Customer service is everything. From answering the phone to your website.
The moment a customer or potential customer researches your company via Google, directly to your website, a link they followed, or even the phone book, do people still use those? You have started the customer service lifecycle.
A company needs to be inviting and use at least 2 of the 5 senses. While Sense of Sight is the easiest to achieve if you are using any of the above. You could also use the sense of hearing also or stay with me a moment, sense of taste. How many times have you looked at a picture of a food item and thought “Oh my, I can taste that” or “That looks yummy”? They are appealing to your sense of taste via your eyesight. This could hold true to the sense of smell also. How many of us wish we had smell-o-vision? Watching people cook is amazing to me.
What is customer service? Customer service is the act of providing service to customers before, during, and after a purchase. The purchase could be something tangible like a television, or a service like technical support.
Even more than getting people to your company, you need to have the right people in the right department. When answering the phone, the voice needs to be inviting and friendly. Even if the said voice is recorded directing you to the department you are wishing to get a hold of. The phone call could be the first interaction of a potential customer dealing with your company. If you have a receptionist trying to answer 20 lines at once, they could get overwhelmed and be short with a potential client. We do not want that to happen so a lot of people have opted to do the recorded voice. This option is ok as long as there is an option to get to a live person. A lot of people do not like talking to recordings but with the technology changes, this is more the norm than a live person answering the phones. If it is done properly, you should not have any problems. As an alternative to talking to someone, if your website is set up correctly, you can have either a chat option or form request for some aspects of your business. This allows the customer to reach out to the team and the team can get back to the customer after collecting as much information as they think they need in order to cut down on some of the back and forth and the issue getting to the correct department hopefully in the first place. When you place a call you might get transferred around to multiple people while if you have a ticketing system or email going to a department they can internally get amongst the company and get the issue to the correct person prior to getting back to the customer.
Your marketing team needs to be inventive and be able to think outside of the box. If there is an understanding between marketing and sales that is a bonus. It is frustrating for the customer if you were promised something in a marketing ad but sales know nothing about it. This could be as little as having to purchase a certain size bag of chips to get the discount. Marketing is trying to build the bridge between the customer and sales to get them to meet in the middle and start a plan.
Once you have the customer’s interest, now it is up to sales to do their thing and close the deal. Sales will understand the customer’s needs and build rapport in order for the customer to open up and get everything out they need. CS3 Technology will work with your team and provide the best business knowledge and expertise to help to improve your overall operations. Let’s move onto the delivery. We have gone through and provided the item/service to the customer and in order to be world-class, we cannot stop there. CS3 Technology is there for you to answer day-to-day questions and assist if anything comes up for continued improvements.
The ultimate goal for the customer lifecycle is to get referrals which starts the process over again. How many times have you purchased something from a particular company because a friend recommended it to you? I know I have. This can also refer to brand loyalty. Companies are doing their best to get you to purchase their products but if you cannot serve your customers’ needs they will look elsewhere. Just because you landed that customer in the first place, doesn’t mean they will stay with you.
We at CS3 Technology want you to stay a customer of ours so we are always educating our team to better ourselves to serve you.
Let’s reiterate what all that means. In order to build your company, you have to have great customer service throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
