Talking to customers takes more than just responding to emails, but as a start-up founder, do you have the time? As the founder, you’re doing a lot of different jobs and don’t have the time to really dive into customer communications. Instead, find some cheats to help you talk to your customers without putting all your time into it.
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Define Your Tone
If you’re the founder of a small business, the tone of your customer support probably sounds like you, but you shouldn’t assume that everyone knows what that means. Write down a few bullet points to define your tone, including:
- Casual or formal
- Conservative or trendy
- Emojis, or plain text
This can define the tone of how you speak to customers, whether through email or through a live chat plugin for website.
You can give all your communications a personal touch and keep everything on-brand. When you take on customer support staff, you already have a tone guide for them.
Research Your Clients
You might have good intentions on researching each new customer, and probably already invested time and money into product research. This isn’t a one-time thing though. Every time you speak to a customer is a chance to get a better understanding of their needs.
If you’re a business-to-consumer (B2C) company, this might seem very overwhelming, but you can make it easier by using customer support software. Look for one that lets you create customer profiles which you can fill with notes and details like job title, company, school, social media accounts, and so on. You can refer to these notes as you talk to a client.
Information like this can help you to better understand your customer’s needs and expectations more effectively.
If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) company, this is easier. Before you talk to a customer, you can google their business. Your search results can give you an idea of their business type and culture. With this information, you can offer more tailored solutions and give examples from their own product lines or services.
Listen More Than You Talk
Listening more than you talk might be an obvious cliche, but it’s still good practice for customer service. Business founders often have trouble with this too, so it’s worth keeping in mind, even it seems obvious.
If you’re trying to secure a sale, you might think it’s best to convince people that your product is the best there is. You will try to explain how your product or service can solve a customer’s problem before they’ve even finished asking their question.
To deliver a better customer experience, you should focus on the journey, as this is more than important than the destination. Take the time to understand the thought process of your customers. If you’re solving a problem, try to understand why they’re might be doing something the wrong way, how they think it should be done, and where the misunderstanding came from.
If you can understand this, you can use this information to improve your UX or product design and to implement new features.
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