Customers are the heart of any company. Without people to buy your product or use your services, you’ll find yourself in the red before you can blink.

One way to attract and keep customers is by showering them with superior hospitality. Poor customer service can turn off potential clients or lose existing business in a heartbeat. Here are five things to watch out for if you want to keep your service on track.

Delayed Deliveries

Interaction with the customer doesn’t end as soon as you have a purchase order. In order to ensure repeat business, you should follow through with status updates and tracking notifications, so customers know when to expect their package. Also, make sure you have fast delivery times. Not only will the client be pleased with the quick turnaround, but you’ll also be able to close out the order instead of devoting precious time to tracking down your packages.

If the delivery system in your business is broken, take the time to fix it. Use a service with consistently high standards. For example, Rymax is able to ship 98.7% of its orders in just two days, while the remainder of orders arrive within ten days. When shipping duration is cut down, customers are happy, and you’ll spend less time and company resources resolving delays.

Disengaged Staff

Your frontline staff is often the first impression customers receive of your business. It’s important that customer service representatives are not only well-trained and prepared to answer all questions, but are also happy to assist!

While reps should be ready to give the lowdown of the business, it’s also smart to make sure no one is sharing the wrong information. Keep staff up-to-date with any changes that get implemented. Let them know when new products are added, so they can talk them up with the customers.

If your staff is disengaged and indifferent, they can’t deliver a great customer experience. Consider implementing the below to keep staff motivated, engaged and performing at their best. Your employees and your customers will thank you for it:

• Employee recognition programs
• Staff appreciation events
• Incentive programs for highest call volumes and positive customer feedback
• Weekly team meetings
• One on one meetings
• Dedicated customer service training days

Highly-motivated staff will work harder for you. Add in the right amount of training, and you’ll have a stellar sales force.

Too Many Call Escalations

On top of sharing general information about the business, each of your customer service reps should be prepared to resolve minor customer complaints. When the staff member has to call in a manger, customers can get impatient and grow even more frustrated. Frequent intervention also means your managers are getting pulled away from potentially bigger problems.

Take the time to understand the most common complaints your staff hears from customers, especially ones that require managers to get involved. With this knowledge, devise a plan of action to address these issues. At Rymax, we empower frontline staff to resolve the problem smoothly without calling in a supervisor.

Additionally, by looking into the problems your customers have most often, you might uncover some flaws in your operation that are fixable. Resolving these could minimize the number of unhappy calls received overall.

Lengthy Response Time

When you tell a customer that you’re going to get back to them, make sure you stick to that promise. If you’re unable to deliver on the customer’s request right away, it’s respectful to respond immediately and give a timeframe. Let him or her know that you received the question, concern or complaint and you’ll look into within a certain number of days. This gives your customer the satisfaction of knowing that you’re working to resolve the inquiry.

Once you’ve given an expected time for your response, do whatever you can to follow up by that deadline. Customers that don’t hear back from you may get frustrated that they have to reach out again, or worse, they may just take their business elsewhere.

First Call Resolution

Make sure that your staff is knowledgeable, well-trained and give the authority to resolve issues on their own, without escalation and without the need to have multiple calls with customers. Customers don’t like having to call three or four times about the same issue, so resolving the issue the first time is key.

In the event that a phone call ends without resolution, staff members should assure the customer that the issue is being looked into and that they’ll be in touch when a solution is found. This takes the onus off the customer, making additional phone calls on his or her end unnecessary.

Another reason a customer may call multiple times is that the representative didn’t follow through with the request. If someone is wishing to make account updates or modify an order, it’s crucial that staff confirm the changes actually went through. Nothing is more frustrating than being told that something was taken care of only to discover later that it wasn’t.

Ultimately, make sure you have well-trained, motivated staff that knows how to fix customer service issues. Commit to following through with status updates and fast deliveries. Want to learn more about how to improve your company’s customer service? Need help motivating your customer service team? Contact us today.