Why Customer Service Is Important For Your Brands Reputation

The first touch point a new or prospective customer has with your brand is the customer service team. The foundation of your brand reputation, therefore, has to be customer service. A friendly, patient, respectful, and helpful customer service team tells customers that your brand is of an excellent reputation.

As you’d expect, if the converse is true, then its inverse must also be logically true- unsatisfactory customer service damages your brand reputation. And with the internet and social media amplifying customers’ voices and power, you can’t begin to imagine the damage a disgruntled customer can do to your brand.

Understanding Customer Service

Customer service is any direct interaction between a customer or a potential customer and a representative of the service provider or seller. The interaction can be face-to-face or electronic (via phone call, SMS, email, website, or social media).

Automated self-service systems are gradually finding their way into the heart of customer service, but it is unlikely that they will ever replace human customer service agents.

Customer service is more than waiting on buyers and answering any questions or concerns they might have. The representative or customer care agent has to be helpful to the buyer in order to encourage repeat business. He/she has to go the extra mile to meet customers’ varied needs.

For example, if a customer wants to purchase an item that’s out of stock, telling the customer that the item is unavailable isn’t good customer service. A good customer service agent has to do everything possible to find the item and ship it to the customer in good time. The customer service agent has to be and remain kind, courteous, and professional throughout the process.

Customer service also has to be timely, preferably a single-step process for the customer. No customer wants to wait in line or sit on hold for hours before accessing a customer service agent. No customer wants to be bounced from one representative or department to another in search of an answer. A good representative follows through with a customer’s complaint, concern, or question to its most satisfactory resolution.

In cases where the agent has to refer the customer to a specialist or a senior representative, the original representative has to reach out to the customer for feedback. If the problem is not solved to the customer’s satisfaction, the representative has to follow up with the relevant departments on behalf of the customer.

Automated and Online Customer Services

Automated and online customer care comes in handy in minimizing queues and snarl-ups in customer service. You, therefore, need to ensure that your website is responsive and fast both for mobile devices and desktops. Your social media pages should be active and helpful to customers, and your customized customer service app (you need one) should be functional and user-friendly.

While at it, you need to optimize how-to content and install self-service tools on your website in order to give customers more control over their own satisfaction.

Lastly, you also need to deploy chatbots on your website to automate customer service. Chatbots help customers get answers to FAQs faster and satisfactorily.

Note:

• There are AI-enabled data analytics algorithms that you can deploy to your website for easy identification of dissatisfied and low-engagement customers.
• No matter how effective your customer service technology is, it is important to incorporate human contact in order to humanize your brand. Your customers are human, after all, and they need that human touch to feel valued and appreciated.

Why Customer Service is Important for Your Brand Reputation

Satisfied customers are your unpaid brand ambassadors.

As we already mentioned, social media and the internet have amplified customers’ voices. If your customer service is good, your satisfied customers talk highly of your brand on social media, which improves your brand reputation.

High-quality customer service also results in highly-knowledgeable customers. These customers can, with ease and authority, answer any questions that people in their social circles may have regarding your brand. They can confidently defend your brand against any misinformation or unwarranted online slander.

Dissatisfied customers are your brand’s worst enemy.

Low-quality customer service experience breeds dissatisfied, frustrated, and disappointed customers. These customers can go to great lengths to tell people how dissatisfied they are.

Some will post negative Facebook posts and tag your brand, while others will give your products 1-star reviews across the internet. You don’t want such negativity around your brand because, in a split second, it can destroy the reputation you’ve taken years to build.

Quality customer service boosts employee satisfaction.

Employee satisfaction impacts your brand reputation in so many ways. First, unhappy employees won’t shy away from reviewing your brand negatively to potential employees. Secondly, when employees are disgruntled, there’s a high employee turnover.

A distant observer perceives your company as toxic if employees quit too often. Thirdly, when turnover is high, your employees don’t live long enough to get the experience they need for optimal service delivery. That means your service delivery is subpar, most often than not.

How does quality customer service boost employee satisfaction and brand reputation?

Well, to begin with, everyone wants to be of help to other people. Your employees will be happy and satisfied if they know the services they offer are exceptional.

Secondly, when you empower your customer service agents to help customers satisfactorily, you send a message to them that they are an important part of the company’s bigger picture.

Thirdly, knowledgeable customer service agents are great representatives and advocates for the brand. Last but not least, great customer service comes with glowing reviews and feedback from customers. Positive feedback renews your employees’ energy and spirit every day, enhances their job satisfaction, and boosts employee retention.

Good customer service builds healthy relationships.

When you use a customer relationship management (CRM) app to manage your clientele, your customer service team is able to track customer activity across all your marketing platforms. You can track a customer’s order histories, previous questions, feedback, purchase power, and personal information, among other valuable information.

Your support agents, therefore, know when a customer needs help even before they ask for it. When a customer contacts the brand, agents are able to recommend (cross-sell or upsell) products that he/she might need and can afford.

Customers feel seen and understood when your reps correctly predict the pain points that they need help with. They feel like an important part of your brand.

How to Improve Customer Service

1. Identify and fix any loopholes within your customer service strategy. If you don’t have a customer service strategy, design one that optimizes your operational performance. You can hire a consulting call centre to help you with this.
2. Use feedback tools and customer management tools to gather as many insights as possible with regard to customer needs, pain points, experiences, and expectations.
3. Only use representatives who are equipped with all the information needed to sort out an issue. That means the rep is able to solve most issues during the first contact.
4. Train your representatives to be empathetic, patient, and consistent, especially when handling disgruntled, chatty, and irate customers.
5. Train your reps to be good, active listeners. Active listening means letting the customer speak and asking relevant/necessary clarification questions. Customers know you understand their frustration and are ready to help when you allow them to lay everything on you.
6. Train your representatives to admit mistakes and commit to finding a solution ASAP.
7. Always strive to exceed customer expectations.

Helpful answers earn the trust of prospective customers

Customer support isn’t just about helping a customer to make a purchase.

It’s also an effective way to grab the attention of your target clientele and earn the trust of potential clients.

Prospective customers in your niche are constantly looking for information online. If your customer service reps or online resources (notably blogs) provide helpful answers to random internet or social media users, your brand comes off as a trusted leader in its niche.

Final word

If a customer receives good customer service, they will convince a few more people to give your brand a chance. If they experience low-quality service, they will tell it to anyone willing to listen. That’s why you have to get your customer service right every single time!

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Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on customer service.

• 10 Customer Service Skills Every Employee Needs
• Reduce Time Spent On Customer Service With Facebook Messenger Chat Bots
• How To Deal With Negativity In Your Instagram Comments
• How After Sales Communication Can Improve Brand Reputation in eCommerce

Tags: Branding, ORM, Customer Service , Guest Post