Top 5 Customer Service Mistakes

Top 5 Customer Service Mistakes

Knowing how important it is to treat your customers could mean the life and death of your business. If you are aware of common customer service mistakes and avoid them, you may strengthen your position in a competitive market.

1. Untrained staff. If your employees are not trained on how to treat your customers, you may as well count on losing half of your customer base. It doesn’t matter whether you have 2 employees or 50, training every employee is a must in ANY business.

2. Playing the “who’s right” game. It takes 5 times more effort and cost to gain one new customer as it takes to maintain one current customer. If you have to win that one argument then your business will end up being the cost of it.

3. Inaccessibility. Have you ever called to talk to someone about a problem or just to get answers about your account and you have to leave message after message to have someone call you back? It makes the customer feel that they are unimportant and now one really cares about their question or concern. If you want to see repeat business you need to be more accessible to your customers, even for the small things.

4. Unfulfilled promises. If you promise a customer that something would be ready by Thursday, then it should be there by Thursday. When you cannot make this happen, do not make excuses; the only words you need to remember are "We're sorry," backed up by an extra effort to make the customer happy. Offer a discount or a complimentary service then next time they come in.

5. Forgetting the basics. "Please," "thank you," "we're sorry about the inconvenience," and so on are simple phrases that cost nothing, take little effort, and win big points.