Delivering excellent customer experience is something we are passionate about at FMI, and rightly so, as it is predicted to become more important than both price and product by 2020.

We understand that the customer’s experience is defined by the quality of skill and support the customer receives. In short, your customer service shapes your consumer’s experience.

Improving your customer service to deliver a better experience does not necessarily require a huge financial investment. It can simply be about focusing in on the details and further harnessing what you already have in place.

Understand your customer needs

McKinsey informs us that 70% of a customer’s journey is dictated by how the customer feels they are being treated. The catch here is that how they feel is unique to each person and circumstance. So businesses have to prepare to facilitate all possible options so that the consumers can simply select the means that best suit them. Many businesses have invested in digital tools like online chats to facilitate better customer service and while this does work a lot of the time, there are instances when the issues are long and complex, and the last thing a consumer feels like doing is writing the intricacies of their issues into a small chat box.  They want to communicate with a human directly. Communicating by voice is a faster and easier way to convey the details of a complex situation. Whereas, for simpler matters a chat box may be the ideal solution. Understanding what your customer needs and ensuring that you have a suitable solution will inevitably help to make your customers feel supported and understood.

Getting employees on side

Although it is clichéd to say it, your staff really are your most valuable asset. They are the ones having conversations with customers, offering advice and insights and responding to the customers’ queries and concerns. Have they been adequately trained on the product or service they are offering? Do they know how to proactively listen to the customer?  Can they empathise with customers but get the problem sorted? If you have managed to do all of the above, how are you measuring the consumers’ feedback on this?

Staff are more likely to be engaging if they are able to speak from experience. If they drink the coffee they are promoting or wear the make-up they are endorsing they will inevitably do it with more passion and conviction. Incentives are an effective means of motivating staff.  Having sales staff with the right attitude, energy and enthusiasm helps to deliver the customer experience, regardless of how ordinary the task may feel. This has a massive impact on how consumers view the experience.

Having a good corporate culture that encourages staff to be fun and playful can create positive energy in the business which creates an uplifting atmosphere and makes everyone involved in the engagement feel good.

Improving customer service is not only good for the customer’s experience but according to Bain and Co, businesses that deliver better service obtain revenues between 4% and 8% above the market average. And that does feel good.

If you want to make your customers feel good and your revenues look good, get in touch with Gavin Spencer, email gavin.spencer@fmi.ie  so that we can share our ideas on how we can help to improve your customer service.