Being good at customer support isn’t an industrial secret.
Being reachable to customers, taking accountability for issues, and solving problems fast should always be your core goals.
However, this is also the standard behaviour people expect from customer service and won’t set you apart from your competition.
So how can you genuinely win customers’ hearts?
Doing the bare minimum won’t cut it. You’ve got to give much more to make a powerful impression. But where do you start?
The A-Z of exceptional customer service
To make a dream come true, you have to have one first.
Look at where your customer service stands today, and envision where you’d like it to reach. What could you do to make it exceptional?
Think:
Service philosophy
Most of us rely on an inner voice to drive us and achieve our goals. Your service operation needs one too.
Have a motto every team member knows and follows as the backbone of your service. The key to success is often simple inspiration.
If you already have a service philosophy, check how well it’s working. If it isn’t, take the opportunity to think of why and tailor your motto to your brand.
Honour your unique way of doing things, and keep your customers’ benefit at heart in your service mantra.
Hire smart
For small companies, investing in the wrong person can threaten your business.
Bad hires regularly cost firms thousands of euros, even by conservative estimates.
Consider the negative impact of inadequate support agents on sales, customer relations, retention, time, money, resources wasted, or legal complications.
Remember, you’re in a post-pandemic economy; your focus should be on regrowth and scaling. Can you afford to gamble on poor employee performance?
Your customers are invaluable to your business goals if you’re planning on healthy growth and expansion. They deserve the best support to serve them.
McKinsey reports that senior customer care executives expect an increased demand for higher-skilled agents over the next few years.
Remote customer service lets you recruit high-quality talent that scales with you—agents with must-have skills, not just nice-to-haves.
With a solid service team delighting your customers, you can focus on growing your business – without worry.
Speak local
Maybe you’re already providing high-quality support, but is your support team speaking your customer’s language?
There are significant benefits to providing native language support.
Language support can help you relate to an international audience if you want to scale internationally. Going multilingual also enables you to stand out from the rest. Fewer companies provide it, so you’re raising the bar for quality.
It can also increase trust in your brand.
Harvard Business Review reports that at least 70% of consumers will purchase with you again if you talk in their mother tongue.
Only a quarter of the world online speaks English at a native level. So why focus on English support alone?
Remote hiring lets you efficiently recruit and scale your multilingual team, regardless of location.
One shot
Microsoft surveyed customers worldwide on the most important aspects of service, in their opinion. Consumer opinion was unanimous across nations that speaking to a knowledgeable agent who resolves the issue in one go, regardless of how long it takes, is critical.
Your customers are telling you they value first contact resolutions. So make this a priority alongside your other service goals, and watch the 5-star ratings roll in from satisfied customers.
No pain, more gain
Reducing customer effort is a great service goal. A skills-based routing (SBR) system in remote customer support helps you do that quickly and efficiently.
Skills-based routing directs customers to agents with the abilities required to solve their issue. Knowledgeable agents help decrease the need for general queues and long waiting times by resolving issues from the get-go in a time-efficient manner.
Furthermore, SBR increases your first call resolution rate, as the match between customer issues and agent skills is accurate.
Proactive service
The phrase ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ has never been more positive than in customer service.
Proactivity means reaching out to customers, so they benefit from knowing something beforehand, such as product news, ongoing issues, trending features, business events, etc.
Be proactive by informing them about any anticipated problems and providing workarounds.
Spark joy
McKinsey revealed that chasing a moment of truth with a customer can significantly change your service quality.
Encourage your agents to spark joy and empower them to make service interactions extraordinary for customers.
Be it instant refunds, great advice, freebies, proactive help, or celebrations, encourage agents to get creative on how to delight customers, especially those who come to you with a problem.
Retaining customers just makes good business sense.
According to Forbes, loyal customers are 65% more likely to purchase with you again, while attracting new ones has a success rate of 13%.
In addition, Bia/Kelsey’s research on small businesses reveals that over 50% of annual revenues come from repeat customers who spend 67% more than new ones.
Humour the grumpy ones
Let’s face it – some customers are going to call in angry.
Maybe they received the wrong product, or a late delivery ruined their plans. Perhaps something went wrong, and now it needs fixing.
We all have off days, even at the product end.
But how you treat demanding customers is crucial to your service quality, customer loyalty, and public image.
PWC reports that 32% of all customers stop purchasing with a brand after a bad experience.
Dissatisfied customers are also more likely to leave bad reviews about you, further impacting sales; they may even caution friends and family against purchasing with you.
Coach your team on how to de-escalate tense situations and empower them to be customer-centric. Let them take instant decisions to indulge the customer and save the relationship with your brand.
How famous companies provide great service:
Sometimes, the best motivation to improve your service can come from looking at other companies.
Some companies are renowned worldwide for their customer service, but what do they do right to win brand loyalty? Let’s look at some examples.
Amazon
Amazon has earned the blue ribbon in customer service and even scored the highest in a rating survey by Foresee a few years ago.
Amazon’s service motto is ‘earth’s most customer-centric company.’
Everything Amazon does keeps this motto at its core, propelling the brand to become the world’s most successful online store.
Customers can get refunds at the touch of a button, many products are replaced free of charge as goodwill, and the entire online process is user friendly.
Want to transform your service from functional to exceptional? Start by viewing everything you do through a customer-centric lens.
Ritz-Carlton
Perhaps the secret lies in their motto: “We are ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen”, in that The Ritz places a high value on internal employee culture.
The hotel chain expects team members to treat one another and all guests with the same respect and dignity, which is a fantastic way of embracing the customer service principles.
(They even have a rule where every Ritz employee is free to spend up to $2000 to keep a guest happy.)
When you live the experience yourself daily, you don’t have to remind yourself how to honour other people.
Go all out to show you care about your customers as the Ritz does, and they’ll care right back.
Disney
Disney’s guiding customer service motto is to “Be show ready.” So it always presents itself in its best light, 24/7.
For example, this could be something as simple as sweeping the park pavements or training staff to be engagingly friendly and helpful.
Coach your service team on how to pay attention to the little things and gladly offer help to every customer who calls in.
Zappos
Many businesses hide their contact details in a little corner of their website, but Zappos proudly displays theirs as a service symbol.
Zappos cares about building emotional, personal, and human relationships with customers by being easily reachable by phone, text, and chat.
They encourage their service team to have meaningful conversations with customers, empower them to act on them, and share their experiences.
Like the time a customer called in to return a pair of shoes.
The person who bought the shoes had passed away suddenly. So not only did Zappos refund the money, but the agent asked them to keep the shoes as a gift for anyone who needed them and then sent the customer a bouquet.
Think about how you can create powerful moments like these, out of ordinary conversations, and you can build customers for life.
The whole nine yards
The online experience is getting slicker, which has led to increasing customer expectations.
Customers expect customer support to run 24/7 in the background, tirelessly solve or prevent issues arising, be easy to reach, and reach out proactively.
But how can you meet these demands and rise to a level of excellence?
Go remote with Cocoroco
Our expert agents provide total coverage across time zones and languages. We also assess all our candidates to ensure you’ll be recruiting the highest quality talent.
Your remote team will be completely yours to train with your Master Shifu like best practices that fit your service goals
We’ve even figured out all the messy paperwork like contracts and legal obligations.
All you have to do is spot the talent that’s the perfect fit for your brand. And they’ll be ready to start working for you as quick as that.
Our mission at Cocoroco is to make great talent easily available to businesses on the lookout, and we’d be delighted for you to welcome our support champions into your team.
Just contact us, or book a demo, to know more.
