Tips and Tools for Excellent Customer Service

Excellent Customer service seems like any company should be able to provide, right? If that were true, the internet would be full of people lauding companies for the outstanding service they provide—rather than the customer support nightmares covering review sites from every continent. With the bar for switching providers dropping lower and lower with each technological advancement, effective customer service is imperative, no matter the size of your company or the number of customers you have.

Examples range as widely as the business landscape as a whole, from the everyday call center team member going out of their way to wish every caller a good day to the extraordinary examples given below. No matter your industry no matter the size of your customer support team, there are lessons to be learned here about how to take care of your customers to help ensure your company survives and thrives.

Good customer service typically includes the following elements:

• Availability: Good customer service means being easy to reach and responsive to customer inquiries and concerns. This can include multiple channels for customers to contact you, such as phone, email, or live chat.

• Professionalism: Good customer service representatives are professional, courteous, and respectful in all customer interactions.

• Empathy: Good customer service representatives can understand and empathize with customers and address their concerns and needs in a compassionate and understanding manner.

• Knowledge: Good customer service representatives have a deep understanding of the products or services they are offering and can provide accurate and helpful information to customers.

• Efficiency: Good customer service should resolve the customer's issue as quickly and as smoothly as possible and follow up to ensure that the customer is satisfied with the outcome.

• Continuous improvement: Good customer service is always looking for ways to improve its service and processes to meet customer needs and provide better service.

• Consistency: Good customer service is consistent in their approach, messaging, and behavior across all customer interactions

• Flexibility: Good customer service is flexible in finding solutions to meet customers' needs, intending to find win-win solutions.

How do you provide excellent customer support?

Talk about your nebulous concepts. How can one list attempt to show what good customer service looks like in YOUR sector? Well, honestly, that would be difficult; however, there are some universals at play. People like what they like, no matter where they are or what they’re looking for support with. Here are a few ideas pulled from across the market to get you started:

Meet your customers where they are

The public is increasingly taking to social media to both ask for help and to put companies on blast for failing to provide that help. If your company isn’t paying attention to Facebook and Twitter, you’re likely missing out on opportunities to keep customers happy and turn critics into fans.

Be proactive rather than only reactive

Despite the terms being used interchangeably (including in this article!), there is a difference between customer support and customer service. The former is reactive, while the latter is proactive. Support is when a customer reaches out to you for help with a problem they’re already having. Service is when you reach out to them with ways to help out BEFORE a problem occurs.

This will look different in different scenarios. Some examples include:

• FAQ pages where customers can look up answers to their questions on their own time.
• Knowledge bases often take the FAQ to the next level with video tutorials for common issues, step-by-step guides, and so on.
• Reaching out to new customers, unbidden, to check up on them and ensure they’re progressing OK with their new product.
  
  

Stay in touch on their terms

Ever gotten a call from customer support around dinner time to check on the status of an issue? Yeah, us too. The easy solution is to have your customer support team ask the customer what their preferred contact method is. No matter how the initial contact was made—Twitter, Chat, or phone call—offer to move the conversation into their preferred medium.

This shows that you’re on top of their ticket and that you value their time as much as your own.

Remember your people

We hope it goes without saying, yet we’re going to say it—take care of your customer support team. After all, the other suggestions here are meaningless if you have a team of disheartened or disengaged workers manning the phone and ticket queue.

One of the examples of great service in action will drive this point home, but the bottom line is that to take care of your customers, you need to take care of your employees. That may be via benefits packages, office perks, or even changing up the work schedule to allow for decompression and lowering of stress levels.

Real-world examples of customer service done right

There are many, many,  MANY examples to be found. These are just a sampling of some of our favorite companies doing customer service and support right.

Jetblue

What isn't Jetblue doing right? From maintaining one of the best on-time rates in the industry, to consistently showing up the old-guard airlines with their stellar service and support, these relative newcomers are setting the bar high. For evidence, look no further than their Twitter timeline. The customer support team member who monitors the Jetblue account is so on the ball; they even manage to deliver a mocha to a time-crunched passenger.

Warby Parker

There are sterling examples to be told here, but we’ll stick with one of the ways this startup disrupted the eyeglass industry from their first days on the scene—try-on samples delivered to your home. That's right, no more dealing with harsh lighting and awkward mirror placement at a store; Warby Parker will deliver five pairs of glasses right to your door for you to try on, free. Talk about your proactive customer service!

Basecamp

An example of giving the support team time off-queue to work on other projects was Basecamp. Maker of Mac-based project management software, their team was simply burning out. By giving each support team member 2 hours a day off the phones and out of the email queue, they could stretch their analytical or other skills by compiling reports, analyzing trends, or working on creative projects. This allowed the team to stay at capacity since the people were no longer stressed and mistake-prone.

Glossier

This newcomer to the skincare world proactively emails customers who recently purchased something to see if they have any questions. This is the proactive approach done right, as it not only shows they care, it can also head off any potentially unhappy customers who might be having an issue but may not have found the time or energy to get in touch with the company.

What all of these examples have in common is the idea of putting the customer first—even when it means putting your people first. These companies realized that without a dedicated customer base, they wouldn’t be able to exist, let alone thrive in today’s busy marketplace. With a few seemingly simple ideas: be human, responsive, and transparent, these companies provide us with a definitive, working definition of great customer service.