6 Tips on How To Treat Customers Professionally

What makes a customer service experience excellent? Ultimately, it all comes down to how you make your customers feel. Remember: happy customers lead to a thriving business!

Remember: happy customers lead to a thriving business! 

In this article, we collected everything you need to know about how to treat your customers professionally, what steps to follow to make them feel satisfied with your service, and what to focus on for long-term success.

Why should you treat your customers well?

In our increasingly competitive world, customer expectations are continuously growing. Unless you go out of your way to guarantee that your customers feel happy, you might risk losing them. 

The math is simple. Unhappy customers stop paying for your services = you lose revenue. Happy customers want to continue buying from you and even tell their friends about it = you boost conversions.

Happier customers lead to higher long-term revenue and a better reputation for your company. Downplaying the importance of customer service is a big mistake. 

See how to Retain Customers and Win Their Loyalty.

Read for free

6 Ways To Make Customers Feel Special

A good customer relationship goes a long way. Let’s look at 6 steps you can take to make your customers feel more satisfied with your service.

#1 Active listening is a must

What a basic idea, right? Yet, it’s one of the most commonly overlooked concepts.

Active listening is more than just letting the caller speak without interruption. To make your customers feel truly heard, show your understanding by asking questions, repeating back the key ideas, or simply saying a few encouraging, affirming words, like,  ‘I see what you mean, ‘Please keep going’, or ‘I’m sorry you went through this’.

Make sure that you remember everything the caller tells you (take notes!), and guarantee that you’ll do everything in your power to find a suitable solution.  

Even the most irate customers tend to feel a bit calmer when they know that the company they gave their money to is not ignoring their concerns. 

#2 Actions speak louder than words

Words are empty when they’re not backed up with actions. Anyone can make promises – prove that your business is different by keeping them. For example, if you tell the customer that you’ll get back to them within 24 hours, make sure you send them a follow-up message before the day is over. 

Or, instead of just saying “sorry”, give the customer a gift, a free upgrade, or any token of appreciation that seems appropriate in your case.

Your customers will notice that you go out of your way to guarantee the best possible customer experience. 

#3 Invest In Quality Customer Service Processes

With modern-day VoIP solutions, technology is here to help you boost customer experience. 

For example, you can ask your customers to provide feedback on your product or service or ask them to rate their current satisfaction levels with a simple tap on their phone screens. 

Receiving regular feedback can help you stay on track with the current level of customer satisfaction and step in before it’s too late.

But don’t worry – you and your team won’t need to spend extra time sending out these forms after each call. A VoIP telephony tool like CloudTalk can automatically send out such surveys to the customer right after their interaction with your support team, thanks to Workflow Automation. 

#4 Make things easy for your customers

When all information is at our fingertips, we don’t want to waste time looking for them. Often, it’s less effort to go to the competitor instead. 

However, if you anticipate their needs, your clients will feel that you truly care about making their lives easier, winning some brownie points – and recurring customers.

Show your customers that you respect the time and money they invested in your services by making things easy for them. 

For example, create a thorough knowledge base section on your website that answers most FAQs, make the “Chat with us” icon visible at all times throughout your website and apps, place dynamic QR codes on your physical products, make all important buttons (login, upgrade, cancellation, etc.) visible, and so on.

#5 Focus On Individual Customer Stories

Everyone is different. Even if you only sell one product or service, your customers might come from different backgrounds, have different levels of knowledge or experience, and wish to solve different problems. Acknowledging this fact is crucial – and with the technology we have today, it’s not even that complicated. 

The number one thing you need to take advantage of is segmentation. 

For example, create different groups (or segments) within your email subscribers based on their purchase history, demographics, or activity. This could be useful if you’re running a travel agency, law firm, or dental office.

Why is that useful?

Well, imagine that you have products that keep you warm in winter – you may not sell them to a whole lot of people in Mexico. In fact, they might feel like you’re wasting their time with such an offer, and might not open your future emails as a result. Send your products to your subscribers from Norway instead! 

