7 Effective customer service strategies for improving customer service in your business

Customer service... Much we have already written about it. Customer service is important. Not only is it often one of the few channels through which there is 1 on 1 contact with customers. It is also a very good thermometer of what is going right and especially wrong within your organization. In addition, it is often crucial in the entire customer experience. For example: You have ordered something from a webshop and something goes wrong with the delivery. The customer service of that specific webshop can make that problem a whole lot bigger by then not having their customer service in order (long waiting times, unfriendly staff, only being able to mail for example). Or they have their customer service in order and solve the problem nicely and kindly for you. In the first case you will be lost as a customer, in the second case probably not. In this blog 7 Effective customer service strategies for improving customer service in your business.

1. Create a customer-centric culture:

Seems obvious. The moment customer focus is central, customer service will automatically be better than when it is not. A customer-oriented culture means that the customer experience is central to the decisions that are taken. Then really, because we come across a lot of companies that shout this but don't really show it at all in practice.

2. Make sure you know who your customers are:

To provide good customer service, you need to know who your customers are and what they expect from you. Only when you really know who your customer is and why he is a customer with you can you shape customer experience.

3.Communicate effectively and professionally:

It is better to provide very good service through one channel than to provide very mediocre service through five channels. Choosing the right channels is based on what your customer wants and what you are able to offer. Make sure you can actually handle the channels you offer well. Telephony? Make sure your employees are good at making phone calls and that the phone is answered quickly. Very simple.

2. Make sure you know who your customers are:

3.Communicate effectively and professionally:

 5/5

What our customers say about our services

As a start-up, we were looking for a scalable solution for our international customer service. We then started a partnership with SpangenbergGroep. In the years that followed, we grew rapidly and SpangenbergGroep ensured that our customer service grew nicely along with us. From a few hundred interactions per month to a few hundred interactions per day across all possible channels. In particular, its flexibility and ability to completely unburden us have enabled us to grow from start-up to multinational.

"Our collaboration has now been running for almost 2 years and I must say it has exceeded my expectations. It is always difficult to convey product content knowledge remotely and this has also forced us to look at our own documentation and training courses. Working together has taught us, at least me, that it is unnecessary and actually undesirable to transfer all knowledge in this way. For instance, we now have comprehensive lists and work instructions, where before we built on the individual knowledge of our own team. Why go it alone when we know more together? In other words, why do it the hard way when it can be done together."

In our peak season, we had to deal with a large increase in customer inquiries. Since we operate in almost all European countries, this was a challenge. We started looking for a partner who could support us in Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, French and English. In addition, we wanted support on telephony, e-mail, chat and ticketing. In the end, we chose SpangenbergGroep. We have now been working with them for 5 years. In the high season we need a lot of staff and in the low season a lot less.

We have our own internal call center where we handle much of our customer service inquiries ourselves. SpangenbergGroup is a flexible shell for us. We have a permanent staff and SpangenbergGroup's team supports us when it's busy. In this way, we avoid a queue for our customers. The employees of SpangenbergGroep carry out almost all tasks, which means that they fully participate as the first line. This gives us the flexibility to be easily accessible even when we are busy.

With our webshop, we wanted to expand into Germany. We ourselves did not have any German-speaking employees who could answer customer service questions. SpangenbergGroup is now helping us with German customer service so that we can simply provide good accessibility for our German customers as well.

4. Facilitate your employees:

Make sure you give your employees what they need to do their jobs well. To do that, you need to have a good understanding of what their work looks like. Then help them do it as well but also as easily as possible. Make knowledge available, make sure they have somewhere to go with questions and listen to them.

5. Optimize business processes:

On an ongoing basis, look at how things are going. What could be better, smarter, easier or more convenient. Both internally and for your customers. Look at what your customers contact you about and whether you can prevent that from happening. Process optimization is an ongoing process where there is always something to improve.

6. Measure customer satisfaction:

Partly you measure whether your customers are satisfied because you want to know, of course. On the other hand, you also want to know what they are not satisfied with. You can use this input to optimize your business processes and it gives you a good thermometer at the moment that you carry out customer satisfaction surveys on an ongoing or regular basis. Is customer satisfaction getting better or worse? If you measure it, you know and you can work on it.

7. Outsource your customer service (in part):

It is not easy to set up your customer service effectively, efficiently and professionally. Outsourcing customer service may then be a solution. Did you know that worldwide as many as 62% of companies partially outsource their customer service? An outside agency often has much more experience, capacity and technical capabilities to do customer service effectively, efficiently and professionally."

As far as our blog on 7 Effective customer service strategies!

About us

SpangenbergGroup is a family business with 25 years of experience in customer contact, customer experience and customer service. With a no-nonsense approach, we help organizations with the improving the customer experience and the optimizing customer service.

With a team of professionals with extensive experience and an independent view, we can support on all kinds of customer experience and customer service issues.

Do you have a customer experience or customer service challenge and can't figure it out? Take Just get in touch with us! up! We like that.