.

However, as fast and effective we try to be, sometimes it may take longer to resolve the problem.

Various issues can occur – some may be your mistake, a client’s mistake, or a technical issue that needs to be addressed by a different department.

Depending on how complicated the fixes are, it may take more time to fix them.

And although your customers are impatient and want solutions here and now, it may not always be a possibility.

Instead of rushing into finding a solution and making space for mistakes, explain the situation to your clients and ask them for more time.

Taking time to resolve the issue correctly will assure your clients they are valued and taken care of, and it will lower the chance of having the same client call you back for the same issue.

It will also help you avoid making the same mistake again.

It’s not okay to tell clients they are wrong

People think in different ways. What for some people is a piece of cake, for others may be a brain-teaser.

It is not uncommon that your client completely misunderstands every word you said and gets everything completely wrong.

Still, nobody likes to be told, ‘No, you are wrong.’ It’s not respectful, and it can be unkind.

Instead, if you are dealing with a client who didn’t quite get everything right, try to give them your undivided attention and keep the conversation professional and upbeat.

Explain them point-by-point where they’ve gotten their facts wrong, and try to make them realize how you will resolve their issues.

Approaching clients this way will cause bad feelings to go away and will most likely make clients come back.

Ask customers for guidance

Dissatisfied clients often come to you to complain and request something. What they also believe they come with are the issue and the solution.

No matter how hard you try to solve their issues using everything in the book and beyond, it may be futile. Your clients may have a completely different idea of approaching the problem.

Instead of trying to solve their issues by improvising, try asking them how they would like the things to be handled.

Ask them to guide you through the process – that way, you will know how to approach them, but it will also ease a lot of irritation and make clients feel heard.

The benefit of asking clients for help and guidance is that it can be a great way of lowering the tension and calming them down.

What’s more, the customer will feel that they contributed to the development of your company.

As a result, you will end up having a happy client who feels satisfied with your superior customer service.

Ask customers if everything is clear

Sometimes, your clients may not catch everything that is happening, which is why your team needs to be able to explain clearly and concisely what you are trying to do.

When interacting with your client, it is important to confirm whether they have clearly understood what was said and avoid any potential miscommunication.

One of the best ways to evaluate this is to ask questions to see if they fully comprehend the information.

For example, you might ask, “Is this clear?” or “Do you have any questions?” This will help prevent confusion and avoid disappointing your client. 

You will thus both save your time for possibly interacting with the same client about the same issue, and you will make your customer happy by solving their problem.

Use positive language, stay positive and cheerful, and never end a conversation without confirming that your client got the information correctly and is satisfied with it.

This is a recipe for superior customer service!

Be real by getting personal

Automation is an efficient time- and money-saver in managing the business and dealing with clients.

And although most likely your customers will find most of the information on FAQs pages and other provided sources, sometimes they will seek more.

Clients need novelties and human interaction. As useful as automated messaging is, the clients can get tired of it.

The result: clients will probably look for personal contact somewhere else. 

Not to take this risk, there is a simple solution that will make your customers happy. Employ social media!

Utilizing social media and responding when your customers post on your page is essential for superior customer service.

Communicating with clients through different social networks is a great way to show them that actual people are working in your company.

Interacting with clients through comments, likes, and messages will show that you care for your clients and want to build trust and long-term relationships.

Simple ways to show your clients that they are interacting with people include:

• Posting support team pictures and bios on your website – show your clients who they are talking to, and it will humanize the entire customer service experience.
• First name basis – using customers’ names in emails, notes, and comments will make you sound friendly and approachable.
• Knowing each customer’s history with your company – this way, you will be able to personalize their experience and make it unique.

Build a community

Understanding your target market is necessary to run a company successfully.

However, it is not always easy to gather all the information about your customers.

Knowing what your clients like, what they expect and need from you is essential but a time-consuming job.

A simple and helpful solution can be building client communities.

According to recent research, creating online communities proved to be a useful strategy many companies opt for to improve sales and profit.

Building a community can benefit your company on different levels.

• You will be able to collect relevant info on your customers and thus more easily understand and target the audience.
• It can ease your client support since clients will be able to help and guide each other, answer frequent questions, and learn tips.
• Your marketing teams will be able to expand their network through events.
• It will drive more organic traffic.
• It will help identify brand ambassadors.

