Top 10 Customer Service Tips that do the trick
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January 6, 2021Attracting new customers through various promotion tools(customer service) and increasing sales and revenue is great and important for your business. However, it is vital to ensure that your existing customers keep choosing you and remain loyal to you, as that will ensure growth and stability for a longer time.
Good customer services can lead to better customer retention. The best part about giving good customer service is that it leads to indirect promotion, which means your customers will spread the good word about your store to their friends, family, and co-workers. It might lead to increased footfall and a successful business.
In this article, we will unveil the magician’s trick about providing excellent customer services so that your customers keep coming to you over your competitors. We assure you that applying these tricks effectively and consistently will make customers acknowledge your retail business. Because the application of most of these tricks is going to be either free of cost or very cheap with long-term benefits and you would not want to lose this golden chance.
What are the top 10 customer service tricks?
1. Focus on the present :
The atmosphere of a retail business is a tense and busy one. Everyone keeps juggling between various tasks: attending to the customer near the food rack, billing at the counter, or filling up the online orders; it is just a never-ending process. Therefore, it is understandable that you might not always be available to pick up the phone. However, this missed call or picking up after several rings can negatively impact your potential customers.
Customers – potential or existing, are the most important assets for your business, and you must always prioritize them, no matter what. Therefore, allocate a person specifically for attending the phone calls to answer the queries of customers. This is important as it takes only a few angry or aggressive customers to spread negative words about your services around the market. Being a small and new business, you would not want to take that kind of risk.
2. Going the extra mile :
As the famous saying goes, you must always go the extra mile for your loved ones; as a retail business owner, there is no one you love more than your customers, and hence, naturally, you must go the extra mile for them if your customers can not find that one product or their favorite brand on the shelves, show them the options.
If your customers demand something, and even if you are sure that it is not available, you must still head back once to your storeroom and check again. You can even show them how they can avail interesting offers if they purchase something now or just provide free home delivery if the product they have been looking for restocks.
These small efforts show that you care about them and how you are willing to offer them services wholeheartedly. There are chances that a few customers might still turn you down, but it is worthwhile to take the risk since many customers will still choose your retail store.
3. Better checkout experiences :
Imagine providing all the great services to your customers throughout their time during shopping, but when they come for checkout, things turn sour. This could happen if they might have to wait for a longer time in the queues, encounter faulty card machines, might not get proper and accurate change for cash, or just get confused during the in-house experience.
These instances are enough to tarnish your reputation, as no one wants to
face such situations because they lead to wastage of time. Therefore, to avoid such situations, you must take simple measures such as using clear signages and being polite to make your customers stand in the queue.
Other methods such as using tools to fasten the process of billing during busy hours and making your customers engaged for last-minute purchases by keeping billing lines near shopping aisles also work mostly.
4. Do not make false promises :
Offering promotions through discounts and offers is a great option to attract customers, but let’s face it, most small or new businesses hesitate to give such offers, as it can affect their profit. Moreover, just to increase footfalls to the store, putting up click baits and ambiguous offers can make your reputation crash land on the ground.
Therefore, the best practice for you is to be upfront and honest about your business and state what it can offer or deliver. When you put on offers,
make sure you at least make your customers aware that terms and conditions are applied, and there is an expiry date to the offer. You must also try to stick to your promises; for example, if you promise to deliver products the next day, you must stick to it and not make them wait.
5. Staying friendly and helping customers :
Your customers are extremely cautious when they come out for shopping, and they can sense when you are faking care or smile, or just being over-friendly. It can quickly turn them off, and they might start avoiding those employees.
It is important to appoint such employees who have mastered the art of empathy and can genuinely greet and welcome the customers. Therefore, employees must make sure that they can strike the right
balance between being friendly and professional.
In addition to this, you must also try to delight your customers by helping them without charging anything for small services or out of kindness, as this will effortlessly make them choose you every time and spread the good word about your store. It will help you reap profits in the end, as people always remember kind and helpful people.
6. Train staff to keep them up to date :
Training your staff is an important step as they directly communicate with the customers. Your customers will seek the employees if they face any difficulty, and no one wants to listen to a “No,” or “I don’t know,” as it leaves a very negative impression about your store.
To tackle such situations, you must make sure that whenever you add a new product or brand, all the employees behind the counter must check them out and learn all the details. If the products are difficult to
understand, such as a new electronic gadget, make sure you properly train your employee beforehand by streaming videos and arranging in-person interactions with experts.
It will enable the employees to help the customers at the time of any queries or confusion about the product. A very important aspect to note here is that even if you do not know the answer to something, instead of saying “I don’t know,” you must politely reply to them with “I will look into it” or “I will get queries clarified.” Such replies sound more positive and keep the customers’ interest in the product alive.
7. Listen to your customers and stay patient :
Sometimes retail employees are so blinded by their small speeches about products that they recite it in front of every customer. They usually fail to even listen and understand the needs of the customers they are serving.
This is a major turn–off and annoys and drives away the customers. To avoid this, employees must try to respond by providing clear solutions to
customers’ problems. Sometimes you might come across some customers who could be aggressive and difficult to deal with while others may be kind and friendly; therefore, establishing an attitude of patience throughout the day is very important.
You can encourage this practice by rewarding your employees for handling such situations patiently and for hitting targeted sales numbers.
8. Make your customers feel special :
It is quite natural to see people choosing to shop in stores that make them feel special. A few small gestures are all you need to make them choose you over your competitors. Such positive experiences lead to satisfied customers spreading positive words about your store.
It can be done by giving away gifts or celebrating the birthdays of regular customers. Gifts are a way of implicitly triggering them to feel that they are indebted to you in some way. By adding personal information about
the customers in your POS system and setting reminders on it, you can be notified about your customers’ special events.
You can send e-mails, special postcards, gift coupons, or offer discounts when their big day comes. It will do the ultimate trick and make them feel happy and show that you truly care about your customers.
9. Special attention to unhappy customers :
Happy or unhappy, your customers are your assets, and you must always try to satisfy their needs. Sometimes, an angry or dissatisfied customer can spread bad vibes in the store, which can hinder the shopping experience of other customers. Therefore, you need to train your staff accordingly so that they can efficiently handle such situations.
Providing a proper written procedure about what steps are to be followed if a transaction goes bad or they do not find proper assistance will work
wonders. They must ensure that they do everything in their capacity to make unhappy customers feel valued. If things get heated up very badly, you can give the customers free home delivery, a gift coupon, or a little discount, anything that calms them down after solving the issue.
Giving your employees the proper authority to give discounts or gift cards without taking permission from higher-ups will save time for your customers, and things can be solved faster.
10. Sprinkle positivity like confetti :
Sometimes you or your employee can have a bad day; sometimes, you might have to handle unhappy customers, while on some days, you might have to take extra orders for shipping. Not every day is the same; therefore, getting low on energy and feeling not positive is natural.
However, on such days, you need to gather all the energy you have and spread positive vibes throughout the store to keep the energy of other employees high. Training staff to be solution-focused and carefully managing the negative emotions can take your retail store a long way.
A few final thoughts
Customers are what keeps your retail business going and help you survive in this competitive industry. Therefore, giving them the utmost advantage is very important. The above-mentioned top 10 customer service tips are your go-to solutions, which can be tried on a real-time basis to check if they lead to amazing results. Therefore, make sure you consistently apply these 10 tips in combination with other promotional techniques to give your retail store a head start towards success.
