Become a Customer Service Superstar

Converting a prospect into a customer can be quite a difficult endeavor. Especially when you’re new at online sales. When a product or service begins to convert, your first reaction is to celebrate; to look at this moment as the end of all your hard work. The truth is, when a prospect becomes a customer, it’s really just the beginning.

It’s generally true that it is easier to sell to “warm” people who have already purchased something from you. However, that doesn’t mean you can just ignore these folks until you’re ready to present them with a new product. You have to handle these customers with kid gloves, making sure they remain happy and remember their satisfaction with your product.

Even one little issue that goes untreated or is badly handled can turn a current customer into a former customer. And most of the time when this happens, they’ll tell other people about their bad experience as well. So not only did you lose a customer, you have also lost other prospects.

So what can you do to make sure your customers remain happy and engaged? Here are three things you can (and must) do to keep your customers coming back for more.

Help Them

If a customer has an issue with a product or service, help them as fast as you possibly can. If you can’t immediately resolve the issue, at least keep in touch often as the issue is being fixed.

A good way to make sure you stay on top of customer issues is to implement a help desk. This doesn’t have to be a complicated application, it just has to let you know something is wrong and let the customer know that you are working on it. Most web hosts offer help desk freeware applications that automatically install in a few steps. Perl Desk and Support Logic Helpdesk are both free, easy to install and very user-friendly.

As you scale up your business, consider hiring someone – even just part time – to help you handle support requests. Sometimes a quick response makes all the difference, even if it takes you awhile to resolve the issue. I know that one of the reasons I love my web host (QHO) so much is that they never take longer than 15 minutes to reply to my requests (and I don’t just mean an auto-responder that says “Hi, we know something’s broken and we really care, but we’re not going to work on it until next week”) even in the middle of the night. Their help desk is easy to use and their techs – at all hours of the day and night – all have the skills to actually help.

The other piece of this is to have a good attitude about helping customers. This should go without saying, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called for assistance (and it happens often with larger companies) and spoken with someone who seemed irritated that I’d interrupted their web surfing. If you can’t be pleasant on the phone, hire someone who can or find a business that doesn’t require you to do any customer service (good luck with that one). The last thing an already irritated customer wants is a cranky support tech.

However, if you treat a customer poorly over one little conflict or request then that person will probably never do business with you again and you can bet that person will tell a few others how horrible you are to do business with. No matter how many times you have been nice, they will always remember your rudeness more clearly. Take the time to treat them right and they’ll stick around for more of your services or products.

Wow Them

Over-delivering is an excellent way to keep your customers more than satisfied. If they spend $47 on a product and you throw in several unannounced bonuses they will remember it. Customers are a lot less likely to complain when you’ve given them more than they expected.

There are a few rules of thumb when it comes to over-delivering properly. First of all, make sure that whatever bonuses you are throwing in actually have value. You can include 80 ebooks with your free report, but if those ebooks can be downloaded on every internet marketing freebie site or giveaway event then your customers will see right through you. Keep in mind that internet marketing is overrun with freebie sites all offering the same stuff and your customers have most likely already been to many of them. If you are outside the internet marketing/blogging/etc. niche or you provide a service, just make sure that it is actually worthwhile.

The second thing to keep in mind when over-delivering is that you shouldn’t over-do it. A high-quality item or service that goes above and beyond the order will be very appreciated. However, if you go too far with it not only do you run the risk of de-valuing your product and the bonuses, you also teach your customers to always expect over-the-top bonuses. If you are going to over-deliver be prepared to continue doing so as your customers might begin to expect it.

Remind Them

There are millions of people selling millions of items online. If you have managed to nab a customer or two, make sure you don’t let them get away. Once you have their contact details and their permission, send them regular updates, special offers and other information that might interest them. This way they’ll think of you first when it’s time to order a related product or service again.

Again, you do need to be careful with this. Do not attempt to immediately sell them something else right away. Do not email them every other day. And do not email them if they did not opt-in. There is a fine line between being helpful and being annoying. People’s email boxes are already overflowing, so if you plan to add to this mess make sure it’s something they can actually use.

I truly believe that you should not do any sort of business activity online (even if it’s just blogging about business) without having an autoresponder service. There are many choices out there, but you want to make sure the service you choose is reliable, trusted and has an excellent delivery rate (so your emails don’t go straight to the junk folder). I have tried several autoresponders of all types – free, self-hosted, paid – and I highly recommend Aweber. Their service is easy to use, extremely affordable and packed with features.

When you land a new customer, you should definitely celebrate. However, don’t forget that when the sale is done, your job is just beginning. Customers need to be treated like kings or else they will do business with one of the other thousands of options online. If you can become a customer service expert, you will be ten steps closer to online success.