There are numerous approaches to building a thriving community, so be sure to use those that suit your company’s goals the best!

Don’t be stiff

When clients contact you on the phone or through email, they want to talk to a real person and not with bots. (Unless your chatbot can imitate human-like conversation like Certainly Conversational AI does).

Handling clients professionally is a must for securing a good and trustworthy relationship.

Still, being too stiff and formal with clients should be avoided.

Standoffish customer representatives may seem robotic and unapproachable, which can lead to customers being uncomfortable.

Therefore, whether you speak or write to your clients, try to sound pleasant, casual, and amiable.

Always try to lead a conversation in a positive and friendly direction.

This way you are increasing chances for connecting with them and creating a long-lasting, trustworthy relationship while enhancing customer care.

Use the CARP method

CARP stands for Control, Acknowledge, Re-focus, and Problem.

Having a demanding client is not something client support looks forward to, but it’s just another job reality.

While you can’t make a client any less manageable, you can learn how to handle the situation to mutual benefit.

Consistency in client support is essential. Whether they are upset or happy, your task is to show appreciation and answer their questions patiently.

CARP method is an excellent and suggested method to use when interacting with upset and difficult clients.

CARP provides you with options to help establish a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with your clients.

Combined with appreciation and respect for clients, the successful conclusion of your conversation is guaranteed!

The benefit? You are increasing your chances that the client will decide to stay with your company for a long time.

P.S. It also shows superior customer service!

Reply to online feedback

The client support landscape is rapidly changing. Clients are becoming savvier, more opinionated, and more demanding.

Most clients demand from a company to recognize their feedback and build a real relationship with them.

Engaging in real-time conversations with clients is a necessity that should never be neglected.

According to research, more than 50% of clients expect to receive a reply within the first week of giving an online review. 

Replying to online feedback can benefit you in different ways, such as:

• Strengthening your prominence
• Fulfilling clients’ expectations
• Delivering better service

Using the Certainly Platform can help you automate and personalize the process of replying to your clients feedback and secure customer excellence at all times!

Ensuring superior customer service through email

More and more companies opt for expensive and innovative tools to attract new clients and market their products.

And while it is a great idea to keep up with technological advancement, we should not disregard the “old-school” methods.

Even though technology has proven to land clients efficiently, email is still considered the most beneficial and affordable solution.

Did you know that 92% of internet users have an email account? With such a high percentage, you have an amazing opportunity to reach out to prospective clients and advertise your brand.  

Email can be used in many ways, from promotion, gathering feedback to replying to client complaints.

Put a bit more to your emails, like customized incentives, or special discounts, and add up to building a positive and long-lasting relationship with your clients.

Need more? Check out Certainly’s NLU Engine that can help you automate your emails and make the marketing process smooth and easy!

Here are some other pros of utilizing email:

• Efficient in landing clients
• Profitable and affordable
• Personal and customizable
• Action-oriented
• Measurable
• Easily checked on mobile phones

Provide a refund guarantee

Buying online from the comfort of your seat became an excellent solution for busy people to conveniently and quickly buy whatever they need.

What happens though, is that it increases chances for making a wrong order, not being content with the product upon arrival, or simply changing your mind.

Most companies have come up with the option to return the product. However, getting your money back is not always ensured.

We understand that refund can sound intimidating. Your business runs on money, and giving it back is not what you were looking for.

However, it doesn’t necessarily mean losing money! And it definitely means happy customers and superior customer service!

The benefits of refunds are that they can increase your sales and impress your clients. They will show clients that you stand behind your product and believe that they will be more than satisfied with it!

The pros of securing a refund are numerous! Make sure to study through them and go on to introduce them to your business plan. Your customers will certainly love it!

Superior customer service with customized content

Your clients crave uniqueness and novelty. Offering them the same thing time and time again can only make them look elsewhere for something new and exciting.

You don’t have to start selling unicorns, of course. It can be as simple as creating customized content for individual clients or clients with similar interests.

Clients who have been with you for a long time most likely know all there is to know about your company and products.

For that reason, sending them the uniform content to promote and advertise your brand is not going to be received happily.

Mary Gormandy White explained that making content focusing on clients helps in creating an emotional connection.

That’s why the content you send out should help clients feel special, appreciated, and a valued part of your company.

