In today’s competitive market, businesses constantly seek new ways to attract customers. Surprisingly, customer service is often overlooked in the drive for increased sales. At Planet Marketing, the focus is on demonstrating how excellent customer service can lead to better reviews and drive business growth.
This article will delve into prioritizing customer service to enhance reviews and contribute to business success. Here’s what to expect in the post:
What is Customer Service?
Customer Service is How a Business Interacts
Customer service encompasses how a business engages with its customers before, during, and after a sale. This definition highlights a crucial point: customer service is not limited to the act of making a sale but extends throughout the entire customer experience.
A business’s success often depends on its ability to maintain long-term relationships with customers. In eCommerce, repeat business accounts for 50% of sales in the world of eCommerce—an impressive figure. Therefore, cultivating an ongoing relationship with your customers is crucial for sustained success.
It’s all about perceptions
The challenge for many businesses is that each customer is unique, and even a single customer may display different traits from one interaction to the next.
Customer service is about shaping the perception of quality service—it’s how the customer experiences and feels about the interaction that matters most.
Why Customer Service is Important
Customer service is crucial for businesses because it directly impacts customer satisfaction, loyalty, and overall success. Excellent customer service fosters strong, long-term relationships with customers, leading to repeat business and positive referrals.
Conversely, poor customer service can damage a brand’s reputation and drive customers away, making it a vital component for a company’s survival and growth.
Customer Service is Crucial for Businesses
1. Good Customer Service Enhances Customer Retention
For any business, focusing solely on acquiring new customers isn’t enough for sustainable growth. Retaining existing customers should be a primary goal, as it’s significantly more cost-effective—acquiring a new customer can be up to five times more expensive than keeping a current one. Excellent customer service often leads to repeat business, which is crucial for long-term success.
Consider this: would you return to a business that didn’t treat you well initially? Likely not, especially in today’s competitive landscape where customers have numerous alternatives. With global competition from businesses in places like China, South Africa, and Japan, it’s essential to prioritize exceptional customer service to stand out and build lasting relationships.
2. Poor Customer Service Drives Customers Away
Poor customer service can lead to customers seeking out alternatives for their future needs, resulting in lost business. This underscores the importance of focusing on customer retention. Enhancing customer service can significantly impact a company’s bottom line, with improvements potentially boosting profits by up to 95%. Therefore, avoiding poor customer service is crucial for maintaining and growing a customer base.
3. Good Customer Service Facilitates Cross-Selling and Up-Selling
Effective customer service makes cross-selling and up-selling much more achievable. Trying to up-sell to a dissatisfied customer can be counterproductive, often leading them to question your approach. However, when customer service is exceptional, it creates a positive environment where customers are more receptive to additional offers, ultimately leading to increased sales and higher profits.
In fact, businesses with high-quality customer service are 33% more successful at up-selling compared to those with poor customer service. This underscores the importance of addressing customer service issues, as it can significantly enhance a business’s profitability through effective cross-selling and up-selling strategies.
4. Excellent Customer Service Generates Positive Reviews
Providing exceptional customer service often results in positive reviews. Positive feedback is a valuable asset for businesses, particularly in eCommerce, where reviews can play a pivotal role in marketing and growth. Leveraging positive reviews can enhance a company’s reputation and attract more customers. We have previously written on how eCommerce businesses can use reviews to achieve growth.
Excellent customer service is often the key factor in convincing hesitant buyers that your products or services are worth their investment. In today’s digital age, reviews are exceptionally influential. They can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, regardless of location, and can persist online for years—sometimes even decades.
This means that while negative reviews can be challenging to counteract once they are out there, positive reviews can serve as a lasting asset, drawing customers back to your business for years to come.
5. Bad Customer Service Can Lead to Negative Reviews
Inadequate customer service often results in negative reviews, which can have a substantial impact on a business. Negative reviews can be highly detrimental, as they influence potential customers’ perceptions and can significantly affect profitability. For instance, a one-star drop on Yelp can lead to a profit decline of up to 9% for some businesses. Read on Negative reviews and how to deal with them.
Reviews play a crucial role in building trust, with over 90% of people consulting them before making a purchase and more than 88% trusting reviews from strangers online. Consequently, a negative review can be quite damaging. However, it’s not necessarily a permanent setback. Negative reviews can be addressed and potentially turned into positive experiences by taking proactive steps to resolve customer issues.
Effective customer service is key to managing and mitigating the effects of negative feedback. It’s important for businesses to have skilled staff who can handle dissatisfied customers and encourage them to give the business another chance. Moreover, it’s worth noting that a mix of reviews, including some negative ones, can appear more authentic. A perfect five-star rating may even raise suspicions of manipulation.
