Every business should strive to make their customers smile because when a customer is satisfied, they’re more likely to stick around. But, what are some ways you can keep your customers happy? Here are a few tips.

1. Offer discounts and sales. People love to score a great deal. Periodically, offer specials on your products. Not only does it help you push sales, but it keeps customers smiling.

2. Create a loyalty program. Loyalty programs are great ways to increase customer retention. You can offer specials and rewards for customers that are a part of the program.

3. Offer quality products and services. This one probably goes without saying, but we’re going to say it anyway. A great product or service will obviously increase customer satisfaction.

4. Be entertaining and engaging on social media. Be active on social media. Create content that your audience wants to see. Keep them entertained, and don’t forget to engage with them when they reach out to you.

5. Offer amazing customer service. Customer service agents who exude positivity, are empathetic, offer a listening ear and are knowledgeable on the products/services you offer can do wonders for customer satisfaction.

6. Make it easy to reach customer service. Customers won’t be smiling when they find it difficult to get a hold of someone with a question or problem. Keep them satisfied by offering convenient ways to reach you such as web chat, text and email support. Also, have enough agents available to assist with their outreach. Phone calls don’t need to be difficult either, as long as there are enough agents available so that hold times will be shorter.

7. Offer 24/7/365 customer service. Let customers know they can reach you any time of the day, any day of the week. Customers will appreciate your availability and flexibility.

8. Provide a FAQ page. Make it easy for customers to get information to commonly asked questions. This will allow them to get answers quickly without even needing to reach out to customer service.

9. Offer helpful information. Provide how-to videos on social media, step-by-step instruction manuals with products and other great information on your website so that customers can get the most out of their products.

10. Acknowledge customers. There are multiple ways to do this. You can highlight customer reviews on your social media pages and thank them for leaving you the testimonial. You can thank them at the end of customer calls and messages. You can provide them with a special discount for being loyal to you. And more.

These are just a few ways to keep your customers smiling. If you’d like help improving customer service, visit our website today. We’d love to assist you!

Recent statistics reveal that 57.7% of inbound call centers offer interaction with their customer support over the phone. Further, 66% of call centers globally are in the United States.

Organizations around the world rely on their customer support to deliver superior customer experience because if they do not, their customers will take their business to a competitor.

To increase sales, you must make customer care a priority. Here are some great tips for improving customer service in your organization.

Provide an Option for Call-Backs

Recently, researchers discovered that 68% of customers will look more favorably at a brand that offers proactive customer service notifications. That is why it is important for your inbound call center to do two things.

One, your customer support should state precisely how long the wait time is to speak with a live representative. Customers want to know how much time you are putting them on hold.

Second, offer a call-back option. That way, a customer will not feel aggravated, having to drop what they are doing and wait a considerable amount of time to get an answer to their question. Having this option will make you competitive, create loyal customers, and boost profits in the end.

Continuous Coaching

One way to help with offering continuing training opportunities is to create agent teams. Call center representatives like to learn from their peers, which helps camaraderie and building confidence. It will help lower employee turnover too, which can be costly.

Further, there should be an ongoing coaching session. This is a way to help your employees hone their techniques, methods, and skills on a one-to-one basis. The more you can help call center representatives to educate them and equip them with the skills and resources they need, the better they will boost the brand’s image with the superior customer experience they deliver.

Remember that the customer experiences your employees give are a direct reflection of your brand image.

Empower Inbound Call Center Representatives

When your internal policies are written and structured in a way that is incredibly complex, it will only frustrate workers and hold them back from a job well done. Therefore, you need to give them confidence by empowering them to decide. Making their own decisions will allow them to better help your customers, too.

This means allowing representatives to go off script. They need to know that this is only for cases when the situation demands it. As a result, you find that customer satisfaction goes up and employee happiness increases too.

Improve Customer Experience With XACT

Are you looking for an extension of your brand? Do you want to trust the right partner to outsource your inbound call center with? At XACT, they organically extend your brand.

XACT offers all the customer contact solutions you need to provide superior customer experiences, such as chat, email, phone, and internet support. They strive to deliver organizations, like yours, seamless customer engagement and support.

Dont wait to contact the professionals at XACT. Your customers will thank you for it!

