17 Small Business Customer Service Tips

"You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied." ~ Jerry Fritz

Whether you run a jewelry store or supply ayurvedic and herbal products, delivering exceptional customer service to your clients can become the backbone for gaining competitive advantage and increasing customer loyalty. The following tips will help you improve your customer service and make your clients a happy lot.

1. Treat customer service as a priority – If you've carefully hired your customer service reps, and you regularly take steps to motivate and train them, your company's customer service will get better. As a business owner or manager you need to be willing to allocate sufficient funds to the customer service function.

2. Clearly state what you mean by excellent customer service - Define standards of good customer service in clear terms such as saying thank you every time, keeping the time of appointments, etc. Defining such standards will not only help you measure performance but enable you to up your standards.

3. Greet your customers warmly – Ensure that you or your customer service reps make it a point to enthusiastically greet your customers. It's not only a means of showing respect to customers but will also give out the message that you are happy to see them.

4. Pick up the phone quickly and politely – Ensure that you have enough customer service reps to handle the quantity of calls you get. Also, include a brief introduction of the person picking up the phone in the greetings pitch, so that customers know that they've reached the right destination.

5. Tell them what you Can Do to assist – Even if you can't, don't start off by saying that you can't do something. Tell them what you can do to help.

6. Be a good listener – Develop good listening skills and train your reps at identifying customer's problems quickly. It will help you get down to resolving their problems fast. Customers like it when their concerns are quickly addressed, without them having to retell their tale.

7. Talk clearly – Answer your customers' questions slowly, loudly, and clearly enough. Don't appear to be in a hurry or indifferent, even when you are pressed for time.

8. Educate customers about your company's processes – You may have established many procedures to help customers, but you also need to teach your customers on using them. Develop a presentation or a video to make them understand. In general, try to keep these systems simple.

9. Don't promise when you can't deliver – If you make promises to customers that you can't keep, not only that the customers will be disappointed but it will affect their loyalty toward your business. For instance if you promise a client delivery on Friday, 11:00 am, ensure that you keep your word.

10. Don't argue with customers – While you may positive that a customer's opinion is not right, don't ever debate with her trying to prove that she's wrong. Focus on resolving the problem than knocking out a customer in an argument.

11. Train your reps to handle difficult customers – Customers, such as irate ones, can be challenging to handle. So you would need to properly train your customer service team on handling. You need to tell the reps what to say, how to calm down customers, show empathy, manage their own emotions, what if nothing works, etc. Despite the difficulty to deal with irate customer try to ensure that the experience of customers is positive.

12. Serve as a role model to your team – If you as a manager display good customer service skills towards your workers such as when your greet them, show courtesy towards them, and listen to them, they are more likely to imitate your behavior in dealing with the people who contact your office, including customers.

13. Make your customers feel valued – You need to keep working at consolidating relationships with your customers. Simple measures such as sending thank-you notes, birthday cards, congratulatory notes, etc can go a long way to building an attachment between the two of you.

14. Try to exceed their expectations - Give your customers something more than they expect. It doesn't have to be something big but a simple courtesy such as saying “thanks for visiting” even when they don't buy from can set you apart from the crowd. And happy customers will advertise your small business for free.

15. Understand that you will make mistakes – Achieving excellent customer service is not a one day affair and there will be times where you'll make mistakes, e.g. shipping the wrong item. However, your duty doesn't end at just setting things right, you need to tell the customer that you're sorry. And ensure that the problem doesn't recur such as by including extra checks, reviewing processes, etc.

16. Ask customers for feedback – Whether your place printed feedback forms at the reception, or periodically send these surveys to customers, it will help you to improve your service. Also, don't forget to thank customers for the feedback.

17. Promote a culture of customer service - Encourage a culture whereby executives, other than customer service reps, lay emphasis on getting feedback from customers, and using it to improve the company's customer friendliness.