With the business world by and large moving online, or at the very least partially online, customer service policies and customer relations have to adapt to the changing ways of doing business. Customer relations is always one of the most important areas of business: the obvious reason being that your customers buy your products and thus keep you in business, but it's also much easier and cheaper to retain existing customers rather than seeking out new ones. Use these three essential tips in order to have exceptional customer relations with your online business model.
1. Timely Responses
Especially in the era of instant communication, waiting days for a response does not enamor customers to you. They expect responses in a timely manner, and so it is a good idea to have a company policy regarding how long responses should take. Replies should generally not take longer than twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Even if you don't have an answer for the customer right away, you should still check in to let them know the status of their inquiry. You should also set up a variety of methods customers can use to contact you - have a phone number, a contact form, messages through social media, perhaps even an instant message feature. This is a major advantage to online customer service because it gives customers more options to contact you.
2. Interact With Them
With an online presence, you have a greater ability to directly interact with your customers, and many of them have come to expect it. Social media in particular gives your company the ability to readily and easily interact with your customers. Asking questions of your followers can start conversations, as well as announcements about products or services your customers might be interested in giving feedback on. This can understandably generate interest in your business as well as display to customers that your business really does care what they think. Interacting with your customers online and joining in conversations with them has the added bonus of potentially making you aware of problems, improvements and suggestions regarding your business or its products.
3. Be Personable
Just because some things are different doesn't mean the core of what makes good customer service has changed now that you have an online business presence. You should always strive for customer service interactions that are personable rather than cold and clinical. Customers like to feel that they are talking to a person rather than a corporation, and if they feel the person they are talking to is genuinely invested in them, they are far more likely to be genuinely invested in your company. This is why it's best to write all online communications, whether they are tweets, blog posts, website content or Facebook posts as if they were from a person and not a faceless corporation. A way to make your company seem even more personable is if your owners and managers, like founder of Vasayo, Dallin Larsen, have their own profile pages on various social media sites such as LinkedIn or Crunchbase. This provides another platform for information to be dispersed and customer interaction to happen.
Customer relations over the Web can pose more challenges due to the lack of face-to-face contact, or even verbal discussions over the phone. Many elements of good customer service, such as being personable, responding in a timely fashion and doing what you can to satisfy the customer, are the same no matter what medium you're using to communicate with your customers. But others, such as the ability to interact directly with your customers instantaneously and have online forums, are new. Use the unique opportunities presented by the Internet to further engage with customers and grow your business to new heights.