All that seems to matter right now is customer service. All businesses repeatedly emphasize that their number one goal is to provide the best customer service to their loyal patrons. While it is quite easy to plan out, sometimes, execution doesn’t seem to cut it. Others have perfected it, but mind you, these companies continue to evolve and think of better ways to improve their performance; however, the environment is also a factor to its success.
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Now that times have changed and technology has become more used by people, marketers also found ways to perform marketing in the digital world. One of the first things every great marketer and company should accomplish is to build a website. A website features everything about the company – its mission and vision, history, portfolio, featured clients, as well as their products and services. It is a one-stop-shop for all potential clients where they can easily view all the details they need to learn about the company. Before we go deeper into that topic, let’s first understand the real meaning of customer service by looking back to how it all began.
History of Customer Service
As far back as 300 BC, humans have been engaged in trade, where an exchange of goods and services with other merchants would occur. While the term customer service has not yet been properly coined, many people, merchants for that matter, have already found ways and strategies on how to treat their customers to trade more goods and forge loyal partnerships and relationships. In the Industrial Age, the term became recognized and paved the way for people to perform well to impress their consumers. The most obvious customer service tactic was made by Watkins Liniment, as it became the very first company to offer a money-back guarantee. After this strategy was developed, a lot of other organizations pursued the same approach. With the competition rising and everyone else offering the same thing over and over again, other companies challenged themselves by looking outside the box and finding more innovative ways to compete. Today, the rise of technology and the Internet allowed companies and service providers to level up their customer service abilities by extending it to their websites and social media accounts.
How to Make Your Website Customer Friendly
The goal is to have a well thought out customer experience. Thus, aside from increasing your SEO score and showing number one in Google searches, your website needs to be a place where your customers will feel comfortable so that you can increase more traffic to your page.
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1. Complete your website’s details.
Your website is a representation of you and your company, and forgetting to put details like your company number and email says that you’re not very thorough after all. In building a website, you need to prepare it properly and become reachable. Yes, your site might be up and running, but you keep wondering why you never get any inquiries or calls. Well, check again because you might have just missed the most important details that your customers can use to reach you. Aside from your contact details, you should also include your company’s address. While a lot of viewers might be from overseas, there are also a handful of people who are in the same region you belong in, and sometimes, a good face to face interaction might be the only thing to seal the deal.
2. Add a contact form.
Websites are quite complex but as difficult as they are, they have a lot to offer. WordPress sites are usually easy to manage, and because of the unlimited number of plugins you can choose from, you can solve almost every problem you can think of and install as many fixes as you can. One of the most used plugins aside from SEO analyzers is the contact form. Contact forms can be attached to different parts of a certain page, be it at the top, bottom, or if you want, you can dedicate a whole page that says “Contact Us,” which is very common in every site right now, and embed your contact form there. Usually, when customers visit your website, they find it too time-consuming to fire up their email to send you one or type in your number to give you a call. It’s always convenient to have a contact form ready on your home page so that they don’t have to open other platforms to reach you. They can easily input their contact details so you can get back to them and their message. Since you are delving into a data collection technique here, make sure your website is secure. This will not only protect your customers’ information but yours as well.
3. Add a Facebook Chat plugin.
Chatbots are online applications that converse with people in real-time. Through chatbots, a person can just send a message, and someone from the other end will automatically reply to the inquiry. Facebook Chat plugins offer just that. Aside from this, chatbots can also allow users to set a schedule for consultation in case the present time is not very convenient for them. This is very important because some customers do not want to wait around for an answer. Likewise, having this type of automation will make users appreciative of your efforts to be available all the time. This shows that you value not just them but their time as well.
4. Add clickable links to your social media accounts.
While you can put almost everything on your website, it’s important not to congest it with things that will work better on another platform. Thus, make a habit of including clickable links, represented by images and icons, which will redirect your customers to the respective social media account of their choice. Everyone is on social media, so as active as you are on your website, your social media accounts should also be updated regularly with new and interesting content every week.
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There are more things you can do to keep your customers occupied and interested in your brand. The four things mentioned above are the key ingredients to have a successful customer service program through your website. As the years go by, a lot of things will continue to change. Thus, you and your company should continue to learn and adopt the latest trends in the industry.
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