4 Signs That Your Customer Service Stinks

If you’re a small business owner, you know that customer service is important. You know that it is hard and/or expensive to get a new customer. You know that your business depends on keeping the customers that you have. And you know that the fastest way to lose customers is to offer less than excellent customer service. But you do not know how your customers would rate your customer service. Here are 4 signs that your customer service stinks.

You Don’t Get Many Referrals

Of course there is a lot more that goes into getting referrals than simply offering excellent customer service. However, we find that companies that offer amazing customer service will get a decent amount of referrals automatically – just because their customers are happy and they tell people about it. This is not to say that if you have an established referral program that gets great results means that you have amazing customer service. What find is that if you are not getting referrals from your current or past customers – there must be a reason and it usually has something to do with your service.

You Think That Not Getting Many Complaints Means Something

Nobody wants to get complaints about their service. And if you are not getting many complaints, it can mean that you start to feel pretty good about your service. However, there is a small problem with that thinking. Research finds that no more than 4% of unsatisfied customers will actually complain. Let that sink in for a minute. That means that for every complaint that you get, there are at least 25 other dissatisfied customers that didn’t bother to complain. Still feeling good about your service because you don’t get many complaints? Didn’t think so. A better measure would be a survey of your current and past customers. Or even looking at the times that someone does the opposite of complains – when you get a compliment about your service without asking. If you are getting more compliments than complaints, maybe you are doing something right!

You Want to Handle Customers as Quickly as Possible

This one can be tough. Your staff has only so many hours in the day and it is easier to take calls as quickly as possible. However, excellent customer service is never done as quickly as possible. It works best if you take your time and actually listen to your customers so that you can best answer their questions and solve their issues. But how can you do that? One simple way is to hire an answering service to answer overflow calls (this is one of our favorite things to do for companies – you can read more about our service here – http://www.pcnanswers.com/areas/chicago-answering-service/), to take messages, and to answer simple questions. This will free up your customer service representatives to handle more calls, spending more time with your customers without having to hire additional staff.

You are not Prepared For Complaints

There is nothing that will drive an irritated customer more crazy than having the customer service representative not know how to handle the situation. Of course there will be things that come up that you cannot prepare for, but you have to take time to think about issues that might arise – and then train your staff to deal with them. The better prepared your staff is for each individual situation, the better they are able to handle the customer well. Our operators answer for the Call Boxes on the side of the Freeways (https://www.newswire.com/pcn-introduces-live-telephone-answering/192815). As you can imagine, we get some strange calls with strange requests. We really had to take time to think about what issues could come up and train our staff on how to handle them. It has really made a difference for our operators and for the callers.

Conclusion

You want to offer excellent customer service. All business owners do. But right now, you’re not sure how your customer service stacks up. These were four tips that can help you to measure your customer service and give you areas where you can address and make necessary changes.

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