10 Important Factors Of Customer Service: Things To Know
Customer service is the process by which a company or person recognizes and caters to the needs of its clients. Customers will stick with a company that offers good customer service and might even tell others about it. The survival and expansion of a business depend on many factors of customer service.
Customer satisfaction levels directly correlate with how well an organization treats its clients.
We will discuss the scientific research on the variables affecting the quality of customer service in this article. Keep reading!
Table of Contents
What Are Important Factors Of Customer Service?
1. Timeliness
Customers appreciate companies that operate efficiently and respond favorably to them. Effective customer service includes returning phone calls promptly, answering emails, and providing services. Everyone’s time is valuable, so make sure the customer knows you care about how she spends it. You don’t want her to feel as though working with your company was a waste of her time.
2. Attitude
Everything revolves around building strong relationships. Making the other person feel cared for is necessary for a good relationship, both personally and professionally. To keep your customers happy, conduct yourself in a respectful and professional manner. Create a long-lasting rapport based on a shared understanding of each party’s objectives and expectations.
3. Empathy
Consider the needs of the customer by placing yourself in their position. Even the most irate and demanding customers will become calm and feel heard. Accepting unfair blame is sometimes a necessary part of empathy; however, save this tactic for extremely dire circumstances only.
4. Responsibility Of Every Team Member
Employees are expected to assume full accountability for their projects and any issues that may arise. If you are unable to resolve the situation on your own, you must enlist the assistance of a more qualified person. Without confusing the customer, you must come up with the correct solution.
5. Documentation
Clear and thorough documentation about the entire IT system is a crucial information source for the technical team and the cornerstone of first-rate customer service when it comes to technical support or the integration stage. All processes and organizational subsystems (including, but not limited to,, examples) so that every support or IT department specialist could resolve the client’s problem by quickly understanding how a specific IT component functions.
6. Active Listening
Prior to finding a solution, you must first listen. Customers will feel more confident that you will respond with the appropriate answer if they perceive that you pay attention to them and what they have to say. If you lack sufficient knowledge, you might occasionally come up with an incorrect answer or solution. Customers become irate and frustrated as a result. But it also involves asking questions and getting clarification, not just listening and nodding. If the customer’s problem is not clear, ask “why”— go deep into their problem. If something is still unclear, keep asking. You might discover novel, occasionally simpler solutions to your customers’ problems by identifying the source of their requests.
7. Proactive Approach
act like a forerunner. The key to providing excellent customer service is being able to discuss and address any weaknesses you may have, whether they are procedural, interpersonal, or technical. Customers will feel that you genuinely care about their success and that this promise is more than just something you say; it is reflected in the way your company treats its clients. Take proactive preventive action to deal with these issues before they arise rather than waiting for them to occur.
8. Expertise
You must be an authority on the subject of your good or service. If you don’t know the answer, be truthful and say so. Find a teammate who has more expertise so they can assist you in coming up with a solution more quickly. If you must introduce the client to a different team member directly, be sure to establish clear responsibility boundaries during the introduction.
9. Dependability
If you make a promise to customers, keep it, and do everything in your power to make it come true. Don’t leave the customer hanging by saying “as soon as possible”. Even if you are unable to respond, show your commitment by following up on the request and offering a reasonable timeline or explanation. simply keep the client informed.
10. Follow Up And Continuous Communication
When a service provider checks in to make sure everything is okay and the issue has been resolved, people appreciate it. It is advised to keep customers informed of any developments that could affect deadlines and predetermined goals, including the delivery schedule and other processes. The secret to great customer service isn’t a flawless product or service, but rather happy customers who have their problems resolved. You do not need to be perfect. Just be sure to put yourself in the customer’s position and fix things on schedule. Once all of these areas are taken care of, you will gain the respect and loyalty of your customers, which will open up new business opportunities in the future.
Customer Service Performance Metrics
We compiled a list of the pertinent customer service performance metrics mentioned in this article to assess excellent customer service. The next 11 metrics can serve as gauges or forecasters of customer satisfaction.
