The Crucial Ingredient for a Successful Customer Service

You've been in business for over 3 years now, and you've reached a place of stability. Your startup is in a lovely plateau and while the consistency is nice, you're hoping for a big boom in the next six months to a year to really give your brand the recognition it surely deserves.

You have your business plan. You have your team. You have an array of products and services which serve your existing customers well, and you have a fair amount of new faces coming to call on a regular basis.

Yet, you seem to only see a small percentage of those faces more than once. You just can't understand it. You view your customers as your friends, not tiny instruments in the money-making machine, but obviously they are not viewing you the same way.

Something needs to change.

Connection

If you're getting good reviews on your products—nothing is breaking down or causing people to contract weird diseases—chances are your problem lies somewhere in your customer service.

In a company, the customer should always come first. Every business owner knows this. So why is it that most entrepreneurs only repeat this adage in word but offer very little personal integration for the consumer?

Synergy

Connection with the customer starts at home. Not literally in the customer's home—unless you're in the home-based-sales business, then you kind of have to engage the consumer in their home.

It starts at the home base of your company.

Whether all of your employees meet regularly in a single brick and mortar building or they are scattered across the globe working remotely, a sense of team identity and connection is the first step to empowering your employees to connect with your consumers.

Little changes hold the power to turn the tide of any endeavor. Developing synergy among your employees—especially remote employees—fosters a sense of enthusiasm and purpose in your employees. By engaging and connecting them as human beings rather than mere workers, their work will thrive. This produces an overflow which will inevitably inspire your consumers.

Only you can know what your team truly needs to feel connected, but here are a few suggestions:

1. Call Everyone by Name, Not Title

This one can be used with customers too. Calling someone by name personalizes the experience for them, making them feel as though they are a part of something bigger than themselves—because they are!

This fosters friendships and relationships which cross from business into personal worlds automatically building trust and accountability among team members.

2. Cross Training

As well as continually educating your employees within their specified field, training them to work in other departments gives them an opportunity to improve. This lends them an understanding of what their fellow employees do on a day to day basis.

Having multiple people able to complete the same task not only improves productivity, but it gives the employees an appreciation for the work their team members do. This generates more patience and creativity within project development—particularly in marketing and consumer relations.

3. Host Employee Appreciation Events

Recognize your team for achievements. Host family events. Brag on your team members on social media.

Make the company culture you want to promote online your actual company culture. Connect your employees on apps. Host game nights. Trips. Birthday parties.

Make work a place where people gather to connect, and they will have a blast both in production and in play.

How to Achieve Personal Consumer Connection

Treating a consumer as a human being is the first and foremost principle of sales. Sales, at bottom, is communication. When done correctly, the product sells itself not because it's a good product, but because it was represented by a person hoping to make a genuine connection with another person.

Genuine connection through social media and other technological mediums is actually easier than it seems. While computers offer a "facelessness" that most consumers do not connect with, there are some simple ways to connect your team's synergy to your online marketing base.

1. Providing Content, Not Hard Sales.

Using social media as a hub for information and conversation allows consumers the opportunity to not only ask questions or put in their opinion, but it gives them the genuine opportunity to "speak with" employees in a casual fun way.

Some of the greatest examples of this are found on Netflix's or Taco Bell's Twitter feed. These corporations are known for providing hilarious answers and memes to consumer questions. Not only do these replies actually satisfy the question, but they generate incredible trust in the company because somehow, somewhere behind a computer there is a human who just wants to make someone's day a little brighter through laughter.

2. Names and Faces.

As discussed before, using your customer’s name is incredibly important in making a connection. On the flip side, signing emails or documents with your name makes it obvious to the customer that they are interacting with an actual human being and not a bot.

While AI is cool in the movies, in real life it’s still better to interface with an actual face than a bot. Another great tip is putting a personal—though professional—photo in the signature of your email. Putting a face with a name is infinitely more powerful than simply using words on a page.

3. Follow Ups.

Following up with consumers on their purchases is incredibly lucrative, and only takes a few minutes. Dropping little details about their visit to your store or the electronic services they engage in from your site makes the customer's day.

They feel provided for, and more importantly, they feel remembered. This sheer feeling of importance will make them want to do business with you for a long time coming.

Final Thoughts

By applying these principles small principles to social media, you are able to have 10 customer service representatives, in-house and remote, connecting with one consumer, all under one name.

Personal marketing is a really simple way to engage your employees and customers. The human element not only improves the credibility of your brand, but also grows your company culture to such a natural state of joy and positivity that people will want to come back again and again.


Guest Author

Ashley Wilson

Ashley Wilson is a digital nomad and freelance writer from San Diego, California. When she is not busy baking cupcakes, Ashley loves writing about business, digital marketing, and finance. Connect with Ashley via Twitter