Salesforce - What is customer service?

Believe it or not, your customers’ needs are also your business’s needs. Great customer service ensures customers are so happy, they’ll come back for more and pay your business the greatest of dividends: Good word-of-mouth.

And the benefits of customer service go way beyond its dictionary definition. It can help you understand who your customers are and how they interact with your product or service. And that can drive solutions to help other customers.

So, in a nutshell, customer service is much more than just solving customer issues — it’s about creating the overall experience your business wants to give its customers.

That’s called "customer experience", and it encapsulates every interaction a customer has with a business, from seeing an advertisement for a product, to actually using the product, to reaching out to a company for help.

How do you use customer service to create an outstanding customer experience?

1) Make customers feel important — Hear them out, respond in a timely fashion, acknowledge them, and follow up with them. Do this well and they’ll want to stick around.

2) Empathize with them — Understand why they need your product or service, and why their issue is an obstacle. Empathy is critical for solving customer issues.

3) Take their feedback to heart — Good or bad, when customers have something to say, be sure to listen. They often suggest solutions you never would have thought of that can unleash your business’s potential.