Honesty and respect for the opinions of your clients are essential components of good customer service. Excellent customer service is a reflection of a company’s culture; the two go hand in hand. Customers will notice your corporate culture if you continue to provide excellent customer service.

However, the effects of excellent customer service extend beyond corporate culture. In actuality, offering excellent customer service has a number of practical effects on your company’s performance as well as the public’s perception of it.

By providing excellent customer service, companies can enjoy all sorts of benefits. Below, we’ve listed eight examples of important benefits so that you can better understand how important customer service really is.

What is Good Customer Service?

First, let’s quickly review what makes customer service good. Good customer service will effectively assist and empower your customers through the entire purchasing process. From pre-purchase, through their purchase and all the way to their post-purchase experience.

Here are three questions that will help you figure out how to provide better customer support in your business.

1. How can I better assist customers who are interested in purchasing my product or service?

Can you quickly provide accurate answers to your customer questions? Are your support reps highly educated about your product offering? Are you able to provide trials or deals for customers who are “sitting on the fence”?

2. How can I better assist customers during the purchasing process?

Is it easy to submit an order to your business? Are you able to accommodate custom requests? Can you efficiently solve errors with orders? Can you provide the customer with order details such as package tracking?

3. How can I better assist customers after the purchase has occurred?

Are you able to quickly and easily fix any issues with faulty products or errors in service? How do you make it up to the customer in such cases? Are you educating your customers on how to get the most value out of your product or service? How easy is it for your customer to send in something for repair? Are you rewarding your customers for their loyalty and repeat business?

As you can see, good customer service is an easy yet complex subject. Plus, it varies from industry to industry. What might be considered a good customer service practice in one industry, might not be helpful in another.

Now, on to the meat and potatoes, why is good customer service so important anyway?

Reasons Why Good Customer Service is Important

1. Retain your customers

Good customer service always helps retain your customers. It is what keeps your customers coming back for more purchases. Retaining customers increases your revenue and it’s also much cheaper to keep a customer than to try to gain a new one. You can retain your customers by offering personalized experiences, convenience, and attentive customer service.

When it comes to the importance of customer service, customer retention is one of the biggest factors to keep in mind. This is illustrated by the fact that 89% of customers are more likely to complete an additional purchase following a good customer service experience. Thus, when you give your customers great experiences, they’ll continue to come back for more.

Customer loyalty is a customer’s commitment to your business or to your brand. A loyal customer will always select your business over another brand and this helps to eliminate your competition. Without a doubt, loyal customers are a very valuable asset for a business to have. Repeat customers almost always purchase more and more often. You can encourage customer loyalty by offering your customers rewards programs, good discounts, and excellent customer service.

3. Build a strong culture and reputation

A strong culture and reputation goes a long way for any brand. The culture is the psychology, attitudes, and beliefs that influence a brand experience. The story of your company and how your team members engage with it is what develops culture and reputation.

In order to first develop your culture, you first need to define your brand culture. You need to define what values you want your employees to embrace. Take time to think about it and write it down. Keep in mind that your customers need to be able to differentiate you from your competitors when it comes to values.

Next, you need to flaunt it, and that starts with top management. Visual branding is also important. Make sure your brand’s logo reflects your culture. Also, use your company’s social media pages to display your brand and demonstrate good customer service. Encourage employees to share positive customer experiences and have your employees actively engaged with your brand’s culture. Doing all of this will help build a strong culture and reputation. The end result will be growth for your brand. Referrals are a powerful way to have your customers do your marketing for you.

4. Get referrals

Where do you go when you have a problem? You turn to your network of family and friends. Whether you’re looking for a new car, a doctor, or a realtor, you reach out to the people that you trust. The importance of referrals is undeniable.

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Referrals are a powerful way to get your customers to do the marketing for you and, with great customer service, you increase the chances that current customers will refer you to their social circle.

At the same time, remember that referrals can work in a negative way as well. For instance, if you provide inadequate customer service, your customers may share their experiences with friends and colleagues. Bad referrals can be the building blocks of a negative reputation, and can ultimately drive away future customers in the long run.

5. Boost sales

Implement an effective customer service approach in order to boost sales at your company. You can accomplish this by quickly handling any issues that arise and ensuring that your customers are treated in a special way. Let them know that they are appreciated. You might even offer discounts, free samples, and promotions.

By providing consistently great customer service, you incentivize repeat business and draw new customers in. Over time, this can help your organization expand its reach and increase sales.

6. Upsell products

Upselling is when you offer the customer a high priced option or an add-on to the product they are buying. For example, you can add a warranty to a product ,or you can introduce a newer, larger screen to TV that a customer is already looking at.

