SEO Hosting Blog

Think that having a great product or service is enough to earn and maintain success? If you don’t back your offerings with great customer service, you could find it difficult to attract and retain customers. Treating your customers right can keep them coming back and even help you win them from your competitors.

That’s why it’s so important that you avoid these 5 major customer service mistakes:

1. Being inaccessible—There’s nothing more frustrating than being unable to contact a company, whether it’s to ask a question, place an order, or file a complaint. If your customers can’t reach you, they’re going to leave you. You must be accessible to your customers and give them the one-on-one attention they desire. Make sure you’re answering your phone, responding to emails, and being available for face-to-face service if necessary. (more…)

Customer service still counts. No matter how good your product or service is, customers will stop doing business with you if you treat them like crap. And those customers will tell others about their negative experience with your company, and before you know it, nobody will want to do business with you. It’s really that simple.

Thankfully, curing poor customer service is actually pretty easy. Here are 5 simple ways you can improve your customer service starting today.

1. Respond to emails in a timely manner—If you’re like me, a lot of your business communications are handled through email. Most prospects email me through the form on my website to learn more about my services, and many of my existing clients email me with questions or to share details about projects we’re working on. I make it a point to respond to every email as soon as I see it. I’m constantly checking my email on the computer when I’m working and on my phone if I’m out and about. I’ve had dozens of prospects say they chose to do business with me because of how responsive I was to them.
2. Always answer the phone—My first introduction to this industry was a job I took as an article writer at a local SEO firm. While I’ve since gone out on my own, I learned a lot at that job, and not all of it was about SEO. I’ll never forget the president of the company telling me that one of the most important ways to grow a business is to always answer the phone. If a prospect comes calling and you don’t answer, guess what’s going to happen? He’s going to call one of your competitors. If a client can never get in touch with you, he too will leave you sooner or later.
3. Integrate live chat into your website—Live chat programs are incredibly useful for improving your customer service. This allows you to chat with visitors on your website so you can answer their questions instantly and help them get comfortable with your company. Check out these 5 tips for using live chat on your website.
4. Put your best employees front and center—Make sure your most knowledgeable and passionate employees are the ones who are front and center dealing with customers. Being friendly with customers is certainly important, but what’s more important is to make sure the employees dealing with customers are competent and know their stuff.
5. Accept responsibility for mistakes and correct them quickly—Mistakes happen. Not every interaction you have with your customers will be smooth. The key is to take responsibility for mistakes and to fix them as quickly as possible.

What are some other tips for improving customer service?

Apologizing sucks. No one really enjoys admitting they screwed up, especially in the business world. Most companies have this idea that admitting a mistake will cause their company to look weak and amateurish. Instead, they think that passing the blame or refusing to fess up to mistakes is the right thing to do.

And they’re wrong.

Sure, it’s not fun to apologize, but a good apology can nip a customer dispute in the bud and possibly even turn that angry customer into a long-term customer. Or at the very least, it may turn that angry customer into a less angry customer who won’t tell the entire world about his bad experience.

Of course, there’s a right way and a wrong way to apologize to your customers. So, the next time you find yourself saying sorry to an angry consumer, keep these simple tips in mind.

• Don’t blame someone else—Customers don’t want to hear your excuses, and they don’t want to see a bunch of finger pointing. What they want is someone who will step up to the plate, apologize, and offer a solution for making things right. Never play the blame game.
• Take control of the situation quickly—Even if it’s not your fault, you need to own the situation immediately. The faster you can get in touch with the angry customer and listen to his complaints, the better. Because if your company is unresponsive, that angry customer is only going to get angrier, and he just might take to the internet to rip your company a new one.
• Remember the customer’s long term value—If you can make things right with this customer, is there a chance they’ll come back to buy again? Is this a repeat customer who has been doing business with you for a while? If the customer has a high long term value, you need to keep that in mind when handling the situation. Give your very best apology so you can try to keep them happy.
• Do whatever you can to make things right—Rules are made to be broken. So, before you tell a customer you can’t (customers hate this word) do anything to solve their problem, take a step back to see if there’s any way you can bend a rule or make an exception to keep the customer happy. Customers appreciate businesses that go the extra mile to ensure their satisfaction.
• Learn something from the bad experience—Experience is our best teacher. Sure, it sucks to have a customer mad at you, but there is always something to be learned from these situations. Figure out what exactly went wrong, and work like hell to prevent it from happening again.

Have you ever had to say sorry to your customers?

What’s the one thing all consumers hate? Excuses. Consumers have zero tolerance for excuses. They know that whenever a company starts making excuses, they’re going to be subjected to a line of BS and no accountability. For once, it’d be nice to see a company admit their mistakes and offer solutions and promises for not making them again.

Look, everyone knows accidents happen. Things don’t always go as planned. It sucks when things go bad, and there are numerous possible reasons why companies make mistakes. The problem is the consumer doesn’t care why something happens. They don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to hear you passing the blame off on someone else. They don’t want to hear that the employee who screwed up their order is new. They don’t want to hear about problems with the delivery coming in late. They don’t want to hear that somebody was out sick.

All they want is for you to fix the problem as quickly as possible. They want you to care. They want you to be truly sorry for your mistakes, and they want to get the service or experience they expected from the beginning. Nothing more. Nothing less. They want you to stop spewing the same corporate BS every company delivers when things go wrong.

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at BP. Since the beginning, they’ve been playing the blame game, trying to say it was the drilling contractors who were responsible for the explosion that killed 11 workers. The public didn’t want to hear it, and thanks to their constant, BP just might be the most hated company in the world right now.

The point? When your company messes up, don’t make excuses. Instead, do everything you can to rectify the situation. Your customers will end up much happier.