When you run a business of any nature, good customer service should be seen as one of your most important responsibilities. Without treating your customers well and managing their questions and complaints, you are going to struggle to build up the positive reputation that you need to create in order to achieve success. Customer service in an online store presents different challenges than if you run a regular bricks and mortar shop. Check out these tips to help you manage customer service in an online store.
Plan and Understand What Makes Good Customer Service
For many businesses, they treat customer service as a secondary function and not one that requires a great deal of time and attention to get right. Rather than doing this, you should learn as much as possible about online customer service and using certain software like a customer relationship management software (CRM)?
What is a CRM? It’s a way to communicate with your customers about future and current projects, while also keeping them updated about what is going on in your business.
Get to Know Your Customers
The online world has given a whole host of opportunities to get to know your customers and understand their wants and needs a little bit better. There are several ways that you can collect this information. You can launch surveys and ask them for feedback via email and social media. You can launch a blog and encourage your users to open up a two-way conversation. You can also monitor their online activity via various analytical software options. Ultimately, it is a combination of different techniques that will help you to get a better handle on your customers.
Choose the Channels You Want to Use
The modern world has opened up a host of channels and ways of getting in touch with your customers. You need to choose the channels that you are going to operate wisely. For example, there is no point in setting up a phone line if there is rarely someone at the other end to answer it. Real-time chat is a popular way of getting in contact with businesses these days.
Whether you choose to hire in-house customer service staff or this is an arm of your business that you need to outsource to an external agency, you need to be clear about the tone of voice and manner of service which you are going to adopt. Email and social media tend to be the other two popular ways of getting in contact with businesses in the modern age.
Learn How to Handle Complaints
The handling of complaints is an essential part of running a modern business, and this should take a top-down approach – meaning that you need to learn how to deal with them yourself. A few common steps include allowing the client the time and space to fully explain their issue, apologizing if necessary, showing empathy, and walking them through what the next steps are going to be to resolve their issue successfully and efficiently.
