Pumping out a great product isn’t all there is to it when running a successful business. You’ll also need to be easily accessible to your loyal band of customers whenever they have an inquiry or concern they need to address.
This concept of addressing your customer’s post-purchase concerns is known as customer service. When done right, it can solidify customer trust, garner loyalty, and help you stand out in your specific industry.
One way to create an unforgettable customer service experience is by adding a touch of personalisation to every interaction. Even just a subtle hint of personalisation, like using a customer’s name when messaging them, can leave a positive impression and make your business stand out for all the right reasons.
Need help figuring out how to start personalising your customer service experience? We got you. Let’s uncover six critical ways you can refine your customer service experience approach and make your customer service something truly one of a kind.
- Assign an Accounts Manager
If you’re dealing with important business clients, having a dedicated accounts manager can be a great way to ensure that your client is well taken care of.
An accounts manager acts as the designated pointperson between your company and your client—fostering and nurturing a relationship that is mutually beneficial for both companies.
Having a dedicated accounts manager allows your company to specifically handle and address the concerns and inquiries of a particular client. It removes the need for introductions and bringing up preliminary contextual points because the accounts manager will already be up to speed with the client’s needs and history.
Having an accounts manager to deal with special clients allows you to provide first-hand customer service that’s more specialised and tailor-fit to that specificl client. This, more often than not, makes them feel more valued when compared to giving them a cookie cutter customer service experience.
- Gather and Analyse Customer Data
Analytics gives you a quantifiable glimpse of key performance metrics of your company. This can help you come up with data-driven decisions that can help you achieve your business goals with confidence, not hunches and guesswork.
There are a wide variety of customer data and intel you can gather. For instance, with the right tools like a CRM tool, you can capture a customer’s browsing behaviour, their historical spending, and their specific customer demographic.
All these bits of information can be used for your company to create a more fitting and personalised customer service experience for them.
For instance, if you’re using an inbound 1300 number with Telcoworks, you can already get the customer’s profile before you or your representative agent even picks up the phone. This allows you to use personalisation tactics—like saying their first name—to get on their good side and leave a good first impression.
That said, there’s an entire breadth of information you can gather, and en masse, this could lead you to develop an informed insight on your customer’s needs and wants. In turn, this can pave the way for you to create a better and more personalised experience for your customers.
- Be Reachable Across Multiple Channels
Another way to personalise your customer service experience is by opening up multiple communication channels for your customers.
Customers tend to have their preferred way of communicating with their business partners. What works for others may not be ideal for some, so it’s important to cast a wide net and have multiple channels open to satisfy the most amount of customers.
For starters, consider having an open business line that your customers can reach. Preferably, you should get an inbound number as they can be reached from anywhere around the nation at a local rate. They also come with an extensive range of features, like multi-routing management and an analytics dashboard, that make them superior to personal phone numbers.
Besides that, also consider opening a website with a fillable form at the bottom of each web page. This allows customers to easily reach out to you if they have a concern or inquiry regarding your product or business.
Of course, having social media channels can also be helpful, particularly if you’re a B2C business. This gives you an immediate channel where customers can reach you. It also doubles as a potent marketing platform that you can use to capture new leads. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are some social media websites you should consider creating a presence in.
By having open communication channels, your customer can easily get into contact with you. This, in turn, makes for a more seamless and reachable communication mode for your customer, increasing their satisfaction when dealing with your particular business.
- Ask for Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is a valuable piece of data that you should absolutely try to extract from your customers. If you don’t ask for feedback, you’re missing out on a lot of valuable information on how to improve your customer service—and providing a great product or service in general.
Acquriing customer feedback helps businesses by providing valuable insights on areas where they can improve within their operations. It can help your business identify blind spots and areas of improvement, which can be used by your executive team to make directional or operational changes as they see fit.
And even if you don’t intend to do any implementation, asking for feedback helps customers feel like they’re heard, which can strengthen your relationship with them.
Furthermore, feedback also give you insights on what a specific customer (or category of customer) generally expects (or wants) from your business. This can give you the information you need to create better products or a better experience for your customer—which can result in you making the best decisions to lock continued patronage from them to your business.
In short, it’s a win-win!
- Create Loyalty Perks
Making customers feel special should be a top priority, especially if they’re the ones who have contributed a lot to your company’s success.
As such, consider segmenting your customers based on their purchase history, and rewarding the ones that have spent a lot on your business.
You can get creative with these rewards. For instance, you can make a loyalty stamp-based reward system wherein customers who have bought a certain number of items can get rewarded with a free item or a special discount from your business.
You can also incentivise customers by rewarding loyal customers with exclusive rewards, like a special discount only for email newsletter subscribers.
By creating a robust loyalty reward system, you’ll be able to personalise your customer service experience and reward those who are good for your business. This way, your special customers will feel special and continue patronising your business. New customers will also feel incentivised to spend more to gain access to these exclusive perks.
- Use AI SaaS Tools to Efficiently Personalise
There’s a wide range of powerful software tools that can help your business provide a higher grade of customer service.
For instance, email marketing tools can automate and personalise subject lines and parts of the email body to better fit the recipient. This saves your team hours of manual labour each week manually filling up inputs in emails—enabling them to spend their work hours in more meaningful and productive work.
Besides that, AI chatbots allows your business to answer customer queries when no human is available. This allows your business to virtually run 24/7, which can help keep your customers satisfied without them having to wait too long for a human operator.
These are just a few examples of the benefits of AI tools in providing a personalised customer experience. By using a suite of artificial intelligence tools, you can get more work done quickly without compromising your relationships with your customers—enabling you to scale your business to new heights.
