How to deliver stand-out customer service

In these days of faceless chatbots and form filling, looking after your customers personally should be right at the top of your list of priorities.

Customers who feel that they have had great – and genuine – service are more likely to buy again and more likely to refer your business to their friends, family and associates. What’s more, by inviting your customers to give you feedback and reviews, you can find out what’s working and what’s not – helping you to improve your service levels on an ongoing basis.

So, customer service is important – but it also takes up quite a lot of time. For small businesses, this often means it drops down the list, overtaken by the everyday tasks that are necessary just to get the job done.

What is customer service?

We often think about customer service as just being our interaction with a business – when we email or call, for example. But great customer service starts a lot earlier in the process:

• Talking to sales leads

• Dealing with enquiries

• Following up interest from network meetings, conferences and exhibitions

• Dealing with questions and complaints

• Gathering feedback

• Offering after-sales support

If you don’t currently have any support and you’re managing it all yourself, what can you do? Some of these tasks are much more easily managed when you outsource them. You work with your Freelance PA or VA to make sure they are taking the right approach for your business and have all the information they need to deliver the customer service levels you want.

How can outsourcing help?

A virtual PA or VA can help straightaway. In fact, a good virtual PA will want to take the time to learn about your business so that they can talk to prospects and customers on your behalf with confidence. And, with sales and conversion experience, they know how to manage calls, recognise the words or tone that indicate a prospect is interested or needs more information and take them on to the next level. You’ll know that your leads, enquiries and follow ups are in safe hands, giving people a fantastic experience with your business and encouraging them to buy.

It’s just as important – if not more important – to look after your existing customers. These customers are the source of your best reviews, your essential feedback and your return custom. So creating a great after-sales customer service is vital to retaining those customers and encouraging them to tell others about you.

From customer feedback services to setting up and operating a Customer Relationship Management system so that all the essential information about your customers is in a single place, a virtual PA can help you manage your post-sales customer services process so that all your customers are valued at every stage.

To find out more about how I can help you plan, run and manage your customer service support, contact me today.