Your customer service sets the tone for propagating your business culture and values to your target customers. It’s easy to overlook this aspect of business and place too much emphasis on marketing and sales, but you should keep in mind that positive word of mouth can do wonders for your business.
Colleges stress the importance of effective interpersonal communication by requiring students to give presentations. And as you enter into business ownership, you realize more acutely the crucial importance of interpersonal skills, and you are always on the lookout for how to make your customers feel loyal to your business and create a positive perception in their minds. Basically it boils down to building customer relationships that give way to a value-added customer experience.
Build on What You’ve Learned
College remains a great place for future business owners to hone their interpersonal skills. (College success can, in fact, be a great determinant for achieving success later on in life.) From your interactions with your peers, colleagues and professors, you learn the importance of maintaining relationships that will ultimately help you identify and unleash your true potential.
Then, as you proceed into business ownership, you can continue work on your networking skills. As a business owner,
you will realize that you need to personalize your communication channels with your customers and use them as an effective medium to create a lasting impression.
Humanize Your Communications
Business owners should tell personal stories so that customers can relate to them. Your customer service should never seem—nor be—automated or robotic. Always make sure that your communication with your customers has that personal touch that makes them feel important, and ensure that their needs are being taken into consideration. Showcase your image on social media in a way that puts forward the message that the interaction with your business involves humans and not a robot or a set of FAQ.
Automated email marketing campaigns certainly serve a purpose, but you need to add the personal touch in your interactions to develop that bond that ultimately drives customers towards making purchases. Furthermore, a great entrepreneur should be able to communicate not only virtually but also on public speaking platforms.
Foster a Customer-Focused Culture
When dealing with prospective customers or even loyal ones, keep in mind that happy customers who communicate their experiences to friends and relatives generate positive word of mouth. You need to exercise a lot of patience when dealing with customers and make them feel comfortable so that they share positive experience without hesitation and help you drive your business towards having a reputation for being customer-friendly.
Always lend a keen ear to what your customers have to say, and never ignore or overrule their opinions. If consumers feel that they are being put on a pedestal, they will develop loyalty to your company or brand.
- Still not convinced of the importance of customer service? Consider these numbers:
According to Desk, up to 60 percent of consumers will readily pay a higher price for a distinguished customer experience. - People will switch to competitors due to unsatisfactory customer experience, with the percentage of defectors being as high as 89 percent, according to RightNow.
Always remember that communication is a two-way process and that you should always strive to the best of your abilities to create happy and satisfied customers.
Rachael Everly is a business and finance enthusiast and writer
