The concept of ‘under promise and over deliver’ should hold good for every aspect of your business model and that would include customer service. In every business the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) will be different, but it will always be higher than the cost of retaining satisfied customers. Not only this but good, and bad, news travels fast. Satisfied customers will tell all their friends and contacts very quickly about good service or products, and they will tell them even more quickly about bad service or products. And word spreads quickly.

All of this demonstrates the need to deliver a first-class customer service at all times and to under promise and over deliver on what your customers might expect. That way, your clients should always be happy and will spread the good news about your product or service, and happy client referrals are always the best promotion that you will ever get.

So, here are some top tips to customer service to ensure that you are doing all that you can to keep your customers happy:

• Be Approachable – Always be friendly and approachable and treat clients as friends. Make sure that all your staff and employees share this ethos and that it becomes one of the hallmarks of your business.
• Be Contactable – Do not ever become a faceless organisation and hide behind anonymous emails or, even worse, only have a help bot. Have a phone number where customers can contact you or your team as nothing puts off customers more than that feeling that your business does not care about them.
• Feedback – Listen to your customers. Regularly ask for feedback or, at the very least, learn from comments received. Make sure that you are actually providing what your clients want, and at a price that they are prepared to pay. Expect to adapt and be flexible as circumstances change.
• Market Positioning – Decide exactly where you are positioned in your market and ensure that your offering and pricing reflects that. If you are positioned at the premium end of the market do not try and offer a budget offering as this will destroy sales as well as your brand.
• Branding – Ensure that your branding helps to identify not only your product or service but also what type of customer service the customer should expect to receive. Don’t shout ‘quality’ if you are focused on budget as this will put off your target buyers and raise expectations. But shouting ‘budget’ when you offer premium services at a premium cost will also put off your target market.
• Complaints – Needless to say, always do all that you can to avoid getting any complaints but whenever they are received always make sure that they are resolved very quickly and very well. By doing this it demonstrates that you do care and that you value the customer. Doing this well can easily turn a negative into a positive as they will say how well they were treated. Do it badly and it can produce an even bigger negative. Reputations, good and bad, spread easily.

In short, the customer is always king even if you feel that on any particular occasion they may not be. Always remember that without customers you have no business.  Finding and securing new customers takes much more time and cost than retaining existing ones and making sure that they are happy and are repeat customers or are happy on long term contracts.

Outstanding customer service is a great free marketing tool in itself because as your good reputation spreads it encourages more potential customers to seek you out. It is so much easier for smaller and early-stage businesses to offer a personal service than for larger, often more faceless businesses to do so, so focus on your strengths.