When it comes to running a successful business, whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, good customer service is a must. We all know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of poor customer service and yet so many companies fail to take this into consideration when creating their own customer service strategy, so what should they be doing about it?

Here’s how to get a handle on good customer service.

Conduct a Customer Service Audit

Whether you’re a new business, or have been up and running for many years, if you feel that your customer service is lacking then the first thing you need to do is to undertake a customer service audit to pinpoint the areas in which you are succeeding and those in which you may need to put in a little more work. Customer service strategies are always changing, just 5 years ago live-chat on websites wouldn’t have been a consideration for most companies and now it’s widely considered a must. Take a look at what you are currently doing for your customers and assess whether there are areas in which you have been left behind. Also, take into consideration any customer complaints you have received as these are often the best indicators of the areas in which your customers are dissatisfied with your service.

Start Noticing Good Customer Service

Good customer service is all around us, and yet, we often fail to notice it, instead too often focusing on the bad service we receive. To truly understand what good customer service is, you must first understand what it means to you – so try to make a conscious effort to notice instances when you receive good customer service. What was it that the business did to make you feel as though you had received good customer service? How did it make you feel? Is this something you could apply to your own customer service strategy?

Ask Your Customers What They Want

Understanding what you as an individual considers to be good customer service is a good start, but to really get to the root of the problem you need to know what your customers want from good customer service. Customer satisfaction surveys are just one of the ways in which you can provide your client base with the chance to feedback on your customer service, you may be surprised at what it is they really want from you.

Take an End-To-End Approach

One of the areas in which many companies go wrong with customer service is that they consider it to start when a contract is signed and to end when it terminates. The truth is that customer service starts the moment a lead or prospect first interacts with your company and should follow them through their lifetime as your customer and continue, to an extent, even once they have left. For prospective customers considering buying from your business, the way in which they are treated from the get-go will shape the way in which they view your business. Simple things like being unable to get ahold of your company on the phone when they have a question can leave them feeling unwanted and that your business is unreliable. The good news is that problems such as telephone hours can be easily fixed with solutions such as the Ivy Answering Service, which will guarantee that there’s always someone there to provide a professional telephone service even outside your normal working hours.

Regularly Review Your Customer Service

Customer service is an evolving landscape and so it’s important to regularly review your customer service strategy to see which areas are working for you and which are not. A customer service review should involve looking at your customer retention rate, your customer satisfaction rating and the results of any customer surveys but do also remember to speak to your frontline customer service team as they are the ones dealing with your customers on a regular basis and are most likely to be able to provide information that you may have missed from analytics and reports.

Treat Your Customers the Way You Want to Be Treated

At the end of the day, providing good customer service isn’t rocket science, you simply need to treat your customers in the way you’d like to be treated. If you don’t like being held on hold and transferred from person to person, then the chances are your customers won’t either. Keep this philosophy in mind throughout your customer service strategy and you will do just fine.