If the recent surveys are to be believed, one of the biggest complaints that the services in the industry get to face today is the poor follow up that customers are forced to deal with. Issue persists and it has been there in the business for long which is quite evidently unfortunate. In a lot of cases, the need for calling the organisation requesting them to get the issue resolved becomes a repeated attempt which actually pays harm to the brand building efforts of any company. The harm is gradual or immediate but it exists there and it can’t be denied that the need for mastering the art of the customer follow up is an important issue that needs to be paid attention at the earliest.
As a result, it is seen that almost 65% of the total customer base are found giving negative reviews about the company or the service. It should also be added that around 48% of the customers don’t even hesitate telling around 10 people about their poor experiences with a particular company or service.
How should you Train Staff and help them Learn Art of Customer Follow up?
Here is what the small businesses can do in order to help them learn the art of customer follow up.
Set Expectations in the First Shot
When you are not keen on setting your expectations, remember the customers are soon going to set their own and when they see you are not up for the game, they are simply going to tune out. You must be proactive and you should also be lot more specific about what requires following up; finally how and when you are going to get back to them. Make sure that you have mustered enough courage and habit of getting back to the customers in the time frame they have been promised and this needs to be done even if there is no resolution.
Have a Focus on After Sale
Most of the businesses know how they should be making sales and what is going to help them make one. However, the not so convincing thing is that most of them are also keen on contacting the customers only when they are looking for the next big thing in sales. Now this does give an impression to the customer that the business they are dealing with is only interested in making the sales. The feeling that they are least concerned with the success of the customer is after all a disappointing one.
Strike with your will
If you feel that your customers are busy to interact or deal with you or are facing some issues, it is simply going to be lame to actually wait for them to call you up. Better get over the phone or simply shoot them an email and get in touch with them all by your own will. A good business firm will always be keen on anticipating the problems their customers might be facing while dealing with a particular business. Not only this, once they have located problems, it should be their first priority to fix them at the earliest.
Connect with Customers Personally
Customers also do have a personal life and events that are special and close to them such as their birthdays and anniversaries. Now remembering them on their special milestones in life is going to be an amazing way to actually connect with them. They won’t mind even if you are connecting with them after long. It is going to be appreciated at the end of the day.
Getting a Bit More Personal
Speaking on the same lines, customers are interested in dealing with businesses that they can completely trust and invest their likes on. Be more conversational in tone and use their names to make your interaction with them much more personal or personalised. While you are sending those emails or messages, make sure that you are using real names of your customers.
Lastly, it is also important to empower your staff and encourage them to take their own decisions and be answerable to it. You can let them do things that fall outside the periphery of normal guidelines and this can be done after quality training. Also be careful on how often you are going to interact with your customers.
Michael Evans is a blogger and he is currently associated with leading UK based start-up – CableProtector.