“Customer service is the new marketing. It’s what differentiates one business from another.”
— Jay Baer
Customer service is the most important differentiator for a brand. The reason why retail customers prefer Amazon for their purchases is simple. Amazon offers customer service that is far better than any competitor. Repeat customers will still use Amazon even if the same product on Amazon is available for a lower price on another platform.
For wholesale buyers, trust in the seller is even more important. Hence, as a wholesale seller, you have to constantly deliver excellent services along with delivering outstanding customer service to earn repeat customers.
It is far more effective to keep serving repeat customers than to attract new customers. If you’re planning to be successful in the long term, you have to find ways to retain customers. To retain customers, you have to keep customers happy and build trust by providing amazing customer service experiences.
A lot has changed in terms of customer service over the years. Gone are the days of waiting for 24-48 hours to hear back from sellers. Everything is fast and instantaneous today. Customers do not like to wait to hear back from you. They want answers instantly!
According to HubSpot research, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important. 60% of customers define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less.
Here are the five most important things that are key to a great customer experience.
- Resolving the issue quickly
- Resolving the issue in one interaction
- A friendly customer service representative
- Ability to follow up with the same customer service representative, if possible
- Ability to record, print, and save customer support interactions
Since the expectations of customers from you to serve them better are rising, you have to implement some effective customer service strategies to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Let’s take a look at the 5 most effective customer service ideas you can implement for your buyers.
- Leverage Social Media
A lot of customers are regularly using social media that it has become second nature for them to get in touch with businesses on social media platforms.
As such, businesses have to adapt their customer support strategy to facilitate social media interactions with customers. Social media is where customers expect quick responses from businesses. Hence, it is important to raise your standards and respond quickly to customers to resolve their queries.
When done right, your customer support on social media can win you more customers. By solving the queries of your customers in a public space, you will attract positive attention that builds the reputation of your business.
- Implement Live Chat
Live chat is cheaper and far effective than customer support over the phone. It can drive 3x to 5x more conversions. Customers that use live chat are three times more likely to purchase from you than those who don’t. Customers can get their answers without having to wait and live chat is faster than email support.
Customer service representatives can easily attend to multiple live chats simultaneously without any problem. This makes it a great choice to improve your customer service experience. You can have a popup message on your live chat to draw visitors’ attention and to let them know that they can instantly chat with a representative in case they have any queries.
- Help Desk Software
It can be a challenging task jumping between email, live chat, and social media to answer customer queries. You need to streamline your process and use a help desk software to efficiently serve customers.
There are many help desk software available. Depending on the size of your business, you can choose the best help desk software for your needs.
Help desk software can integrate with social media platforms, live chat, email, and contact forms on your website so that you can better respond and serve your customers.
- Knowledge Base and FAQs
A knowledge base containing all the important information customers are looking for will reduce the number of queries from customers.
Customers would love to solve their issues without reaching out to customer support and by providing a comprehensive knowledge base with all the relevant information you can meet the needs of your customers better.
A FAQ section is hugely beneficial for product and category pages on your website. You can answer the most common questions you receive from your customers to save their time. This will reduce the number of support requests you receive while also being beneficial for your website SEO.
- Automation
You cannot scale your customer service operations without automating as much as possible. When done right, automation can effectively serve customers while still keeping them engaged on a more personal level.
There are a lot of conversations where customers only need basic information like shipping receipts, order tracking details, insurance details, etc.
You can automate all these conversations by setting up personalized auto-replies that meet the needs of customers. There are many customer service automation software available to respond back immediately to your customers.
The most important thing while automating your replies is to maintain your brand’s voice.
When you go the extra mile to deliver amazing customer experiences, you stand out from the crowd and attract more customers through word of mouth and positive reviews. Remember, customers value trust and customer service is your opportunity to earn trust by displaying your commitment to serve customers.
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