What makes great customer services

For example, they once sent a best man free shoes the night before the wedding after his order was sent to the wrong location due to a mistake by the delivery company. Resolving customer queries as quickly as possible is a cornerstone of good customer service. Customers understand that more complex queries take time to resolve. You should, too. That means they want to feel like more than just a ticket number.

Customers want to interact with a person — not a company. How about their interests or hobbies? Can you make them laugh? Your customers are the most integral part of your business, and they come before products or profit. Treat them like they are the center of your world — because they are. So, get to know your customers. Humanize them. Want to learn what Help Scout can do for you? See for yourself with a free trial — we'll happily extend you if you need more time. What is customer service? Why is customer service important?

What are the principles of good customer service? Personalized: Good customer service always starts with a human touch.

Personalized interactions greatly improve customer service and let customers know that your company cares about them and their problems. Competent: Consumers have identified competency as the element that plays the biggest role in a good customer experience. The more knowledge they have, the more competent they become. Convenient: Customers want to be able to get in touch with a customer service representative through whichever channel is the most convenient for them.

Offer support through the channels of communication your customers rely on most, and make it easy for customers to figure out how to contact you. Proactive: Customers want companies to be proactive in reaching out to them. If one of your products is backordered or your website is going to experience downtime, proactively reach out to your customers and explain the problem. They may not be happy about the situation, but they will be thankful that you kept them in the loop.

Customer service tips by business type and industry: B2B customer service SaaS support Customer service in healthcare Startup customer service Customer service in education Financial services customer service Small business customer service Customer service in nonprofit organizations Ecommerce customer service. Foundations of Great Service Discover the tools and techniques used by high-performing customer service organizations in our free, six-part video course. Sign up for free. I can place the order for you right now and make sure that it is sent to you as soon as it reaches our warehouse.

Mitigating gaps in product knowledge It takes time for team members to build up their product knowledge. For example, with Help Scout , you can: Create a database of saved replies that support agents can use to answer frequently asked how-to questions about your product. Search your help center articles and insert links to them in responses without ever leaving the conversation view. Set up automated workflows that attach helpful internal notes to conversations with instructions on how to reply.

Search all previously sent responses by keyword, tag, and more to see if someone else on the team has already answered the question. Try for free. Either way, the outreach is well worth the reward. AdRoll helps D2C marketers reach and resonate with their audience by centralizing their marketing and advertising activities in one platform.

By spending less time looking for data, marketers who use AdRoll spend more time doing the work that makes the data. We've mentioned before that one of the tenets of good customer service is self-service support.

AdRoll's robust help center begins the user's customer service experience with four options to choose from: an intro into AdRoll, getting started with setting up your AdRoll account, FAQs, and an option to browse by topic. If none of these get you exactly what you're looking for, there's a search bar at the top.

Of course, if all those options still leave you lacking, their customer support team is available to help answer your questions. One customer wrote a review about AdRoll on G2 and said this:. The retargeting has helped generate a consistent conversion rate over the last 6 months and their customer service is helpful and super efficient. Good Customer Service Takeaway: Your customer service team doesn't have to provide round-the-clock live support to be a champion of the customer experience.

AdRoll gives us an ideal example of "work smarter, not harder" when it comes to solving customer pain points. With a self-service solution that is easy to navigate, your customers will be just as happy that you saved them a phone call and gave them a tool to find a solution instead. Santa Cruz Bicycles manufactures and sells high-quality off-road bicycles.

Its bikes are known for their high-performance and its customers deeply care about the technology that they're riding. But, the bike's performance isn't the only feature that Santa Cruz customers love.

They're loyal to the company because its service and support teams match the quality of its products. Customers can trust that any problem they have with a bike will be solved swiftly and with excellent service.

If you have an issue with a Santa Cruz Bike and come to us with your issue, we'll help you resolve your issue. And, Kyle wasn't just talking about problems with the bike.

The company is also focused on removing long-term roadblocks from the customer experience. For example, when the business was first starting out, it experienced a sudden growth. Customers loved the bicycles and the demand for the product rose beyond what Santa Cruz's service team could support. Agents were working tirelessly and the team's email inbox nearly reached capacity. Recognizing this flaw in its service experience, Santa Cruz adopted customer service tools to aid its support team.