Customized customer content doesn’t have to be complicated. Some simple ideas include:

• Sending product updates
• Showing them some unexplored features
• Sharing news and current events regarding your brand
• Featuring customer feedback and their stories
• Creating tips and tricks content
• Offering perks to signed customers

Reply to customers on the channel they chose

Altering the channels that your clients chose to contact you on has shown to be the worst decision a client support provider may make.

It may lead to a bad client experience and their overall dissatisfaction with the service.

Some channels may indeed take longer to reply than others. Still, transferring clients’ complaints from social networks to phone or email, in reality, may not be the best practice.

There are a few reasons not to do this.

If the client contacted you on social media, there must be a reason for that. Maybe they use it more often or find it easier to navigate.

Also, it may negatively affect your business. Social networks enable clients to create their communities where they share reviews about your company.

Enabling them to see that you care about customers and reply fast shows them that you are offering superior customer service they will not be able to resist!

Finally, serving clients on the channel they chose will secure their happiness and satisfaction, so why risk that?

There are many more benefits and channels you can use in client support, so make sure to check them out and see which ones are in line with your working culture! 

Work on new techniques, insights, and abilities

Though we are creatures of habits, it doesn’t mean that we don’t like things around us to evolve and change.

And what often makes us feel special is witnessing that process, being a part of it, and being able to confirm it.

Every company’s goal is to provide their clients with more value and constantly develop and enrich relationships with them. For that to happen, you need to develop too!

As a customer service provider, focusing on learning new techniques, gaining new insights and abilities will give you more to offer your clients.

It will also make them excited to participate in your advancement.

Continuously offering more to your clients and providing them with exceptional service can help you gain happy clients for life.

By learning new ways of surprising and satisfying your clients, you are ensuring mutual benefit.

Keep focused on your professional growth and learning!

Record service calls

Dealing with dozens of clients per day and talking for hours non-stop is exhausting.

As practiced as we are in dealing with their complaints and answering their questions, sometimes it can be easy to forget some important and useful points.

Recording a call from a client is a useful method that can be beneficial in different ways.

Recording a call:

• Enables you to determine the strengths and weaknesses in your relationships with clients.
• Allows you to understand your clients by reading between the lines.
• Provides you with insights that will prevent the issues from reoccurring.
• Improves customer service.
• Helps increase sales.

Recording your service calls can also be utilized for:

• Training purposes
• Identifying areas where you can improve client’s experience
• Creating role-play scenarios

Create unique customer experiences 

Sometimes, clients reaching out to you may mean that they want to remind you that they are still here and perhaps want something extra.

They love to get special treatment and be surprised and contacting you may be their intention to achieve that.

Creating a one-of-a-kind and superior customer service experience for clients is what they are expecting, and it will make them appreciate you even more!

Having long-term clients enables you to get to know them, their purchasing habits are, and their interests.

Having all the information at hand allows you to personalize their experience, ultimately increasing your revenue and client retention. 

A survey conducted by Segment showed that personalization:

• Increases impulse purchases
• Increases revenue
• Leads to fewer returns
• Grows customer loyalty

Create a sense of community by making each client’s experience exclusive. Take care of their requests, ensure good service, and always be willing to go the extra mile.

Be systematic to provide superior customer service

The world needs systematic, detail-oriented, and organized people in order to run smoothly. The same goes for client-focused businesses.  

Systematic people have a natural bias towards solving problems and ensuring long-term client satisfaction.

Employing an organized person in client support can be beneficial for you in the following aspects:

• They’ll be sure to understand the issue before replying fully.
• Systematic people will proofread and make sure not to miss mistakes that could lead to losing credibility.
• They’ll regularly follow up with your clients.
• Systematic employees will stay collected even in times of crisis.

Goal-oriented focus

Fast-paced companies can sometimes be disorganized and can lead to confusion between team members. Unfortunately, this scenario can bring more bad than good.

For that reason, defining a company’s goals is crucial for following where you and your team are heading without losing direction.

Customer service may be the area where staying focused on your goals may come in handy the most. Clients can often throw us off track with their complaints, requests, or tone.

Therefore, staying focused on your goal, which can include making your clients happy and satisfied with the service, is a must.

Fixing the client’s issues is just one piece of the puzzle. Finding solutions that are leading toward higher goals is what customer service should aim attention at.

