Top 10 customer service tips

Customer service is the main way that you can differentiate yourself from your competitors and have customers coming back for more. If you don’t use outstanding customer service to retain your customers, you’ll find yourself having to deal with increased customer churn and more and more angry customers. 

Without authentic and powerful customer service to deliver an impressive customer experience, your business will end up losing out. 

What is customer service? 

Customer service is the support you offer your customers both before and after the sale – that gives them an easy and enjoyable experience interacting with your company. 

It’s much more than the traditional telephone support. Customer service can be offered through email, live chat, social media and text message. Many companies even offer self-service customer support, so customers are able to help themselves without needing to contact the business. 

Now we'll move on to the 10 customer support tips that can benefit your business. 

1. Always say thank you

Whatever your customer says to you, even if they are angry, make sure you thank them for contacting your company. 

It may seem like you don’t have the time to thank your customers, but it’s always good to offer thanks. 

If you can, say thanks to customers offline with a handwritten note. When you take the time to offer thanks to your customers through snail mail, this builds the bedrock of solid customer relationships. 

2. Use active listening

When a customer contacts your customer support team, it’s important to remember that there’s a real human on the other end of the line. Active listening means you truly hear the concern or question that the customer needs to be answered. 

Make sure you approach each conversation by focusing on the speaker and with the goal of learning something about them. When the customer finishes elaborating on their problem, make sure to ask clarifying questions to ensure you understand what they’re saying. 

End the conversation with a summary of what has taken place to show you were listening to the customer. 

3. Understand how to close a conversation

You can improve every single interaction with a customer by learning how to close a conversation. Instead of closing a sale, you are instead closing the conversation with a customer. 

When an issue is unresolved it creates unnecessary problems for the customer support team. The customer may have to get in touch with you again, which is not good for the customer and not good for your support team. 

Ask the customer: “Is there anything else I can help with today?” at the end of every conversation. Ensure that the customer is responding with “No, I’m all good!” before you consider the conversation as closed. 

4. Use clear language

How you communicate with your customers is important in every interaction. Make sure you use language that customers can easily understand and avoid confusing them with slang, colloquialisms, or technical jargon. 

Keep in mind your styling which also affects your level of communication. Don’t use passive-aggressive language such as “Actually…” or “Well…” and instead take every customer interaction seriously. 

Instead of telling customers that they are being transferred, tell them that they are being introduced to a customer service specialist who can help them with their problem. 

5. Offer a quick response

When customers email your company, they expect a response within one hour. This is a difficult bar to reach when most businesses take one day to reply to an email. 

Make sure you’re reaching customer service expectations by responding in a timely manner. One way that you can shorten your response times is by reducing the number of customer support requests you receive – this can be achieved by setting up a customer service knowledge base. 

If you invest in customer self-service, then you can get back to those customers who do need to contact you much more quickly. 

6. Invest in customer self-service

As we just mentioned, investing in customer self-service is a great way to supercharge your customer support strategy. Self-service content can be personable and individual as long as you properly invest in creating helpful articles. 

Instead of having to contact your customer support team, customers can instead check your company knowledge base for a suitable answer. While it may seem hard to create a self-service knowledge base, this journey starts with a single article. 

You can use our very own knowledge base software KnowledgeOwl to create a knowledge base for your customers. 

7. Have the courage to say “I don’t know”

When you’re dealing with customers, sometimes the time will come when you just don’t know the answer to their question. 

Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” as long as you follow it up with “but I’ll find out for you”. Customers will appreciate your honesty and the trouble you’re taking to find out the right answer for them. 

8. Employ the right technology

It’s not enough to rely on an email inbox to keep you in touch with your customers. You need to invest in the proper help desk tools to help you keep track of customer conversations. 

Help desk tools help you stay in touch with previous customer conversations and provide the context you need to pick up where you left off. You can convert these conversations into actionable customer service tickets, assign to the right department or set levels of priority. You can even include other team members for collaboration. 

Think about offering your customers live chat so you can help them right where and when they need it. 

If you want to offer a self-service solution to your customers, consider investing in the right knowledge base software. 

9. Make a great last impression

Always leave your customers with a great last impression so they feel good about doing business with you. Don’t fall at the last hurdle just because you feel you’ve solved the customer’s problem!

The ideal last impression leaves the customer with a smile on their face. Wish them a good day or thank them for doing business with you in order to create that great last impression. 

Even if you are talking to a prospective customer, leaving a great last impression may mean they will do business with you in the future, or refer you to others. 

10. Hire the best support employees

It goes without saying that you can’t deliver amazing customer service without having amazing customer service agents to help your customers. If you want to outdo the competition then plan on investing heavily in a team that can offer outstanding customer service. 

Make sure you can offer career development opportunities for your customer service agents and invest heavily in training. 

Consider getting everyone in the company involved in your customer service department so that everyone can feel the customers' pain. 

Final remarks

Customer service is no place to cut corners. You need to make sure you offer outstanding customer service to outpace the competition and retain customers for the long-haul. 

If your service agents don’t believe in your company, then neither will your customers. Hire the best people who can deliver the customer service that you need and who will take great delight in doing their best to help customers.