How to Provide Exceptional Customer Service
It’s evident that excellent customer service can lead to increased sales and better reviews. But what steps should businesses take to enhance their customer service? Here are several strategies to provide exceptional services to your customers:
1. Interact positively with customers
Training helps prepare your staff to better interact with customers, so training is essential.
Teach your staff how to interact with their customers. Show them that the customer is always right. In most instances, you need to lead by example. If, as a boss, you treat other people rudely, then chances are high that your staff will do the same. That’s a recipe for disaster.
2. Understand that people are different
Interacting with people is never easy. One thing that you need to teach your staff is that people are different. How they deal with each individual should therefore be different. Some people are friendly. Others are difficult.
Some will make seemingly outrageous demands while others will never be happy in spite of the fact that you may have gone out of your way to please them. One of the keys to offering better service lies in understanding these differences that are inherent in people.
3. Motivate your staff
Of course, the entire thing can be rather complex. Perhaps your employees do not themselves feel that they have a stake in the business. They are just going through the motions. Did you know that up to 53% of Americans are not happy at their current workplace?
If you are an employer, how does it make you feel to know that your staff are only there because they have to be? They do not have much motivation. And they would rather be elsewhere. Given a chance, they will leave without even saying goodbye. Or they will say goodbye just to rub it in.
We are not exaggerating here. Truth is, people are on the hunt for ways through which to liberate themselves from the drudgery of their work lives.
So dissatisfied employees do not offer good customer service. At best, they will treat the customer indifferently. At worst, they will be rude, and you can kiss goodbye to recurrent business from that individual.
4. Communicate with your customers
Communication is the key to offering better service. But how do you communicate? In this day and age, there are seemingly countless communication channels. You can reach out to your customers face to face. That’s something that we have already spoken about. Teach your staff to foster better relations with your customers.
Most businesses will have Facebook Pages. I have previously written an article in which I talked about how to better run your Facebook business pages. You can use your page as an interactive tool with your customers.
Communication can also be through a Live Chat tool on your website. There are many such tools, and they can be instrumental in boosting your conversion rate. A few days ago, we published an article about using Facebook Live chat on an eCommerce site.
That’s even better because people will have access to your chats even on their Facebook profiles. That’s different from a chat on your site that gets lost the moment somebody leaves your page.
Communication can also be via online review platforms. You should always respond to online reviews. If it’s a positive review, then it’s a simple matter of thanking the customer. And if it’s a negative review, there are a number of things that you can do to turn it into a positive, as already mentioned at the top of this article.
5. Carry out Customer Surveys
The key to better customer service lies in understanding the customer. But how do you understand your customer? Well, you can start by carrying out surveys to get a pulse on what people are looking for. Get your customers to fill out surveys where possible.
In the world of eCommerce, you can have your customers give you feedback on checkout. This feedback can then be displayed on your website as customer reviews. Everything is intertwined. From online reviews comes better understanding of the customer. And better understanding fosters better Customer Service.
As an example, if people complain about shipping, then you can try and make improvements on that. If people complain about moody staff, then you can train your personnel to offer better service.
If people complain about hidden shipping costs, which is a major cause of abandoned carts by the way; you can try to be more transparent. Make sure that the checkout page displays all costs associated with the product.
6. Offer your customers incentives to stay put
Offer your customers some reward for being loyal.
Customer service is all about the customer. It’s not about you? But what’s the customer getting from relating with you? There are a number of things that you can do to foster the relationship between your brand and its customers. Building that relationship is one of the ways that you can use to get more sales and great reviews from your customers. You can offer the various incentives, including the following;
- Discounts
- Offers
- Free shipping
- Gift cards
- Rewards
- Coupons
7. Turn customer complaints into a positive
Complaints are something that you are going to encounter as you do business. It’s inevitable. The mark of greatness is whether or not you are going to be able to turn those complaints into a positive. So, how do you turn customer complaints into a positive?
- Quickly respond to all reviews, both negative and positive.
- Teach your staff to be civil whenever responding to negative reviews.
- Offer to resolve the issue with the customer.
Can Excellent Customer Service Boost Sales and Reviews?
Absolutely! This article has demonstrated the powerful connection between customer service and increased sales and positive reviews. Treating your customers well is key to success. To achieve this, ensure that all staff members are well-trained and equipped to handle diverse customer needs.
Adaptability is crucial in meeting various demands. Positive reviews on platforms like Yelp and Shopper Approved are a direct result of consistently providing outstanding service.
