Key Aspects of Customer Service

Running a business has never been an easy job, and it has become even more difficult today. Business is a key aspect of mankind’s historical evolution and has been conducted ever since humanity gained basic intelligence. Although we can argue on the types of businesses that were conducted and the transactional mediums that were used, still the basic definition of business remains the same. Aspects of Customer Service-

In simple terms, a business is an exchange of products or services in return for monetary gains. These monetary gains can be in the shape of paper money that we use today, while in the early days of business there was a barter system where goods were exchanged with other goods. Still, the basic functionality of the business has remained the same while there have been many shapes and forms of it. Another thing that kept on evolving was the consumer trends.

Buyer trends are core components that heavily influence the workings of any business. As a business is nothing without its customers so every business must adapt according to the current consumer behavior if they want to keep their business up and running in the long run.

The current consumer pattern demands that extra attention should be paid to the customers. Especially in the process of after-sales. This pattern in place for quite a few years now but it’s only recently that it has garnered a significant pace, and the main credit of this goes to the pandemic. Ever since the pandemic, the average buyer has become more cautious regarding where they spend their hard-earned money.

Due to economic recession and high inflation rates, people have resorted to cost-cutting and saving money by careful spending on products and services they don’t need to replace in the foreseeable future.   

This is quite a change from earlier consumer patterns where customers had many choices, and would conveniently switch from one provider to another. Now choices are there but customers prefer to stick with a brand, and the only deciding factor that makes a customer stick to a brand is good customer service. Because no matter how good the product is or how economically it is priced, in the end, a user is bound to run into some kind of trouble with it.

These problems especially happen in a services business, like an ISP. That is why it is required to provide a good customer service experience to the customers that provide them rapid solutions to their queries and problems. This would allow them to remain attached to a business while providing many new avenues to improve the overall sales and revenue of the said business.

Benefits of Good Customer Service 

Customer service is the sole thing that can improve customer retention rate. And customer retention has lots of benefits for any company as it improves the overall CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value). This is a metric that defines how much benefit a customer provides a firm as long as they stay with a particular company.

CLTV is something that needs to be ensured by any company if they want to be profitable in the long run. Since acquiring a new customer is an expensive task that is why the focus should be on customer retention so that a business can sustain profitability, as no business can afford customers jumping ships in a short amount of time. 

Moreover, if we take an example of Cox communication, they have become the third-largest cable company in the country just because they had a loyal customer base, which was only possible because of the exceptional Cox customer service department that worked on customer retention and made a loyal customer base form themselves. Through this example, we also realized that customer service is the thing required for a loyal customer base which in turn increases the brand value. Today everything is sold on a brand’s name, no matter how bad or expensive the product is still customers are going to buy it if it comes from a reputed brand. In this regard, we can see the importance customer service holds in different aspects of a business.

But this raises the question that if customer service is so important for a firm then what are the key aspects of customer service that a brand should focus on? This is the concern we will try to address. 

Major Components in Customer Service

Here we will focus on the major components that every customer service department should be aware of in order to ace the art of customer service.

Empathy

Empathy is a key human emotion that connects us with others who are in distress. Since people who are contacting customer service have problems of their own with their products and services. So showing a little bit of empathy to the customers goes a long way, as in this way the agents are able to connect to the problems a customer is facing which help them better understand the exact root cause of the said problem on which they can work together with the customer for an effective solution. Plus this also calms down an already frustrated customer by giving them a sense of realization that their brand company acknowledges their problem and is working to fix it.

Listening to the Customer  

Customer service is a job of listening more than speaking. This is the core component of customer service which whoever understands can ace this art. Listening skills are important as the customer you are talking to has a lot to say regarding the problem that they are facing. In order to extract the core problem out of all this conversation is entirely dependent on good listening. Plus how can a customer service team provide an effective solution if they haven’t even listened to the actual problem? That is why patiently listening to the customer is important.

Patience 

Being patient is the crux of a customer service job because most of the time the customer is frustrated and agents might have to face the wrath of the customers. However, agents should understand where the customer is coming from and should understand and acknowledge the problem of the customer and keep in mind that the customer is showing anger towards the brand and not the individual itself. Being patient with the customer can yield great results and improve the overall customer experience, as it is the factor on which every other aspect is dependent.

Conclusion 

Customer service is a crucial part of the growth of any business. And in order to ensure growth, the key aspects of customer service should be focused on and improved on. We have mentioned some main customer service aspects in the above-mentioned list. However, there are countless others including communication skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving ability that should also be emphasized.