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Customer service is about making sure your customers are happy, which directly affects your sales and profits. The happier your customers are with your service, the more likely they are to stay loyal and recommend your business to others.

In roles like receptionists, sales staff, and other jobs where employees deal directly with customers, good customer service is essential. For these positions, excellent customer care should be a key criterion of job descriptions, hiring, and training.

Don't neglect the importance of customer service in other areas of your business. Even if departments like warehousing and dispatch have little direct contact with customers, their work in handling orders plays a big role in how satisfied your customers are.

Types of customer service

A huge range of factors can contribute to customer satisfaction, but your customers are likely to consider:

• how well your product or service matches their needs
• the value for money you offer
• your efficiency and reliability in fulfilling orders
• the professionalism, friendliness and expertise of your employees
• how well you keep your customers informed
• the after-sales service you provide

Training courses may be useful for ensuring the highest possible levels of customer service. Use our to search for suitable training courses. 

Providing a high level of customer service means finding out what your customers want. Once you have found your most valuable customers, you can target them with higher levels of customer service.

Collect information about your customers

Information about your customers and what they want is available from many sources, including:

• their order history
• records of their contacts with your business - phone calls, meetings and so on
• direct feedback - if you ask them, customers will usually tell you what they want
• changes in individual customers' order patterns
• changes in the overall success of specific products or services
• feedback about your existing range - what it does and doesn't do
• enquiries about possible new products or services
• feedback from your customers about things they buy from other businesses
• changes in the goods and services your competitors are selling
• feedback and referrals from other, non-competitive suppliers
• social listening - track and analyse conversations on social media 
• website tracking tools - using programmes such as Google Analytics

Manage your customer information

You should draw up a plan about how customer information is to be gathered and used. Establish a customer-care policy. Assign a senior manager as the policy's champion but make sure that all your staff are involved.

Monitoring your customer service performance is crucial for the success of your business. It provides insights into customer satisfaction, helping you identify areas for improvement and address customer concerns quickly.

Tracking and reviewing your customer service performance allows you to assess the effectiveness of your staff training programmes and the need to review your customer service strategies. Satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your business to others, raising your reputation. 

Metrics for measuring customer service performance

Many metrics can help you measure your customer service performance. Some may be more familiar than others, they include:

Average resolution time

To measure your performance in resolving customer cases, you can use the average resolution time metric. To calculate this metric, add up the total duration of all case resolutions and then divide it by the number of customer cases resolved. This will give you the average time it takes for you to resolve a customer case.

Customer service abandonment rates

Another useful metric is the customer service abandonment rate. This is the percentage of customers who hang up before your team answers their call.

To calculate it, divide the number of abandoned customer service enquiries by your total number of enquiries.

First response time

It is important to provide customers with prompt assistance. To evaluate how well your customer service team is meeting this expectation, you can calculate your first response time. Find the average time between a customer's contact and your staff's response.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

An NPS metric is a tool for measuring customer service performance and satisfaction. It can be a valuable benchmark to determine how well your company is performing compared to others in your industry.

To measure customer service performance using NPS, you could develop a questionnaire and ask customers questions such as: ‘Based on your latest service experience, how likely is it that you would recommend our service and our company to a friend or colleague?’

Respondents would be asked to rate their likelihood to recommend you based on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 would be extremely unlikely and 10 would be extremely likely.

These answers would then be sorted into three groups including:

• Detractors – this would include anyone rating you between 0 to 6
• Neutral – this would include anyone rating you with a score of 7 or 8
• Promoters – this would include anyone rating you with a score of 9 or 10

The NPS score is the difference between your promoters and detractors. It can range from -100 to 100.

A higher score means your customers are more likely to be satisfied with your service and the experience you provide.

Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) together gives you a full view of your performance. It helps you find areas for improvement. In turn, this contributes to cost savings and improved overall operational effectiveness.

Customer feedback and contact programmes are two ways of increasing communication with your customers. These strategies help you better understand customer needs. They also let you share more about your business's offerings.

Customer feedback programmes

Customer feedback can provide you with detailed information about how your business is perceived. It's a chance for customers to:

• voice objections
• suggest changes
• endorse your existing processes

It's also an opportunity for you to listen to what they say and act upon it.