When you focus on delivering great customer service, it becomes easier to upsell your customers and increase your bottom line. This is because customer service builds trust between a company and consumer. If a customer feels that they have been treated well by your organization in the past, they’ll likely be more inclined to increase their spending with you and explore additional services you may offer.

7. Improve employee happiness

While you may think that providing great customer service only makes the customer happy, it’s important to note that a good customer service system can boost employee happiness as well. This is because happier customers tend to lead to happier employees. Positive professional relationships facilitate happiness for both parties, whereas upset or confused customers can lead to employee stress and burnout.

8. Remain competitive in the marketplace

Good customer service can be a valuable selling point for your business. After all, if two companies offer a similar product but one provides much better customer service than the other, which company do you think more consumers will choose?

Every customer wants to be supported and treated with respect. When you employ effective customer service strategies, you can gain a competitive advantage over other businesses by building lasting relationships with customers.

How to Achieve Good Customer Service

A company must provide excellent customer service in order to survive. Make sure your staff members receive adequate training in customer service. Teach them to solve problems and to listen well. Here are a few customer service suggestions to assist you in doing this.

Be proactive

In order to provide proactive customer service, you should anticipate customer problems and address them before they become an issue. This may mean setting up an easy-to-use customer support center on your website, writing out detailed FAQ pages, or tweaking the customer journey to streamline the customer experience.

In any case, being proactive is better than being reactive. When you have to react to customer problems, it can often be difficult to find a quick solution that’s satisfying for both you and the customer. Avoid this dilemma entirely by being proactive with your customer service.

Get feedback

Getting feedback is an effective way for learning your weaknesses and strengths. It sets the groundwork for improvement. A good way to get feedback is to provide opportunities for both your employees and your customers to rate the customer service experience.

In order to solicit feedback, you may send out customer surveys or set up focus groups to find areas for improvement. However you get feedback, try to keep it anonymous. People are always more honest when they can be anonymous with their responses. Once you get all of the feedback, you can implement changes where needed.

Provide training

Always provide training for your employees. Training should always be ongoing, as one can never stop learning. Keep your employees informed about new products and ways to use them. They will transfer that knowledge to your customers. Also, it will help you employees feel more confident on the job and create a positive customer service experience for everyone involved in the process.

In order to keep your employees trained, devise a training schedule and stick to it. A training schedule may include anything from customer service workshops to lectures about how to use new technologies. Just remember that well-trained employees are going to be better equipped to provide customers with excellent service.

As already mentioned above, excellent customer service cannot be overstated, and all of the categories discussed above are an important part of the puzzle to accomplish excellent customer service. If you don’t implement all the categories above, the puzzle will remain unsolved and your business may suffer for it. That means that your customer service will always need improvement, thus delivering excellent customer service should always be a work in progress for companies.

Keep in mind that with the right technology and tools, it becomes much easier to manage customer relationships and provide a great customer service experience.

Customer Service’s Impact on Brand Image

Every company is known for its customer service to some degree. Of course, you always want a positive brand image and customer service can be a significant determining factor.

1. Customer service affects your brand image and loyalty potential.

In many ways, your customer service team is the face of your brand. Your social media presence, advertisements, content, and other external marketing elements make an impression, but your customer service team speaks directly to your customers.

They are responsible for representing your brand when interacting with potential buyers. Customer service can break a company’s chance to turn a potential customer into a loyal customer. After a positive customer service experience, 89% of consumers report they are more likely to return and make another purchase. While making a purchase decision, a critical factor for 66% of customers is the customer service reputation of the brand. When they receive poor customer service, 61% of consumers say they have cut ties with a brand.

Customer service is a key player when it comes to building your brand image and brand loyalty. Nearly three out of five consumers report that good customer service is vital to feel commitment toward a brand. Therefore, investing in a customer service team that accurately represents your mission and values is a worthy investment and a wise branding strategy.

2. Excellent customer service will protect relationships with customers who experience a mistake down the road.

When customers have a poor customer service experience, they’re more likely to quickly share about it and leave the company than in previous years. And if you work in the B2B space, data shows that 51% of B2B companies start to avoid vendors after a poor customer service experience. However, if your company provides excellent customer service, 78% of consumers would do business with a company again after a mistake.

Additionally, only one in five consumers will forgive a bad experience at a company whose overall customer service they rate as “very poor,” while nearly 80% will forgive a bad experience if they rate the service team as “very good.”

3. A positive customer service reputation makes people more likely to do business with you.

Consumers consider customer service when they’re making purchasing decisions. In fact, 78% of consumers use customer service to decide whether or not to do business with a company. This means that your company’s reputation for customer service will impact a large majority of potential customers.

Additionally, customer service doesn’t begin and end with your frontline reps. The customer service potential customers experience during the sales process will also impact their purchasing decisions. Therefore, delivering positive customer service experiences should be the goal for any customer-facing role.