Reps started recording data on customer issues and highlighted problems that were most common with their customer base. They created a shared inbox with an email alias so customers could easily contact the support team. They also created a customer feedback loop so they could collect and share customer reviews with the entire organization.

Good Customer Service Takeaway: When your company experiences growth, it can sometimes create unexpected problems that pop up down the road. If these issues are left unchecked, they can become a detriment to the customer experience and halt your business's success. Santa Cruz recognized a potential flaw and acted immediately.

They adopted customer service tools to ease the pressure on their support team while simultaneously improving the customer experience. That way, reps weren't being overworked and had the time and energy to provide excellent customer service. Additionally, Santa Cruz used its new tools to conduct reporting as well.

This allowed the company to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction while its customer base continued to grow. Even though more customers were interacting with the business, each interaction still felt genuine and personalized because of the customer data Santa Cruz had gathered. Ride-hailing app Lyft succeeds in the customer service space by making its customers proud by putting its money where its mouth is toward values and causes customers truly care about. For example, Lyft announced its commitment to minimizing the environmental impact of the millions of car rides it provides every day by declaring all of its rides to be carbon neutral, thanks to its voluntary purchase of carbon offsets.

Lyft condemned the executive order, writing in an email to customers:. We stand firmly against these actions, and will not be silent on issues that threaten the values of our community. Wherever you stand on these important issues, it's undeniable that Lyft's customers care about these topics all over the world.

Good Customer Service Takeaway : An important facet of customer service that can be difficult to measure is standing for the values that are important to your customers. I recently heard from Kristin Aardsma , who works in customer support at Basecamp.

She spoke about Basecamp's customer support team -- more specifically, how the team measured success to reduce employee stress and turnover, and achieve better outcomes for customers. Part of Basecamp's solution to solving for the customer and reducing employee stress was creating time in the workday for research, innovation, and creativity. To that end, customer support reps spend two hours per day off the phone lines and away from the queue -- and they re-dedicate that time toward other projects.

Employees have more opportunities for company-wide impact by collecting research, analyzing data, identifying patterns and trends, and working on projects and processes to achieve better results. Two hours per day, or 10 hours per week, might sound like a lot, but it paid off for Basecamp.

Employees weren't burning out due to overload and stress, and Basecamp wasn't over capacity and unable to solve customer problems because team members were happier. Good Customer Service Takeaway: Time spent away from the queue isn't time wasted -- so make sure to dedicate time during your week to identifying patterns, analyzing data, and creating processes to work more efficiently.

When you're burning through tickets or on the phones non-stop all day, it can be hard to step away, but front-line customer service insights and feedback can help your organization, so make sure to collect and share them.

Our friends over at Wistia -- a video hosting and analytics platform -- believe in the power of video to help tell company stories. And that isn't just restricted to marketing videos and social media content -- Wistia uses videos to provide great customer service, too. General enquiries: 13 QGOV 13 74 Home Running a business Customer service and consumer laws Customer service Improving customer service Principles of good customer service. Customer service. After-sales service Managing customer complaints Managing online customer reviews Improving customer service Principles of good customer service Meeting customers' expectations Creating a service delivery flowchart Measuring customer service Creating a customer service program Improving customer service - case study video Collecting and storing customer information.

Principles of good customer service The key to good customer service is building good relationships with your customers. To ensure you provide the best customer service: know what your customers consider to be good customer service take the time to find out customers' expectations follow up on both positive and negative feedback you receive ensure that you consider customer service in all aspects of your business continuously look for ways to improve the level of customer service you deliver.

The following are some of the main elements of good customer service. Customer relationships To build good customer relationships you need to: greet customers and approach them in a way that is natural and fits the individual situation show customers that you understand what their needs are accept that some people won't want your products and concentrate on building relationships with those who do help people — even just letting a customer know about an event that you know they're personally interested in is helpful continue to keep customers aware of what's in it for them to do business with you.

Staff If you want to provide the best customer service, all of your staff need to have good communication and sales skills. Complaints Listen to customer complaints; you may learn something about your product or service.