How To Beat Your Competition With Customer Service
Customer service is hard. It’s repetitive. It can be basic or super-complex. It’s hard to stay fresh-faced and bushy-tailed, especially when you’re juggling a million other high priority tasks. But in truth, it’s an entrepreneur’s secret weapon. It’s a small business owner’s greatest and most cost-effective ammunition to outperform larger, more powerful competitors.
Yala’s founder, Gary Levitt, honed a few trade secrets about how to build loyalty and transform customers into advocates through customer service. We’re happy to share them with you, but shh… don’t tell your competitors!
- Pretend you’re the customer and give yourself goosebumps.
If you were the customer. And you were reaching out with a question or a problem. How would you like to be treated?
Try to evoke joy. Try to give yourself goosebumps. What would delight you if you were the customer? And then do that.
Try to make it as easy as possible for your customers. Try to screencast the solution if you can or provide screenshots. Go above and beyond. This is your greatest opportunity to make an impact. To lay the foundation for a long and prosperous relationship.
2. Take the time to identify something lovely and connective with your customer.
It’s easy to just go through the motions but this is your chance to build a meaningful relationship with your customers. Take the time to research your customer and find something you like or admire about them.
For example, one of our recent customer emails ended with this line “By the way, Michelle, your recent article about pesticide exposure was eye opening for me... Thank you!”
3. Give your customer service voice a bit of pizzazz.
Many of us in startups wear lots of hats every day. Product design hat, sales hat, data analytics hat…You have to be a jack of many trades. The startup business demands it of you. Often though, when we put on our “customer service” hat, we turn into robots.
It goes a little like this… (Make sure to read in a robot voice) “I am sorry that you are having X problem. I suggest you do X,Y, and Z. Please let me know if that worked.”
Don’t: Be a robot.
Do: Talk to them as a friend. Share YOUR feelings.
Like this, “When I heard your good vibes about your first spin of Yala, it was awesome. Thank you for being kind! I’m so happy you’ve joined us.
As for connecting your accounts, check out this screencast to walk you through the process. Standing by to make sure this helps!”
4. A timely acknowledgment is more important than a solution
It’s good to reply as fast as you can, even if you can’t deal with the problem right then and there.
Write a simple “I’ve asked the team to take a look on the backend— will be in touch with a solution asap!” or “Thanks for reaching out. Let me look into this. I’m on it. I’m not leaving my station until I get back you with an update that makes you — and me — happy.”
Other tips:
If you’re crazy busy with lots of requests coming in, just reply… “Hey Jenny, I’m on it! I’ll shoot you an email with an update shortly.” It buys you a little bit of time for free.
When you’re waiting for a response from the other person, saying “I’m standing by” always feels good for the reader.
The beauty of being a small business owner or startup is that you have the creative room to design your own brand to best serve your customers. And always remember your secret weapons…imagination and goosebumps!