Setting goals will:

• Direct your team and help them focus on achieving them
• Improve the performance of the team
• Make the system work smoothly and consistently

Finally, when setting goals, make sure to follow the SMART philosophy for the best results.

Be able to handle unexpected situations

Sometimes, customers will do something that your company guidelines don’t cover or react in a way that nobody has expected. 

These situations inevitably arise. In today’s world, companies need to resolve such problems instantly.

For this reason, it’s good to have a team of fast thinkers who are able to handle surprises on the spot.

Be on a constant lookout for calm people, who are able to act on the spot. Hiring such people can go a long way in securing an excellent customer service experience.

Writing skills

Surprisingly enough, being a good writer is the most overlooked skill employers are looking for in their customer service representatives. Yet, it is indispensable.

Writing requires special attention and skills. The way you phrase a sentence can make a difference in how people perceive your brand.

If you struggle to communicate with your customers in a written format, there are many resources for content writing online.

The right, skillfully written message can make all the difference between conveying your brand’s friendliness and sounding like you don’t care about customers.

Hiring a skilled writer is important even if your services are mostly done over the phone.

A good writer will also convey a clear message to your customers and communicate concisely and strategically with your team.

Include off-hours service

In many instances, it will happen that your clients will need your assistance during your off-hours.

Sometimes it will be an urgent request, misunderstanding, and most likely, it will be the only time when they are available.

Not replying to your clients until the next day may lead to their dissatisfaction and disappointment in your services.

To keep this from happening, it is crucial to introduce 24/7 client support which will provide your customers with your assistance at any time.

The list of channels you can incorporate to serve you after your business hours are over is abundant. We have listed the ones we believe you will love!

• Emergency number
• Mobile support
• Upgraded canned responses
• Pre-recorded tutorials
• Customer forums
• Offline chat

Save the best for the last! Using Certainly to create your chatbots can secure you with 24/7 superior customer service that your clients will love! Make sure to check them out!

Introduce support on social media channels

It is as clear as a day that overcomplicating websites and making them impossible for clients to navigate can only harm your business.

A simple and easy-to-navigate platform is an essential component your company should introduce to increase client retention and secure their stay.

Although it may require investment, it will pay off in the long run. The poll conducted by Twitter showed that investing in client support on social media channels can increase your revenue.

Clients value a quick response. It shows them that you are professional, respectful, and responsible.

They love fast responses so much that they are willing to pay almost $20 more per transaction if you respond to them within six minutes!

The benefits of investing in social support care are various:

• Instant resolutions
• Personalized support
• Proactive approach
• Happy experiences
• Controlling reputation

Time is money! And by supporting clients on social media, you will be saving both!

Check every interaction point

Ensuring client satisfaction doesn’t only include successfully resolving their issues.

There is a long list of points that client support providers need to work on when interacting with clients to ensure superior customer service. 

Every employee’s responsibility is to keep an eye on all the points because one small oversight can create a lot of trouble and inconvenience for the client.

Keeping track of interaction points and ensuring that they have been checked along your client’s journey is necessary for providing exceptional service.

It can also be instrumental in advertising, billing, and collecting information through the website.

Finally, having a clear overview of the interaction points will help client support providers to listen and react to their client’s wants and needs.

Ultimately, it will help you to improve your business continuously and ensure customers are happy!

Have control over every customer service call

Every once in a while, we encounter a client who takes a lot of our time, and the end doesn’t seem anywhere near.

Therefore, resolving the situation and going on to the next call may become a challenge. This is where call control comes into play.

Being in control of the call will help client support providers collect all the necessary information and resolve issues quickly.

This strategy is a time-saver that improves productivity and enables providers to go on to the next customer fast.

Some of the methods to remain in control include:

• Asking to-the-point questions to deduct information
• Splitting conversation into chunks
• Managing the conversation through questioning
• Using customer’s name

Be in charge of your actions

Remaining calm and in charge of your emotions and reactions when dealing with a strong-willed client can be challenging.

However, losing control of yourself and acting impulsively can only lead to enraging your clients even more, which can be very exhausting. 

To be the best at your job, it’s essential to keep your cool.

There are many different methods to talk to displeased clients.

To provide outstanding customer service for your clients, your employees need to control their emotions and actions.

Approach clients with dignity and listen to what they have to say. If you get angry, take a deep breath and regain control over your words and your attitude.