1. Extraversion
Big-five personality traits include extraversion. People who are extroverted are outgoing, confident, chatty, and active. Also more driven to succeed are extroverts. Extraverts excel in service and sales roles, according to research. In comparison to introverts, extroverted people perform better (individually) in terms of customer service.
2. Conscientiousness
The second Big-Five personality trait linked to superior performance in providing excellent customer service is conscientiousness. People who are conscientious are dependable, responsible, diligent workers, and aspirational. Conscientiousness is linked to better overall job performance in addition to better customer service.
Openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, the other three Big Five personality traits, were not linked to better customer service performance.
3. Cognitive Abilities
The cognitive ability of a worker is another sign of higher customer satisfaction. Better customer service is typically provided by employees with higher cognitive ability, which is frequently measured in IQ (Ployhart et al., 2011).
Learning happens more quickly, more information is absorbed, and knowledge is generalized more successfully in people with higher cognitive abilities. Our third customer service performance metric is cognitive ability. The employee’s education level might be a good proxy for this metric.
4. Local Competition
Customers’ opinions of a store’s performance in providing good customer service are influenced by local competition.
The quantity of eateries within a predetermined radius is referred to as local competition. Customer satisfaction and ratings of the quality of the services were higher, and customers returned more frequently when there was more local competition.
This can be explained by the fact that businesses raise their service standards to effectively compete when local competition is fierce.
5. Employee Training
According to Hatch and Dyer (2004), training accelerates the rate at which workers pick up specialized knowledge. The purpose of training is to make employees’ skills better. Employees with greater skill levels typically deliver better service (Ployhart et al., 2011). This isn’t necessarily the case for all jobs, though. Compared to workers with more complex service jobs (such as food preparation), employees with less complex service jobs (such as waiting tables) appear to benefit less from training. working in a high-end restaurant).
6. On The Job Experience
On-the-job experience is another indicator of customer service performance, as more experienced workers are better qualified for their position and consequently offer better service (Ployhart et al., 2011). For instance, a novice error can degrade the quality of customer service and lead to unsatisfied clients, like a waiter who drops a drink on a customer because they forgot to balance their tray.
7. Store Service Climate
Employee behavior is significantly influenced by workplace culture. Employees who work in an environment where providing exceptional customer service is valued and rewarded are aware of this. Workers can provide better service in such an environment.
It has been demonstrated that the service environment in a store affects both service quality and customer satisfaction. By having workers use a brief scale to rate the climate, it can be quickly measured. An example item for this scale is: “The restaurant measure and track the quality of work and service”.
8. Individual Customer Service Performance
A metric used to measure an employee’s level of service performance is their individual customer service performance. A common way to measure this is by asking “how likely are you to recommend [person]’s service to a friend or colleague?”, or by measuring it through a 360-degree feedback form, in which the client is asked to rate the employee’s service level.
Individual customer service performance is an outcome variable whose value is affected by the aforementioned variables 1 through 7.
Read More: How to Make the Most of Feedback?
9. Team-level Customer Service Performance
A metric that is influenced by individual customer service performance is a team or store-level customer service performance. According to a study by Liao & Chang (2014), a particular store outperformed the other stores in the sample when individual customer service performance (8) was above average.
To put it another way, there is a bottom-up effect between team-level customer service performance and individual customer service performance.
10. Customer Satisfaction
One of the most crucial customer service performance metrics is customer satisfaction. Higher customer satisfaction has all of the aforementioned metrics as antecedents. Different metrics can be used to determine customer satisfaction. Using a computer to rate the service with a smiley face or thumbs up/down is becoming a more popular way to do this.
11. Customer Loyalty
The likelihood that a customer will patronize a business again and refer others to it is referred to as customer loyalty. As returning customers tend to spend more money than those who only visit once, customer loyalty is closely correlated with financial results.
By keeping track of customer purchases in a (reservation) system, it is simple to gauge customer loyalty. These systems can also aid in improving customer service, which is another advantage. For instance, the majority of tanning salons keep track of a client’s previous level of intensity and length of the session in order to offer more accurate advice based on their past experiences. A (scannable) customer loyalty card could be used as an alternative.
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