Best Practices for Exceeding Customer Expectations

You already know how essential good customer service is for your organization. Around 80% of American consumers say that “speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service” makes their customer service experience stand out. But how good is good enough? Do you reach a benchmark and maintain it or do you look to go the extra mile? 

You should be striving to constantly improve your customer service provision, especially with a constant flow of new and emerging technologies you can utilize. When it comes to exceeding customer expectations, how do you implement new ideas and tools that will elevate your service to the next level? How can you streamline workflows to provide a memorable customer experience (CX)? 

Why consider exceeding customer expectations? 

You may already be providing great customer service so why look at taking it up a notch? If your customers are already happy, will exceeding customer expectations make them happier? What benefits will customer service improvements bring?

• More sales. If you’re providing fantastic customer service, then you will likely see an upsurge in CLV (customer lifetime value) as more people recognize that your service adds to the customer journey. 
• Customer loyalty. Satisfied customers means your customer retention rates can rise. In turn, that lowers your average CAC (customer acquisition costs) which can mean higher revenue levels returning customers spend around 67% more than new customers. Better customer service can also boost metrics such as your NPS (net promoter score). 
• Marketing. What business would turn up its nose at free marketing? Those loyal customers will often become brand ambassadors, recommending your brand to friends and family and openly advocating for your products on social media. You may also see more positive reviews which can drive new customers to your website or social media pages. 
• Lead the pack. Many sectors can be fiercely competitive and anything that gives you an edge on your competitors is welcome. If two businesses are offering the same product for the same price, superb customer service could be what tips the scales in your favor. 

Best practices for exceeding customer expectations

So, you can see that having even better service than you currently have could bring many different benefits to your business. What areas of your customer service should you be looking at and how can you improve them? 

1. Omnichannel 

In this digital age, it’s crucial that brands meet customers where customers prefer and that’s applicable for customer service as well as sales and marketing efforts.

You may already be using several channels, but are there more you could introduce? It’s important to focus on preferred customer touchpoints, ensuring that these are fully covered.

Analyzing your customer data can help identify any missing channels that you don’t currently offer. Build a roadmap that includes both touchpoints and pain points so that you can construct the ideal customer journey that ensures customer satisfaction. An omnichannel strategy can also help you maintain consistency in your messaging. 

2. Listen 

Your customers are the best experts when it comes to customer service so listen to them. You may already be collecting data on your brand and products, but are you listening to your customers when it comes to customer service? Gather all the customer service data you can, analyze it, and make changes where needed. Customer feedback may identify what you are doing right but it can also highlight issues, including ones you hadn’t been aware of.

There are various ways you can collect data beyond any in your CRM (customer relationship management) system. 

• Surveys: These are maybe the best way to collect feedback as you can customize them to ask specific questions or focus on different areas. You could have a simple one at the end of a customer service call, send one to subscribers to your email list, have a pop-up on your website, or even post them on your social media pages. 
• Social media: Away from your own pages, what are people saying about you? Using social media listening tools lets you monitor conversations where people mention your brand. As well as searching for mentions of your brand name, look at any related hashtags or mentions of your products. 
• Reviews: Reviews are not only good for spreading brand awareness and attracting new customers, they can also offer insights into customer sentiment surrounding your brand and your customer service department. As with social media listening, you can use a media monitoring tool to track mentions not on your own site or pages and that appear on independent review sites.

3. Personalization 

Personalization is a tactic that you should be applying to customer service as well as your marketing strategy. Your CRM contains a lot of information about existing customers, from basic contact details to a history of customer service interactions and purchasing history. This allows agents to greet a caller like an old friend. 

For example, someone calls your customer service team with questions about one of your products. Data held on your business telephone system helps your agent see any previous similar discussions and can personalize the conversation beyond using the customer’s name and discuss different aspects of the solution than those that have previously been talked about. 

4. Add self service options 

Around 88% of customers prefer self service options when shopping so why should it be any different when it comes to customer service? Many of the issues customers face may be common and fairly simple. For example, a customer who is unsure how to set up their new SaaS product and turns to you for help.

Your self service options can include an FAQ section (for the most common problems) and a knowledge base that can also include video guides (such as ‘how to’ videos). For complex products, you could provide tutorials that guide the customer through different stages of the service or product. Chatbots can also be helpful, even if only used to help guide a customer to the right agent or team. 

5. Be proactive 

It’s not always the case that customers reach out to you; being proactive can be a positive in customer service. For example, you have seen that a customer has left a fairly negative review of one of your products. As this is unusual, one of your agents reaches out through your outbound call center solutions to find out what the specific problems entailed and tries to find a solution. 

Being proactive goes beyond that, though. You could have your agents reach out to new customers (or customers who have recently purchased a service from you) and help them with onboarding and setting up their product. They could also reach out if someone abandoned their cart before checkout to find out why. It could be an easy fix if something simple like shipping charges. It’s all about ensuring your service is customer-centric. 

6. Technology 

While customers love the personal touch, they also want any issues to be expedited as quickly as possible. With constantly evolving tech out there, look at how you can integrate some of it into your customer service provision. Automation can be something that helps take your service to the next level. 

It could be something such as IVR (Interactive voice response) or chatbots in your call center that can help ensure a caller is directed to the correct agent or team (this can also help boost your first call response (FCR) rate). You can also automate welcome emails for new customers. One of the primary benefits of using automation for simple or repetitive tasks is that it frees up your agents to deal with complex issues. 

7. Improve communications

Providing omnichannel options is one step in providing excellent customer service but you should also look at other communication options too. Time is precious and customers don’t want to wait in long call center queues or wait for days for a reply to their email. By understanding the pain points your customers experience, you’re better placed to solve them.

One major solution is live chat. Having this option on your website means their questions can be answered quickly. And by having any initial chat being hosted by an AI-powered chatbot, you can solve some problems or escalate them to a human agent. By offering the customer different options such as live chat, phone, or email, you are enhancing their customer journey. 

The takeaway 

When you provide positive experiences for customers, they remember them and that can be reflected in customer loyalty and boosted CLVs. Of course, part of that comes from you ensuring that every customer service representative has been trained to the highest level and that you also provide coaching and refresher training where needed.. 

Customer service expectations will always be high, whether for customer complaints or simple queries. Your agents should also be prepared to deal with different customer behaviors, from angry to confused. Though there can be challenges in some aspects of customer service, you should acknowledge that exceeding customer expectations benefits your customers, your agents, and your business as a whole.