Is customer service a priority for your business? For many, it isn’t; the average business loses a fifth of its customers annually by neglecting its relationships with them. In the end, your retention rate is heavily influenced by the quality of service you offer to your customers. Below are five common customer service mistakes that might be eating away at your bottom line.

Being Unprepared or Disengaged with Staff

Customer service starts between you and your employees. Before you even begin customer service training, make sure you’re respectful to them, as their relationship with you tends to be reflected in their relationship with the customer. Also ensure that everyone in your office gets some training. On a busy day, you never know who might be conscripted to handle a call.

Trying to Win an Argument Against a Customer

Arguing with a customer is the most labor-intensive way to lose business; agreeing saves time and money. What’s more, when employee egos clash with customers, things sometimes spiral out of control. Promoting a “customer is always right” culture (and some basic anger/stress management techniques) can safeguard your business against employee-customer standoffs, and the negative buzz that comes with them.

Using Jargon

Nobody likes being made to feel stupid, and speaking in industry language that a customer won’t understand does exactly that. Make a habit of discussing your product in layman’s terms— no advanced technical or business vocabulary.

Relying on Automated Customer Support

It doesn’t matter how comprehensive your FAQ page is; some customers just want to talk to a person, and your business should be ready and willing to help those customers. If a caller has a question that’s answered on your website, the proper recourse is to respectfully answer the question, then explain where the information can be found for future reference. Once again, this is a matter of investing in not making the customer feel stupid.

Being a Stickler for Company Policy

“If I did this for you, I’d have to do it for everyone.” This is the sound of losing a customer, and it’s easy to see why; it implies “you’re not special enough to us for this kind of help.” Making sensible exceptions is a cornerstone of excellent customer service. So, make sure that you and your employees understand that your policies don’t supersede common decency. Just as blindly sticking to policy can be insulting to customers, while bending it for them will often leave them grateful enough to leave a good review or tell their friends.

Any businessperson knows how hard it is to find new customers, so why skimp on keeping the old ones? Ensuring that your customer service personnel are well-prepared and have a good attitude could be a bigger boon for your revenue than the best marketing campaign. What has your business experience taught you about customer service?

Tags: customer service, small business advice

This entry was originally posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2015 at 10:00 am and is filed under Small Business Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.