HANDOUT # 5

CUSTOMER’S SERVICE STRATEGIES

Keys to improving your team’s customer service skills

1. Strengthen your customer service skills

First, it’s important to make sure that your customer service team has the right skills for your
managing customers’ needs. No amount of CRM software can compensate for shortcomings in
this area. But what skills should you be looking for in a customer service rep?

 Empathy, patience and consistency.

 Adaptability.

 Clear communication

 Work ethic.

 Knowledge.

 Thick skin.

2. Look at every touch point

A bad customer experience at any point in the customer lifecycle can ruin your
relationship. In addition to making sure the right skills are demonstrated, you need to be
sure they’re being demonstrated consistently. Pay the most attention to key touch points,
but make sure you have a full view of the customer experience, or you risk lapses in
service that can really hurt business.

3. Improve your customer interactions

If your staff has the necessary skill set, that’s a good start. But they still need to relate to your
customers. Here are some tips for making sure customer service is both thorough and well
received:

 Ask reps to try to identify common ground–like shared interests–with the people they
help.
 Practice active listening so your customers feel heard. Admit your mistakes, even if you
discover them before your customers do
 Follow-up after a problem is solved.

4. Enhance your customer service strategy

Prepared by: Francheska Gizelle S.Pangilinan

  Get personal. Your customers want to feel like they have access to real people, not bots
and FAQs. Offer more than just automated email responses, and do not let your telephone
prompts or website send them down a rabbit hole.
 Be available. Part of the personal touch is making sure your customers can reach you.
 Cater to your customers. Make sure you are fully meeting your customers’ needs.
Consider assigning reps to specific customers so they can build a relationship. Offer VIP
treatment for your best customers to let them know they are appreciated. What special
services might your customers like? Set up focus groups, interview customers, or run a
survey to get ideas.
 Create communities. Your customers will feel even more valued if you treat them as
important members of a community.

5. Make sure your reps are engaged

You can have the best customer service skills and the best training in the world, but if
your reps are checked out, it won’t matter at all. Improving employee engagement is
another way to make sure customers have a great experience. Dissatisfied employees are
unlikely to come forward with their problems, so consider an anonymous suggestion box
or an employee engagement survey to see what makes your employees tick.

6. Give your customers a way to provide feedback

STEPS TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE:

1. Give all your employees excellent product knowledge.

When everyone in your company can act as support, customers can get their questions answered
promptly.

2. Train employees in customer empathy.

Customer interactions are emotional exchanges as well as factual ones. Give your employees the
tools to share a happy customer’s enthusiasm or reduce a frustrated customer’s tension.

3. Build an infrastructure that supports great customer service.

That means incorporating SMS powered live chat and support ticket software, streamlined self-
help options like knowledge base on your website and call-backs instead of lengthy hold times.

4. Resolve customer issues at their first point of contact.

Prepared by: Francheska Gizelle S.Pangilinan

 Customers do not want to repeat themselves. When it comes to customer service agent
interactions, ensure that the agents review all available history the customer had with the
company – past calls, chats, and issues that came up.

5. Deliver on your promises.

Every package that arrives on time or product that works as intended reinforces your customers’
trust in you. Customers don’t want you to promise them the moon as much as they want you to
deliver it on time and with a smile.

6. Make it personal.

Adding on to the point of empathy above, connection with the customer is everything. Your
customer has to feel valued, understood, and connected with your company, your brand, and
your customer service representative.

EFFECTIVE, LONG-TERM CUSTOMER SERVICE STRATEGIES

1. Service as a product. Most buyers don’t have the technical knowledge they need to make the
best choices when they’re purchasing products such as electronics, software, cars or home
appliances.

2. The customer is the boss. One service-minded company, Bio-Lab, has a mission statement
that places the customer at the center of nearly every business function. The statement reads:

3. Strive for reliability. Reliability means consistent performance that meets the expectations of
all your customers all the time. Admittedly, this is ideal. But a superior service program will
come very close to achieving the ideal.

DEVELOP A SERVICE STRATEGY (Philippine Setting)

- Must be developed and implemented through impartial analysis, skilled people

management, intense concentration and commitment – along with serious spending.

Prepared by: Francheska Gizelle S.Pangilinan

 - Begin by analyzing these areas:
1. All policies and procedures they must be customer oriented
2. Work flow – reliable delivery of customer orders
3. Customer wants and needs – they must be considered at every step.

Why Customer experience is important?

 Higher customer referral rates and customer satisfaction increased their investment in
customer experience.
 It eases customer acquisition, drives customer loyalty and improves customer retention
 Increases customer satisfaction
 Reduces customer churn
 Create a competitive advantage and differentiation
 A report by E consultancy found that just 20% of companies have a well-developed
customer experience strategy

Customer Experience Strategies

a. Designing the right experience- focused value propositions.

b. Delivering value to the customer
c. Developing the capabilities to do it again and again

“Give them quality. That is the best kind of advertising.”

–Milton Hershey, entrepreneur

Prepared by: Francheska Gizelle S.Pangilinan