By Katie Scheer
What can set you apart from your competitors is your ability to provide quality to your customers. This is more than just the design, style, usefulness, and condition of the product or service you are delivering. This is taking it past these logical elements of what you are selling by delivering a quality, focused customer experience.
How do you do it? Going beyond processes, procedures, and your tangible product or intangible service, you can provide quality customer experiences by incorporating these concepts into your business standards:
- Provide An Individualized Experience– No one likes to be treated like a number or to be given generic service and conversation. Today's customers want to feel like they are valued, and the best way to make your customers feel appreciated is to customize your services, actions, and conversations to their style and needs. And if you need more inspiration on how to do this, since this is the best way to gain loyalty, take a look at this great article, 8 Ways You Can Provide More Personalized Customer Service, by Rieva Lesonski (Contributing Writer, SmallBizTrends.com).
- Listen with Interest– When communicating with your customers, you need to actively listen, both to verbal and nonverbal messages. Respond and mold your conversations back based on what you have learned through your keen listening skills. And, take notes for other bigger picture ideas that you might want to add to your overall business strategy. Your customers can give you the best ideas for your continued growth. Keep in mind though—knowing which customers to listen to is key, as is explained in this article: How to Listen to Your Customers by Paul B. Brown.
- Communicate with Care– Be aware of what you are saying, how you are saying it, and how quickly you are delivering your messages. Understand how each customer prefers to communicate, and mold your replies to these preferences. Strong communication skills are vital to your success, and Role of Effective Communication in Improving Customer Service by Meredith Estepon expands upon the importance of these skills and gives suggestions for how you can improve.
- Show You're "In"– Overall, you need to show your customers that you are invested in your relationship with them. There are so many ways to make this apparent, such as in simple tasks such as timely follow-up and proactively creating a new product or service that best matches their current needs. You want to make your customers feel good, and in 10 Simple Ways to Show Your Customers You Care by Rhett Power, he gives suggestions for making your customers feel good about you and your business.
Add this to your 2017 goals: Achieve and maintain customer experience excellence. Why? "[Customers] may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel." – Carl W. Buehner. Start delivering quality to your customers today so you can maximize your success ASAP.