That way the clients will be pleased and come back in the future.

Superior customer service means going above and beyond

Have you ever ordered a product and got an extra gift on the side?

Probably yes, and there is a good reason for that. Companies know that their clients will appreciate it when they go the extra mile in their service.

From a discount code or a coupon to a small gift, throwing in something extra can cement client loyalty and make them feel truly valued. It serves as a motivation for them to keep on purchasing.

A company should provide exceptional service, show high customer care, and go above and beyond to make their clients happy. This way, it can be sure that the clients will notice it and respond accordingly.

There are various strategies to show your clients you want them to enjoy the customer service process.

From calling them back personally with updates on the status of an order to:

• Assigning a person to deliver the product
• Giving 20-30% discount for regular customers
• Apologizing for the delay via mail/email
• Gifting them with a basket full of goodies for special occasions

Be welcoming

Clients contentment and pleasure is the first concern for any company. There is no worse experience than feeling that you are not welcome and are uncared for.

Ensuring that clients are welcome in your company is a critical strategy in customer care.

It can help in securing a strong connection with clients and provide an enjoyable and memorable encounter.

The good news is that it is a cost-effective strategy, and practicing it can help you be the most popular in the market!

Welcoming your clients, you show them they are appreciated and respected! What you can do to secure this is:

• Smile in person and on the phone
• Look professional
• Greet your clients cheerfully and competently
• Take a genuine interest in their story
• Eliminate distractions
• Thank the customer

Don’t be too strict about the rules and policies

There is the old saying, “Rules are meant to be broken.” Although it is not always the smartest saying to follow in life, its point still stands.

We make rules to give us direction and help us navigate through life more easily. The same goes for businesses.

Rules are made to help us organize our company, its services and prevent undesirable situations. 

However, sometimes not bending the rules for our client’s benefit may bring more bad than good.

We risk losing a customer, getting terrible feedback, or worst case, indulging in a legal battle.

For example, bending your company’s return policy when the situation allows it can give the customer just what they need.

Occasionally bending rules to serve your clients’ needs will unlikely cause any harm, and it can bring many benefits. 

Revising and easing up the rules that don’t serve your customers can help eliminate customer complaints and increase retention. Make sure to make some space for rule-bending!

Proactivity for superior customer service

“Proactive” has recently become the most sought-after word in job applications.

It is a skill that most employers look for in their future employees. And there is sound reasoning behind it!

Being able to proactively recognize the needs of your clients and approach them in advance can be useful for numerous reasons:

• It helps you resolve issues before they begin to occur
• It enables you to give clients an experience without them having to ask for it
• Decreases customer inquiries
• Allows you to predict clients needs
• Issue resolution is faster
• Improves customer service
• Clients become brand ambassadors
• Increases client retention

So, make sure to secure proactive client support and embrace all the benefits it has to offer!

Get involved as a founder

Whether your company is a start-up or a well-established one, your role as a founder is to take care of the whole system to ensure its smooth running. 

And while you have employed a team to take care of your clients, it is nice for a client to hear from you occasionally.

Keeping in touch with your valued clients will keep you in the loop and enable you to improve, adjust, and become the best in your industry!

What’s more, it will show them that you are not conceited but truly care about your clients’ satisfaction.

Thanking your clients by email or sending them a handwritten card is a fantastic way for founders to show appreciation for clients. A simple act that will make everyone happy!

Time is money – so act accordingly

In customer service, time is precious. It may run too fast or too slow, but its value doesn’t change. 

As with everything else we do, we often don’t realize the amount of time we spend working on one thing, whether it is watching a show or handling clients’ requests.

However, if one started to analyze the amount of time that unconsciously slipped away, they would see the costs and remind themselves that time really is money!

Realizing how much time is worth will enable you to see just how damaging these inefficiencies and small mistakes along the way can be and start improving them.

Likely, managing your time better will help your company to improve and ensure exceptional service for your customers.

Therefore, you should analyze and reconsider your time and find the solutions to manage your time as effectively as possible! 

Don’t be too assertive

Every company dreads having their selling voice sound too assertive. 

There is nothing more unappealing to customers than a person whose only interest is selling their product without paying attention to what exactly it is that they need.

Getting someone to buy your product can be stressful. While you want to make sure that you’re approaching each client the right way, you also don’t want to lose sales because you’re too afraid to close.