Managing customer calls is something that virtually every one of the over 33 million small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. have in common. Of course, taking calls isn’t always optimal or practical.

For example, professionals that rely on on-site work, like electricians or plumbers, can’t always stop what they’re doing to take a customer call. Doctors can’t reasonably interrupt a meeting with one patient to take calls from another. Beyond that, most businesses close down for at least part of the day.

Those demands and realities drive many businesses to use a telephone answering service. Keep reading for some things to look for while choosing phone answering services.

Industry Experience

While it might not seem that important, industry experience matters significantly in some industries. For example, an answering service for a law office or a physician has different demands than an answering service for an accountant.

Service with experience in a given industry will understand the unique demands of that industry and can provide a customer-focused experience.

Time in Business

You should also consider how long the service has been in business. While new companies aren’t doomed to failure, the failure rate is much higher with new businesses.

The last thing you need from a call center is for it to close overnight and leave you and your customers hanging.

Customer Service

You should give some thought to the customer service the answering service provides. While it’s not a one-to-one relationship, you can read the customer service they offer you as a signal about the customer service they’ll give your customers.

If they give you shoddy customer service, there is a good chance they’ll do the same for your customers. Remember, getting a customer to leave for a competitor can be as little as one bad experience.

Reviews

If you can find them, you should look for customer reviews. While there are fewer customer reviews of B2B services than B2C products or services, you can still see them. You can also ask for recommendations for a call center or answering service.

Cost

Weighing the relative costs of different services isn’t the only way you should decide, but it is something you should consider. Breaking your budget for a service that gets slightly better reviews or recommendations isn’t prudent.

Instead, you should select a service that offers what you need while bringing good reviews or recommendations.

Choosing Your Telephone Answering Service

Choosing your telephone answering service can have a tangible impact on revenue. A good answering service can help you secure or retain business, while a lousy service might cost you money.

Things you should bear in mind include factors like cost, customer service, and industry experience. Don’t forget about factors like time in business and customer reviews.

XACT provides telephone answering services for businesses. For questions about our answering services or to get started, contact XACT today.

There are over 30 million small businesses operating just in the U.S. While these businesses are in many different industries, they share some fundamental concerns.

They all worry about things like cash flow, revenue, and profit margins. They must also worry about things like marketing, lead generation, and customer relationship management.

One of the more important, but often overlooked, elements of customer relationship management is customer service response time. Many businesses put off responding to customer service calls because it often involves dealing with an angry customer. Yet, that delay can have serious consequences.

If you’re in the habit of putting off responding to customer service inquiries, keep reading to learn why your response times matter.

What Is Customer Service Response Time?

Customers can potentially reach out to your business with customer service inquiries in a variety of ways. Some of the more common ways include:

• Phone calls
• Emails
• Dedicated ticket systems
• Social media

The exact methods available often depend on the company and the product or service. Response time is a customer service metric that tracks the average time it takes for your business to react to those inquiries.

With that essential definition covered, let’s look at why this metric matters.

Limit Customer Frustration

Anyone who has spent half an hour waiting to talk to a customer service rep at a call center understands that frustration mounts quickly when you have a problem. That frustration doesn’t get any better when someone must wait 24-48 hours to get a response.

Yet, these are normal customer wait times for customer service responses in a variety of industries. Of course, the longer you make someone wait, the less forgiving they will become.

That intolerance will only grow sharper if the customer service response doesn’t resolve their problem the first time out.

Long Wait Times Can Cost You Customers

The real risk you run with poor response times from your contact center is that customers will abandon your business. Customers will often read your delay as an implicit sign that their business doesn’t matter to you. In other words, you provide poor customer service.

Like it or not, even a single instance of poor customer service can make a customer drop a business or brand. You don’t need too much of that before it starts hitting the bottom line.

Managing Response Times

If you’re in the habit of putting off customer service calls or emails, you should consider an alternative. For example, you can outsource your customer service to a third-party customer help desk.

You avoid most of the things that make customer service a challenge and your customers get better response times. Those better response times reduce frustration and signal that customer service matters to you.

Customer Service Response Time and You

While you may loathe customer service calls and emails, your response time can have a meaningful impact on your business. Take too long and customers may well abandon your business or brand for someone else.

XACT provides a range of customer service-related services, including customer help desk services. For questions or more information, please contact XACT today.