You have to make your customers feel like you care about them for them to stay loyal. Unfortunately, most organizations don’t put much effort in teaching their employees soft skills. But it’s the soft skills that matter most to the customer experience.
“Your best strategy is to teach your employees what caring about customers looks like in action,” says Jon Gordon, author of The Carpenter. “When they see how good it feels to care, and how good caring is for business, you’ll receive your team’s buy-in and continued participation.”
So what does caring look like?
Be more present than ever
As business gets more complicated by technology, it’s often the simple things that can make customers feel great. Give customers your full attention by avoiding all distractions around you when they talk.
Extend the offer
Offer to help, but don’t hover. If customers visit you, acknowledge them not immediately, and offer to help.
A lot of business happens online and on the phone these days. Offer a chat session when consumers are online, but don’t have chat box offers pop up over and over.
When on the phone with a customer, end every conversation with one more offer to help, in case customers think of something else.
Make it personal
Always address customers by name to make the experience more personal. You can also add a memory, perhaps referring to a past experience or personal information the customers shared another time, to show you care about the person, not just the transaction.
Most databases offer room for notes. Make short notes that you and your colleagues can use as references to past conversations that can and should be mentioned again. On the flip side, you might want to also take note of things that shouldn’t be discussed with customers.
Show respect
Employees who deal with customers know to be respectful. There are additional steps you can take to show respect beyond listening closely, speaking kindly and using a kind tone.
Example: You can show customers respect by recognizing something they’ve done. It can be as simple as complimenting them on a choice they made during an order. Or, if they reveal an accomplishment, perhaps a work promotion, a child’s college graduation, compliment them on the effort it took to achieve that. Make sure to note it in their account so you can follow up some time down the road.
Be positive
You cannot set a caring tone when talking negatively about your job, competitors, customers, the industry, weather or whatever. A negative culture is not a caring one.
“When you see the good, look for the good and expect the good, you find the good and the good finds you,” Gordon says. “You can apply this principle by making an effort to stop thinking of customers as ‘annoying,’ ‘needy,’ ‘clueless’ or ‘a waste of my time.’”
Have fun at it
Laughter is a sign of caring. Every conversation and exchange doesn’t have to be 100% business. Appropriate humor from you or customers is a powerful way to build a stronger bond.
You can make fun of yourself for a little misstep, but never laugh about a major mistake that has customers upset.
Go the extra mile
Always look for ways to make every interaction just a little bit better. Actions such as walking customers to the door or through your website, show you’re interested in customers and how they’re treated.
Follow up calls to make sure everything went as expected mean a lot, too.
Customer relationships are everything to a business. Happier customers mean higher profits. Enroll in our online customer care courses and be ahead of your competitors by equipping you or your team with skills to communicate confidently. Follow the links below to apply.
- Basics In Customer Care (FRBCC)
- Customer Service Critical Elements of Customer Services (CSCE)
- Customer Service Training_Managing Customer Service (CSTM)
