Customer Service Strategy: Why Brands Need Culture, Feedback and Partners to Survive

Treating customers well is the key to retaining them. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to any business leaders who have stayed up to date on the latest trends affecting their industries. After all, almost every sector, from healthcare to hospitality, is being impacted by the demand for better customer care.

But customer service optimization can be a double-edged sword. There is a fine line between doing it right and scaring away consumers. As a result, many of today's brands tackle customer care from a high level. Unfortunately, that approach will no longer work as more organizations make customer service their prime differentiator.

To ensure that they're providing best-in-class customer care, every business should practice these three essential customer service strategies.

1. CREATE A CORPORATE CULTURE

As discussed in previous blog posts, a corporate culture of customer service is absolutely required if a brand wants to set itself apart from its competitors and treat its consumers as well as possible.

"Core ingredients of excellent customer service - employee competence, attitudes and behavior - have become even more significant differentiators," Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service, told The Telegraph.

How exactly can businesses create that culture? There are a few different opinions on the matter, but in general, the answer boils down to this: They must treat employees well.

On his blog, Jon Gordon explained that the best customer service stems from putting employees before customers. That might sound counter-intuitive, but the argument is that if staff members feel valued by their employer, they will pass along that sentiment to consumers.

Of course, treating employees right won't immediately inspire a customer service culture. Executives must convey the importance of customer care, and that process begins with training staff on how to better serve their consumers. And by staff, we mean everyone.

"We are all customer service," said Jason Wesbecher, CMO of Mattersight, writing for Entrepreneur.

2. COLLECT CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Businesses don't really care about their customers unless they're willing to listen to them. That's a major tenet of customer service for call center services, but it must extend beyond just hearing consumers out via the phone, Web chats or social media. Employees must reach out to ensure they're hitting the customer-care mark, a process that entails collecting feedback.

"Don't take your customers or clients for granted, and don't assume you know what's on their minds," wrote Ric Edelman for Inc. "Talk with them often. Ask their opinion. Find out what they want, what they like about your company and what they don't like. Surveys, focus groups, casual conversations, formal reviews - use every means possible to make sure you're getting the information from your customers or clients that you need so you can deliver to them what they need."

If leaders don't listen to this advice, they could be losing customers. Marketing Land reported that 55 percent of mobile app users would abandon a brand if their feedback went "seemingly ignored."

Collecting customer service feedback is one thing, but it's a whole different animal to actually act on it. In short, all businesses need to act on their consumers' responses. If they did, they could even collect more feedback, creating a continuous loop of improvement - 99 percent of individuals would gladly report how their customer service experiences went as long as those asking for it actually acted on that information, according to Marketing Land.
 

3. PARTNER WITH EXPERTS

If a business doesn't have in-house expertise or the bandwidth to provide the best customer service possible, then it must seek out a solution. Often, that means partnering with outsourcing services that can offer contact centers for all channels.

In fact, outsourced customer service is getting very popular, with 62 percent of outsourcing contracts containing references to multichannel customer service in 2014, My Customer contributor Peter Burman reported.

That said, brands cannot trust just any organization with one of their most precious resources: their customers. While Berman was specifically referencing the outsourcing of social media management, the author's point rings true for all customer care initiatives - customer service representatives must be strongly trained on branding and customer care, as well as possess soft skills, such as speaking consumers' native languages.

Furthermore, the best customer service partners have the ability to understand their clients' customer care goals and create training processes around them, ensuring that the chance of a negative interaction is slim-to-none.

At the end of the day, each of these three customer service strategies explained above form the foundation of any successful customer care initiative. Therefore, devoting resources to guarantee each aspect is fulfilled will go a long way toward improving satisfaction and customer retention rates.