It’s a fine line between sounding too pushy and being convincing just enough. And pushing your clients into buying your product and tirelessly convincing them to make a decision will only upset them.

Here are some tips to help you make a sale and keep the customers without pushing them too much:

• Remove the pressure
• Focus on the client’s needs
• Try to be more personal and improve your relationship with the client
• Be honest with them
• Let your clients explain and talk you through what they need
• Focus on what their issues are, and not just on making a sale

Check if you are being mentioned

If you had one chance to guess what your client’s favorite way of interacting with others is, we are pretty confident you would’ve easily guessed it. Social media, right?

Everybody uses social media networks to keep in touch with their friends and family.

They are also using them for keeping track of how their favorite brands are doing, what new products there are, and what other clients think about them.

For that reason, it is essential to have an active online presence, closely inspect all the mentions, and try to reply to your clients as fast as possible.

Being mentioned on different platforms means more than somebody tagging your product for the sake of being reposted.

It can bear much more importance, which is why you need to check it constantly.

Clients use social media to communicate with other people. They use it to share their experiences and opinions about products.

A disappointed customer may decide to leave a bad comment about your product, which you should make sure to see and address.

Paying attention to what is being said about you gives you the opportunity to:

• Improve the weak points
• Apologize to clients for the inconvenience
• Prevent crisis
• Reap the rewards of a good service

Today, there are many tools that can help you follow when you were mentioned, so search around and find the right one for you!

Build your superior customer service dream team

Running a company means being faced with all sorts of challenges and obstacles.

Some will be easy to overcome, while others may take you on a roller-coaster ride you never expected.

But regardless of the size or challenge of any problem, the best way to overcome it is by surrounding yourself with the right team to get the job done.

Bringing the best individuals to deliver outstanding results is the first task to ensure great results and ensure you are providing superior customer service.

Hiring a client support team by choosing the best professionals can increase clients’ happiness and secure their loyalty for a long time.

To make sure you are hiring the right person, ask questions in the interview that will determine if they are a good fit, such as:

• Do you have experience handling customer complaints and issues?
• Do you know the industry?
• What do you know about our products?

Building a great team will provide the basis of an excellent strategy for client support and reliable, long-lasting, and trustworthy relationships with customers.

Make superior customer service everyone’s duty

Undoubtedly, your client support providers will deal with happy and mad clients the most.

Although other employees may not have so many face-to-face interactions with clients, they also represent your company culture. And your clients’ care about your culture!

Successful and consistent running of the company means that every person within that company is accordant with the core values you are promoting.

If not, your clients will quickly notice it and probably will not be pleased.

Therefore, the ultimate goal of all the employees must be clients’ satisfaction.

Engaging the whole company in discussions regarding how the company can better serve its clients can help secure mutual happiness and trust.

Training and teaching your service providers is necessary for ensuring exceptional service. The benefits include:

• Better product understanding
• Better interaction
• Help in predict user demands
• Cultivating critical thinking ability
• Positive attitude

Keep the company’s website updated

A confusing, slow, and messy webpage is every client’s worst nightmare!

To ensure that your clients are getting the updated and correct information at all times, you need to make sure to keep your online channels up-to-date.

The information that you should pay attention to includes:

• Contact information
• New deals
• Discounts
• Product launches

Your clients will love to use a well-developed and accessible website. To provide the best online experience, you should look at:

• Visual appeal
• Security
• Content
• Effectiveness
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Usability
• Load Times

A/B testing is a great way to ensure your clients have easy access to your webpage. 

Finally, don’t forget to look at the best web design practices to be sure you are following the newest trends your users will enjoy!

Ready to deliver superior customer service?

Well-executed customer service is a necessity, which will significantly benefit your clients, company, and employees.

It needs to be an ongoing process of continual, thorough improvement. Therefore, we hope you found our 100+ tips for superior customer service improvement helpful and inspiring for your business!

What’s more, we hope you will start applying them to your client support as soon as possible and see what excellent results you can achieve!

We are excited to hear back from you and get to know what successes you have achieved – from client retention, new clients, securing client loyalty, and your service representatives’ happiness – let us know!

If you want to get to know our Certainly team and learn about our products that can help you achieve exceptional service, don’t hesitate to reach out!