Now that more and more businesses are being
run online, it may seem that customer service has become a relic of a bygone
era.
Many businesses use to define their success as
a business based on the excellent customer service that they offered. Companies
like Nordstrom comes to mind.
However, customer service has changed and in
many cases, it seems that businesses have not adapted to offering a new more
modern forum of excellent customer service.
All of this creates an opportunity for
businesses that do provide excellent customer service to not only be proud of
what they're doing but also to use it as an excellent marketing tool to grow
their businesses.
Here are five steps to make customer service
your biggest marketing advantage.
Step no. 1
Define customer service.
The first thing that you need to do is define
what excellent customer service is at your organization. If your team doesn't
know what's expected of them to create excellent customer service, then they
can't be expected to do it and do it consistently.
Create a document that captures the spirit of
what excellent customer service is at your organization, as well as specific
steps to create an excellent customer service experience.
And finally, show examples of excellent
customer service that you can share with your team consistently so that they
know exactly what excellent customer service is.
Step no. 2
Measure it.
If you're going to say that you provide the
best service in your industry or in your city, you had better be able to back
that up. The way to back that up is to be able to measure the effectiveness of
your customer service.
Of course, the way to do this is to find out
what your customers actually think about your service. One of our favorite ways
to do this is using what's called a **Net**
**Promoter Score**
.
The **Net**
**Promoter Score**
is a simple, consistent, very brief survey tool that gives
you back statistically significant data to help you determine how you're doing
with your customer service. It also shows you trends in how you're performing
overtime.
Whether it's Net Promoter Score or another
approach, make sure you have a way to consistently measure the feedback from
your customers.
Step no. 3
Number three is to report it.
Once you have that data, you need to use that
data to help your team understand how they're doing and make adjustments so
that they can improve any shortcomings that they have in their customer
service.
It's our experience that by reporting this
data to your team, your team gets very motivated to improve that data and
define ways to improve that data, which creates a culture of improvement and
accountability at your business, which is what great customer service is all
about.
Step no. 4
Compensate for it.
Step no. 5
And then the final step, and this is where the
marketing comes into play, is to brag about it.
Once you have excellent data around your
customer service that's worth bragging about, you don't want to let that go to
waste.
Excellent customer testimonials and feedback
and specifically showing data that you're performing at top of industry levels
is an incredibly effective marketing tool. Take that data and use it to create
marketing campaigns.
You can also use it to create campaigns where
you're bragging about your employees and the job that they're doing for your
customers.
By humanizing the story around your customer
service, you not only motivate your employees, who will appreciate the
attention but also add more character to your company to show that you're
human.
Most of all, it shows that you really care
about the personal experience that your business can offer.
That's five ways to make customer service your
biggest marketing advantage. Look for opportunities to implement all five of
these steps at your business and turn customer service into your most effective
growth marketing tool.