On top of that, you can also use skill-based routing and ACD (automatic call distribution) in your call center. You could add VIP customers to your 24/7 support line or send foreign callers to agents who speak their language.

With VoIP software features such as real-time customer cards, call notes, or contact history, your agents will have all the information about the caller right in front of them. 

Imagine the frustration you take off your customers’ shoulders by not making them repeat their backstory over and over! 

#6 Show Respect and Use Proper Language When Speaking on the Phone

Your customers deserve your respect. After all, your business would likely fail if they took their money elsewhere.

As Kenneth B. Elliott allegedly said:

(We highly recommend printing this quote as a daily reminder) 

Even if you find it hard to handle difficult customers, always remember the bigger picture: customers keep companies alive. 

As long as you’re representing your company, give customers the respect they deserve and show that in your language.

For example, never fight back or hurt the customer, even if they sound irrational; and never say “I don’t know” to their request, but offer to go the extra mile and see what’s possible.

Keep in mind that customers, however difficult they might be at times, are the ones that are responsible for your salary. The nicer and more empathetic you’re with them, the more likely they’ll keep paying the company you work for, thus enabling your monthly paycheck.

When you remember this, it’ll help you instantly handle customers with respect. 

We compiled 9 ways to treat difficult customers, and you can read them in this blog post.

Taking good care of the customer also means….

…knowing how to thank them

Customer service agents should always know how to show appreciation. Forget all cliché phrases used in every other phone call. The thank-you statement should fit the specific situation. The traditional “thank you for your time” can turn an upset customer into a furious one. In that case, it would be more appropriate to say, “thank you for your understanding and patience“. Communication should always be tailored to the customer. 

In addition to picking the right words, you can also show appreciation via action. For example:

• Send a handwritten thank-you note
• Provide a free sample
• Go the extra mile with helpful tips and solutions
• Offer a special discount

…knowing how to say sorry, if you were mistaken

‘Sorry’ might not come easy, but a call center agent should never be frugal with this word.

However, the point we made in the previous section also holds true in this case. Just saying ‘sorry’ is empty and meaningless. 

Or worse, sometimes a ‘sorry’ can be downright offensive – the customer might feel like your company is covering their lack of effort with this overused expression.

Always be specific, empathetic, and proactive – for example, “I’m sorry that we couldn’t find a solution to your problem. I understand why it’s an inconvenience for you. While I cannot promise a solution today, let me offer a workaround / a refund / a free month”.

While you can’t make every customer happy, often you can decrease frustration with a proper apology. 

Put your focus on how to turn customers into lifelong clients

Ultimately, your goal is to boost your company’s reputation, attract new clients and turn your existing ones into loyal, recurring customers. 

The best way to start is by going out of your way to keep customer satisfaction high. 

Here’s a checklist for you:

• How long does it take to solve a customer query? Is there a way you could keep it shorter?
• Are you asking only specific, relevant questions? Anything that’s fluff is wasting your caller’s time, thus increasing their impatiens and dissatisfaction.
• Does the customer generally end the conversation in a better or worse mood than how they started the conversation? What do you think causes the change in their mood?
• When you can’t solve a problem, how do you make sure that the customer still leaves with a good impression of the company?

Professional discussion requires patience

Handling customers professionally requires many soft skills that might take years to develop. Don’t worry if your agents haven’t got the hang of it just yet. Encourage continuous deliberate practice, training sessions, and learning from the recordings of your best-performing agents.

Even if the result is not yet perfect, any improvement might result in a few more customers. 

A pro tip for improving your agents’ soft skills: practice with role-playing games where they’re the customers who have a problem; and also encourage them to take notes whenever they make a purchase in their personal life that they need assistance with. 

Knowing how it feels to be on the other side and how easy it is to get confused, frustrated, angry, or anxious can help your agents not only to gain awareness and understanding but also come up with more useful and realistic ways to deal with difficult customers. 

Ready to provide excellent customer service?

Which one of these steps can you implement right now? Here is one we can help with: start by implementing the right technology to get instant customer feedback, have easy access to customer profiles, monitor your agents to continuously improve their performance, and more!