You can gather feedback using the following methods:

• questionnaires
• online surveys
• face-to-face conversations
• phone calls - either structured or informal
• focus groups

Customer contact programmes

Customer contact programs aim to help you deliver tailored info to your customers. Examples include:

• a special offer that is relevant to a past purchase
• a reminder sent at the time of year when a customer traditionally places an order

Contact programmes are particularly useful for reactivating relationships with lapsed customers.

Do your best to make sure that your customers feel the extra contact is relevant and beneficial to them. Bombarding customers with unwanted calls or marketing material can be counter-productive. 

There are a number of ways to contact your customers. See:

• email marketing
• telemarketing
• direct marketing

Good overall service is the best way of generating customer loyalty. You can also help strengthen relationships with customer loyalty schemes. This can work for new and old customers.

Loyalty programmes reward customers for behaviour that benefits your business. Rewards can include:

• fixed or percentage discounts
• extra goods 
• prizes

They can also be used to persuade lapsed customers to give you another try.

Your customers' view of the service you provide will influence their loyalty more than rewards. Be sure to tackle any perceived customer service problems before implementing a scheme.

Examples of customer loyalty rewards

You can decide to offer rewards based on:

• repeat custom
• cumulative spend
• orders for large quantities or with a high value
• prompt payment
• length of relationship

For example, a car wash might offer free cleaning every tenth visit or a free product if a customer opts for the deluxe service. A mail-order company might look to revive the interest of lapsed customers by offering a voucher. You can improve response rates with such vouchers by setting an expiry date.

You can also provide key customers with loyalty cards that give them a discount on all their purchases.

Promote your loyalty scheme

Employees who deal with customers' orders should be fully aware of current offers and keep customers informed. Consider traditional marketing, digital marketing and social media promotions. 

Your existing customers are important assets to your business. They have already chosen you instead of your competitors. Keeping their custom costs far less than attracting new business. It's worth taking steps to make sure that they're satisfied with the service they receive.

You can use techniques such as:

• providing a free customer helpline
• answering frequently asked questions on your website
• following up on sales with a courtesy call
• providing free products that will help customers look after or make the most of their purchases
• sending reminders when services or check-ups are due
• offering preferential discounts to existing customers on further purchases
• providing online chat 91Ï㽶»ÆÉ«ÊÓƵ for immediate assistance 
• offering extended warranty or service packages
• personalising communication based on customer preferences

Existing customer relationships are opportunities to increase sales. Your customers will already have a degree of trust in your recommendations.

Sell more existing customers

Strategies like cross-selling and up-selling can help increase the value or variety of what you offer. Here’s how they work:

• cross-selling - suggest complementary products that enhance the customer’s initial purchase
• up-selling - offer premium versions or upgrades of products they already use
• product alerts - keep customers informed when new or relevant products become available

To keep your customers' trust, never try to sell them something that doesn't meet their needs. Remember, you want to build a long-term relationship with your customers, not make quick profits.

Satisfied customers will contribute to your business for years, through:

• purchases
• recommendations 
• referrals 

Every business must deal with situations when things go wrong from a customer's point of view.

However you respond if this happens, don't be dismissive of your customer's problem - even if you're convinced you're not at fault. A customer with a complaint can be a genuine opportunity for your business:

• if you handle the complaint successfully, your customer is likely to prove more loyal than if nothing had gone wrong
• people willing to complain are rare - your complaining customer may be alerting you to a problem experienced by many others

How to handle complaints

You should handle complaints courteously, sympathetically and swiftly. Make sure that all staff in your business know your procedure for dealing with customer complaints. At the very least the process should involve the following:

• listening to the details of the complaint
• recording the details together with relevant material, such as a sales receipt or damaged goods
• offering rectification - whether by repair, replacement or refund
• appropriate follow-up action, such as a letter of apology or a phone call to make sure that you have solved the problem

If you're proud of the way you rectify problems - by offering no-questions refunds, for example - make sure your customers know about it. Your method of dealing with customer problems is one more way to stay ahead of your competitors.

When a customer complains online

Customers may choose to voice complaints on social media platforms. These complaints and how you handle them have an even bigger impact on your reputation as they take place in public. The best approach is to respond quickly and publicly acknowledge the complaint. You should then continue the conversation in private.