Customer service is not always an easy task for professional service providers, but creating exceptional experiences is well worth your time. Great customer service helps drive business growth—happy clients tend to stick around and recommend your services to others.
For your clients to have the best experience possible, you need to find the right balance between technical knowledge and communication skills. Here are five customer service tips to help your small business provide excellent customer service every time you interact with a client.
1. Remember to be human
It may be just a job to you, but to your clients, the work is likely personal! No matter what service you’re providing, there’s a human being behind the paperwork. Keeping this in mind could help you provide them with a better experience.
Every client you work with wants to be heard and understood. Actively listening to their goals and concerns can help you learn more about them and what they need from your professional services.
2. Use your emotional intelligence skills
Emotional intelligence can help professional service providers better communicate with their clients. Using empathy to read the emotions of others helps you understand where they are coming from. It can also guide your response, helping you avoid potential issues that could arise from a misunderstanding.
For instance, some clients are more demanding than others. This can be frustrating for you, but using your emotional intelligence skills could help smooth over potentially heated conversations. Your response to these clients will determine the direction of the relationship (which may be a long one, depending on the services your business provides).
There are many tips online to help you practice your emotional intelligence skills, as well as short courses that could give you more in-depth guidance on how to use them in the workplace.
3. Use positive language
The words you use with clients can set the tone for the entire conversation. Using positive language can help improve a client’s experience with your business. It can be a powerful way to let them know things are under control and that they’re in good hands.
Using positive language may be as simple as reassuring a client that a problem with your work is easily fixed. This could help the client feel more confident about the situation and the outcome of your work. While you can use positive language to put a positive spin on things, it doesn’t mean trying to downplay a client’s concerns.
4. Give clear and concise answers
You’re an expert in your field, which is why clients hire you for your professional services. However, it’s important to remember that your clients probably don’t share the same level of skill or knowledge as you. They may come to you with what they think is a simple question, not knowing that the answer is a lot more complex than they imagined!
Answering client questions as clearly and concisely as possible can give your clients a better customer experience. They probably don’t need to know every detail of the work you’re doing for them. Giving them just the highlights, explained in a way that’s easy for them to understand, could keep your clients from getting overwhelmed or nervous about the work you’re doing for them.
5. Keep learning
For many professional service providers, industry changes and new legislation can greatly impact their clients. Keeping an ear to the ground for these types of important updates is helpful. It keeps your knowledge current and helps back up your expertise to clients old and new.
Of course, some learning opportunities happen closer to home. Professional service providers can learn from their mistakes and put steps in place to ensure they don’t happen again. Admitting your mistakes to clients is often the first step to finding a solution.
You might also want to have a professional service insurance policy, such as Professional Indemnity, to help you shoulder the costs of fixing errors in your work. In a worst-case scenario, Professional Indemnity could help you recover from a negligence claim or lawsuit.
6. Use customer service tools
Many small business owners and their staff wear many different hats to keep the business running. Professional service providers can use customer service tools to help them manage their workload and improve customer service.
Tools for streamlining communication, automating repetitive tasks, and catching costly mistakes could help you run your small business more efficiently. If you can cut down on admin and decrease work bottlenecks, it could free up time to focus on your clients. This may help you deliver more and better services that help you grow your small business.
Professional Service Customer Tips Recap
There are many ways for professional service providers to give their clients a great customer experience every time, including:
- Remember, you’re dealing with other human beings
- Use emotional intelligence skills to guide your response
- Use positive language to reassure your clients
- Provide clear and concise answers to client questions
- Keep up with industry changes and learn from mistakes
- Use customer service tools to your advantage
Protecting your small business
Are you looking for ways to protect your professional services business? You may want to consider business insurance. Professional Indemnity is an essential type of professional service insurance for small businesses. This cover, along with other kinds of insurance, could help protect you against expensive claims and lawsuits.
BizCover is business insurance made easy. Compare quotes and buy policies in minutes—no paperwork, no hassles!
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