Customer focus means assisting people. This idea, in its simplest form, is what enables your company to succeed as a whole. The capacity to satisfy the ultimate goal of assisting people, regardless of obstacles encountered along the way, is called being customer-oriented.
Besides helping your business become successful, excellent customer service is vital to the longevity of your customers’ journeys. You must earn the trust and loyalty of each client by demonstrating that you care from beginning to end.
When everyone concerned with providing client services works together under one leader who values their work ethic and the company culture, you will not go unnoticed.
Here’s how to get it done.
Empathy goes a long way.
How well you assist your clients is determined by your capacity to sympathize with their problems. If you know how they’re feeling, you can help them feel better, which is essential for a customer service job. Even if there’s no quick remedy, a little attention, care, and concern can go a long way.
This is especially true when running a business that deals with clients at their most vulnerable state. If you are running bereavement services, you have to understand that you will be dealing with very emotional, and to a point, unreasonable clients.
Empathy involves responding to a “no” or an “I can’t help you here” with more thoughtful discussion. It would require going out of your way to help someone grieving the loss of a loved one.
Be sure to follow up as well as follow-through.
The worst thing a business can do is drop the ball on its customer service commitments, failing to follow through or follow up.
If a consumer makes a complaint, your team fails to solve or follow up with the problem. This will surely escalate the situation.
Successful companies have mastered the trait of following through and then following up with their customers. This is a characteristic that people value in friends or colleagues, so it’s no surprise they appreciate seeing this from a customer service team.
Hire the best people for the job.
It’s not enough to speak nicely to customers and be nice. Customer-facing teams need to have a unique skill set and further training to guarantee a great customer experience for their clients.
When searching for staff, make sure that the qualities you’re looking for are listed in your job description. Ensure that customer orientation is one of them when hiring.
Some main traits to look for are curiosity, technical aptitude or learning, and problem-solving skills, as well as de-escalation abilities.
Engaged, enthusiastic staff provide a better customer experience while also offering other advantages. A healthy and dynamic consumer relationship can boost sales by 20%.
Your employees are your customer advocates within the company. They’ll surface any key insights in meetings, and they represent what is essential to customers best.
Customer development is a strategy to encourage customers to reveal what attracts them to your brand and nurture that attraction over time. Treating your employees well, providing growth possibilities, and enabling them to continue developing firm loyalty are all indicators of customer orientation.
Don’t make the customer solve the problem.
Do you want to be guided through a customer service solution or simply have the problem resolved quickly?
A customer satisfaction study from Hubspot found that most people just want their problems solved. They don’t care about how it’s done, as long as they’re happy with the results. The survey showed that reducing work for customers would make them most comfortable and best retain loyalty to a brand or company.
The best customer-oriented teams take ownership of problems and challenges rather than passing them back to the customers. If your customers need a problem fixed, just do it for them without doing more work on their end.
Customers are unlikely to feel stress rather than worry when they seek assistance. To become a customer service-oriented team, you must be eager to make things simple (and efficient).
Raise the bar.
How can you tell whether you’re progressing if there’s nothing to compare it to? Setting goals for the qualities you want your clients to attain is an essential first step in developing your customer orientation.
When you lay down standards and procedures for assessing, you give your team and customers a good foundation to succeed.
Creating standards also implies that you can track them. Making a process for reporting on client-focused indicators communicates to your staff that these aspects are critical.
The Takeaway
There is no doubt that customer service, when done right, can be a massive asset to your business. It helps you grow and thrive in the competitive marketplace while also ensuring that each client has an excellent experience from beginning to end.
