Customer service for small businesses: how to improve it?

Okomo
Okomo Blog
Published in
3 min readSep 26, 2019

No matter how big or small, customer service is crucial to every business. The way companies deal with customers is very important. But, for small companies, the struggle to have the resources to build a great customer service and experience can be really hard. Local and familiar businesses cannot afford losing customers to a bad experience, that means bad advertising by having this unhappy customer sharing the poor experience with the rest of the community. But when the opposite happens, when your small company has great customer service, you will have a great word to mouth from that customer, recommending your company, since the way he was treated by your team was amazing. This means more customers reaching out and the consequently growth of your business.

Small companies have normally small teams and each team member has to wear many hats at once, dealing with many tasks at the same time. So how can you channel your team’s energy and resources to build a great customer service? The truth is that small businesses and small companies have an advantage, comparing to big corporations. When your cycle of operations is small, you and your team are more flexible to engage with customers and build a closer relationship with them.

Differentiate yourself from the competition

A survey shows that 45% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer service. Even if your competitor is a larger corporation that can offer better prices comparing to your company, you can still have competitive advantage over them, because your small business provides a better customer service and experience in the end. And that matters a lot.

Even if your competitor is a larger corporation that can offer better prices comparing to your company, you can still have competitive advantage over them, because you provide a better customer service and experience in the end. Customer service for small businesses matters a lot, therefore it is better to take action now!

In the next few years customer service will be taken more in consideration than price or product. SCORE, an organization of business professionals that helps small business owners presented the following analysis.

source: score.org

As you can see, personal is always better. Customers prefer to deal with someone real instead of waiting a long period of time for an email response or to be answered by preformatted answers from chatbots that don’t get to the point of their concerns.

So, what is the solution to improve customer service for small businesses?

The solution, even in the digital world, is to interact more directly with you customers. By having a great digital presence, your company will stand out in its field of action. Okomo is the best answer to offer a direct interaction on your digital platforms. You can integrate Okomo widget in your company’s website, in your team’s emails and social profiles, etc. Okomo provides a communication platform to be used in any web browser, where your customers don’t need to register for an account: they just choose the person to speak to and reach out for a contact.

Okomo is a great resource to provide customer service for small businesses and enhance the general customer experience, because it doesn’t need any software installation besides a browser or new hardware besides the one that you already use to access the internet. Therefore, Okomo will not represent a burden in your company’s budget.

You can also go for a free trial, with no strings attached, and see how it performs on your company platforms.

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Okomo
Okomo Blog

Okomo is the most seamless & personal way of interacting with online customers and prospects. Find out more: okomo.com/