Best Ways to Improve Customer Service in Kenya

Offering a superior product or service is one way to get customers. The modern Kenyan customer however, is not only looking to get value from the product or service they are purchasing but they also base their buying decision on the overall shopping experience.

When a client receives great customer service, they will tell a few people but when they have an unpleasant experience, they will tell many people.

Your customer service team is key in the sustainability of your business. They have the chance to create unforgettable experiences for the customers which then translates to customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Having this in mind, as a business owner, how do you ensure that your team is consistently offering high quality customer service and improving on their service delivery?

Here are some solid tips that once implemented, guarantees a turnaround in your customer service and ultimately, your customer experience.

 

1.  Customer Service Culture

Exceptional customer service involves every component of the company and hugely depends on every employee. Customer service is not only for the customer service team but it should matter to every staff member whether they interact with clients or not.

Making service one of the core values of the company ensures that all staff understand the importance of a satisfied customer and they in turn support the customer care team that is actually tasked to deal directly with the clients.

It is important to involve the staff from the different functions of the business such as Finance, IT, HR, Procurement in matters regarding the Customer Care team. These teams are regularly overlooked but they have a great impact on customer service and may be in a position to contribute more in ways to improve customer service on issues affecting their respective departments.

It is important to ensure that the roles of each team member are clearly defined and customer centered. As a business owner or manager, it is important to also clearly define what exceptional service is and how to deliver it.

 

2.  Ask for Feedback:

The key to improving your customer service is getting to know the needs of your clients. When you understand what your customers need, you are then able to meet and satisfy their expectations.

Asking for feedback from your customers allows you to get information on the product or service that you offer. Feedback can be for instance; if it actually meets their needs, if there are areas that could be improved in regards to the product or service or the customer service team.

As a business owner, encourage your customers to give you feedback so that you get to know what is working and what needs to be changed. Customers feel valued when engaged by the companies they patronize.

It is important to have your customer care team diligently following up to get feedback from clients. Identifying a channel or channels that work for your company is also of great importance in reaching out to your customers. It could be a simple phone call or text after a purchase is made, sending out an email, a short survey form or online reviews.

Whenever feedback is received, it is ideal to appreciate the client for taking time to share their feedback and in case it was a negative feedback, it would be prudent to advise the client on the corrective measures that will be undertaken.

 

3.  Personalizing the Service:

Is it not always delightful when someone addresses you by your name? Whether it’s a greeting or when the attendant of a store/ shop that you frequent calls you by your name or an email sent to you but they don’t just say “Hello” but they complete the salutations with your name.

They say the devil is in the small details, your customer’s name may not seem like it’s much but it goes a long way to show the client that your value and appreciate them.

Personalized customer service can also increase the chance of your customers being loyal to your company because they feel that they are part of the brand and they trust your company.

As business owners and managers, there is need for your customer service team to offer standardized and personalized customer service. This includes:

-Using customer’s names

-Greeting and welcoming the customer warmly.

-Appearing genuinely interested in the customer and their situation

-Carefully listening to the client’s needs and being able to phrase the same back to the client.

-In case of a complaint, showing empathy to the client.

-Asking relevant questions to find out what the client needs.

-Seeking and providing the best solutions to client’s concerns.

 

4.  Exceed Customer’s Expectations:

It is one thing to meet the needs of a customer but going over and above what is expected is the best way to grow customer loyalty. This may not even mean going overboard to impress your loyal customer but just simple but meaningful gestures will suffice.

For instance, a birthday message and maybe a discount to shop at your store, an upgrade of a ticket or hotel room booking if the client is travelling to celebrate a milestone. Imagine the joy on your customer’s face when they find out they won’t be travelling in economy class for maybe an eight-hour flight!

People will always love to shop where there are deals, discounts or rewards. So go ahead and reward your loyal customers. This could be via the company’s loyalty program where your loyal customers get extra discounts for points earned via the loyalty program.

Happy customers are more likely to come back and make another purchase hence improving your customer service may greatly impact your customer loyalty.

 

5.  Treat your employees the way you treat your customers

Happy employees lead to happy customers. Paying attention to the needs of your staff and addressing issues that they may have, will help improve your customer service. When staff work from a position of contentment, they are able to offer high quality service to your customers.

As a business owner, get to understand how your employees feel about the company and their team leaders. You can review this via surveys, internal staff forums or via staff representatives. The most important thing is to ensure that employees have an open channel of communication should they want to an issue addressed or if they want to make a proposal.

You can also consider introducing a recognition and reward scheme for employees who deliver exceptional customer service. Such schemes normally have to be commercially viable but they would be return on this kind of investment due to the additional customer service results attained.

They say “behavior breeds behavior” and the actions of your employees will affect those around them especially those that they are meant to serve. When you look after your employees, they will in turn look after your customers.

 

6.  Automation – Adopt Service Technology in Customer Service:

Automating customer service communication or adopting customer service software will go a long way to standardize communication, make it efficient for customer service agents to solve issues and overall help improve customer service.

As opposed to having your customer agents repeatedly answering some of the common questions that constantly come up, it would be ideal to have automated answer templates. The agents would still need to personalize their message to their clients and they can achieve this by having placeholder fields on the template that prompt the agent to use the client’s name.

Take for instance a mobile service provider whose customer care agents get questions about forgotten passwords, how to buy data etc. These are questions that keep coming up multiple times in a day.

Giving your customer care team a template with pre-written answers ensures that they provide solutions in a simple manner that does not overwhelm the client. The beauty of customer service tools is that they have artificial intelligence capabilities that help in ensuring service offered by different customer agents is consistent.

 

7.  Invest in Customer Service Training:

Great customer service largely depends on human interaction and so it doesn’t matter what technological tools you have made available to your team, if they don’t understand the fundamental skills of customer service, they will still fail at delivery.

As a business owner you may decide to have the managers or team leaders give short training sessions for those internal training or when you on-boarding a new team. It is however necessary to ensure that the managers have the right resources to deliver these trainings such as products, services, training guides, exercises etc.

However, for an in depth training it is important to engage a training professional who will take time to learn your business, understand your strategy and standards and then tailor make a training suitable for your team.

The trainer should be able to help you choose the most ideal exercises and activities in order to effectively achieve your set goals.

So has your team been trained on customer service? Feel free to reach out to Customer Centric Kenya to help you improve on the delivery of your customer service.