Give Your Customers a Reason to Celebrate Your Service
Here’s a test for you…
Step 1: Reply to a customer’s email within 5 minutes.
Step 2: Take a look at the response you receive.
Do this often enough and you’ll begin to see a pattern…
“Wow! That was quick.”
“Thank you so much for sorting this out so quickly!”
“I was not expecting that. Usually, I have to wait days for help!”
People are genuinely surprised to receive help quickly.
At Teach Starter, this was a lightbulb moment for us. It might seem obvious that faster replies = happier customers. However, what clicked for us was the fact that clearly, not many businesses are doing it.
It’s even easier for a smaller business without many customers, because you have even more time to reply faster than the big guys.
This is such an easy win.
If you want people to talk about you, you have to be exceptional.
A lot of companies are exceptionally bad at customer support, and what do you always hear about them? It’s true, bad word of mouth travels fast.
Being exceptionally great at customer support is rare.
Being rare presents a perfect opportunity to stand out.
So how can you stand out?
Speed is an easy one. For you, it might be something else. A handwritten note. An incredibly thoughtful reply. A funny joke.
Do something that 99% of people aren’t doing, and you have a chance of being remembered for it.
When you begin to spot these opportunities for improvement, you begin to see customer support as more than just providing a solution for your customers. It goes much deeper than that.
At the root of it all, it comes back to showing much you care.
Helping someone builds trust. Brilliant customer support is a way to form a stronger connection with your customer. Having a customer who trusts your brand is priceless.
Think of Customer Support as a Marketing Opportunity
This doesn’t mean up-selling. In fact, it doesn’t mean selling at all.
It means presenting the best, most helpful and most valuable version of your business as you possibly can. When someone contacts you, it’s a golden opportunity to build a relationship.
Remember, nothing scales a business like word of mouth.
If you’re wanting that person to buy from you, what kind of impression do you want to leave? The impression of a business that couldn’t care less about its customer’s needs, or of one that would do anything to help them succeed?
I know who I’m buying from.
It’s all about providing as much value as possible.
Be timely. Be accurate. Be helpful. Be kind. Show that you truly care.
Give, give, give… and expect nothing in return.
Provide support like this and you’ll be surprised by the results.
This article was a short excerpt from ‘10 Lessons Learned After 10,000 Customer Support Tickets’. The longer article highlights more ways you can improve how you view and handle support within your business.
