Expert Advice on How to Deliver Excellent Customer Experience

Even if you have a fantastic product, if your customer service is unhelpful, unreliable, or simply difficult to contact, people will complain, and you will lose customers as a result.

That is one of the main reasons why customer service is so important for long-term business success.

But what does it mean to provide excellent customer service, and how can you ensure that every customer who contacts your company for assistance has a positive experience? We've identified several strategies for elevating your customer service to the forefront of your industry.

What is Great Customer Service?

Great customer service entails not only adhering to best practices such as respecting customers' time, maintaining a pleasant demeanor, and providing knowledgeable and productive resources, but also going above and beyond to exceed — rather than simply meet — expectations.

10 Ways to Deliver Excellent Customer Service

While there are numerous ways to satisfy your clients and have them raving about your assistance to their friends, here are our top ten ways to provide excellent customer service.

1. Know Your Product

As a customer support agent, you spend your days troubleshooting customers, which necessitates product knowledge.

A broad understanding of your product is an important customer service skill. You should ideally believe in your product, be able to discuss features and use cases extensively, and demonstrate how the product can benefit your customers — not to mention troubleshoot any issues!

Your job is to make sure your customers get the most out of their purchases and feel like they got a good deal. Make it a goal to learn everything you can about your product so you can wow your clients with prompt recommendations for new features and services.

2. Maintain a Positive Attitude

Attitude is everything, and having a positive attitude will help you provide excellent customer service.

"The right attitude transforms negative customer experiences into positive customer experiences," says Flavio Martins, Vice President of Operations and Customer Service at DigiCert, Inc. Because most customer interactions are not face-to-face, your tone of voice and language should reflect your attitude.

The tone of written communication is easy to misinterpret, and email or live chat can come across as cold. The brain interprets someone else's emotional tone using a variety of signals, including facial expressions and body language, many of which are missing online.

If an email or chat conversation becomes tense, don't be afraid to use emoticons to convey warmth and good humor or pick up the phone.

3. Creatively Solve Problems

Over 80 percent of customers have left because of poor customer service. That is why you must thrive on problem-solving for your customers and make it a central part of your support role — because there will always be problems to solve.

Everyone has heard of Zappos' legendary customer service. For example, they once sent a best man free shoes the night before the wedding after his order was misplaced due to a delivery company error. Zappos solved a problem and provided outstanding customer service — they gained a customer for life and provided the man with a story he couldn't wait to tell.

Don't be afraid to impress your customers while attempting to solve their problems. You could simply fix the problem and move on, but by going above and beyond to meet their needs, you'll create customers who are committed to you and your product.

4. Respond Quickly

66 percent of people believe that the most important aspect of any online customer experience is to value their time. A key component of providing excellent customer service is responding to customer inquiries as quickly as possible. Speed should be of the utmost importance, especially for minor issues that don't require much time to resolve.

That being said, great customer service always wins out over speed.

Customers are aware that more complex queries require more time to resolve. There is a time difference between how quickly you respond and how quickly you solve their problems. Customers do not want to wait in a ticket queue, but they are willing to spend as much time as necessary to resolve their issues. You should as well.

Respond to your customers as soon as possible, but don't be in a hurry to get them off the phone or close the ticket without fully resolving the issue.

5. Personalize Your Service

Customers want better human service, according to 40% of them. That is, they want to be treated as more than just a ticket number. They become enraged when they are not treated as individuals, when they receive boilerplate responses, or when they are batted around like a tennis ball by various people.

Customers want to interact with people, not businesses. It's one of the reasons why many businesses send birthday gifts to their customers.

Do you know your customers' birthdays as well as their names? What about their interests or pastimes? Are you able to make them laugh? It is obviously not possible to do it for everyone, but going off script and providing a personal touch when possible is an important way to demonstrate to your customers that you know them and care about them.

6. Help Customers Help Themselves

Customers, on the other hand, don't always want to talk to someone to get their problems solved; instead, they frequently want to resolve their issues themselves. Before contacting a live representative, 81 percent of consumers try to resolve issues on their own. According to additional research, 71% of people want to be able to handle most customer service issues on their own.

Self-service is a scalable, cost-effective way to keep customers happy — that's the thinking behind Help Scout's Beacon, which places help content front and center so customers can find answers without leaving the page. If they are unable to answer their own question, assistance from a real person is only a few clicks away.

7. Focus Support on the Customer

Customers are the most important aspect of your business, and they take precedence over products and profits. Treat them as though they are the center of your universe because they are.

"It's time to consider an entirely different approach: building human-centric customer service through great people and clever technology," writes Kristin Smaby in "Being Human is Good Business." So, get to know your clients. Make them more human. Make yourself more human. It's worthwhile."

Southwest Airlines demonstrated this principle in a memorable way when one of its pilots delayed a flight to wait for a customer traveling to a funeral. They prioritize the human over the target, and the customer will never forget it.

8. Listen Actively

Paying attention to customer feedback entails reviewing data as well as listening in real-time. When your customers take the time to speak with you, show them that you hear them. Listening increases your chances of hearing your customers' true problems and effectively resolving them, resulting in happier customers.

Listen to what they have to say without imposing your own agenda on them. Don't assume you know what your customer will say.

Use phrases like "It sounds like..." and "Do you mean...?" or "Let me make sure I've got this right" when on the phone or in live chat to demonstrate active listening skills. To demonstrate that you've heard them, repeat the problem back to them in your own words.

Active listening also implies that you are aware of your customer's different personality and existing emotional state to tailor your response to the situation. Customer service is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

9. Keep Your Word

Making sure you deliver on your promises is common sense customer service. Don't disappoint your customers. Respect and trust are at stake when you keep your word.

For example, if you promise 99 percent SLA uptime, make sure you keep that promise. If you pledge to develop a specific feature in your software within a certain time frame, ensure you follow through.

When you break your word, such as when you say you'll get back to a client within 24 hours but don't, offer compensation. If your customer's delivery is damaged, offer to replace it and reimburse their money. In the short term, you may lose money, but you will gain a loyal customers.

Customers are not especially grateful when you give more than you promised. If you break a promise, however, they become angry. It's still preferable to under-promise and over-deliver to avoid breaching this crucial social contract.

10. Be Proactively Helpful

When customers feel like you value them — like they’re truly special to you — they’ll keep coming back. This may be linked with the phenomenon of reciprocity in social psychology: If you do something nice for your customers, they will want to do something in return — like buy your products!

Sending them a small gift “just because,” or giving them a rare promotional code, will speak to your customers’ egos and demonstrate your genuine appreciation of their business.

Going above and beyond is among the most important tasks you can do to provide excellent customer service. This is when you've checked every box but still want to do more.

Being helpful sometimes means anticipating your customers' needs before they even express them. In fact, customers may request one thing without realizing they require another. It is your responsibility to anticipate and meet their needs.