Ways Small Businesses Can Rock Customer Support on a Budget

No matter what industry you operate in, you need to exceed expectations.

When it comes to customer support, this is especially important, as today’s customers expect top-level customer support.

If you fail to do so, you could see your churn rate increase as your customers jump ship to your competitors.

However, this can be tricky since your organization is already busy trying to improve other aspects such as product creation, marketing, and internal productivity.

With so many things on your plate, it can be hard to balance excellent customer service as well.

Still, it is crucial: great customer support can separate you from the rest, creating loyal fans in the process.

So in this article, we will cover 6 great ways to rock customer support. You can implement these in your small business, even if you have a limited budget and are short on time.

That way, you can increase your reputation, repeat purchases, and referrals for your company.

Let’s get started.

Make Customer Support Part of Your Company DNA

When a company is exemplary at something, it is because they make it part of their organizational DNA.

It’s not enough to simply do something one time. This is especially the case with customer support.

Just providing quality service for one person and ignoring the rest is a recipe for failure.

Instead, when you make it a key part of your company’s makeup, it will resonate with other parts of your business.

Then, instead of just having one happy customer, you’ll have many of them who bring referrals your way.

To make customer support part of your business identity, you need to do a few things.

First of all, you should write a clear mission statement. This will communicate your company’s core values.

Secondly, you need to be constantly reinforcing these values and holding your team accountable to ensure that your customer service remains top tier.

Call Your Customers

There are a lot of business activities that are a burden on your resources. However, calling your customers is not one of them.

It doesn’t cost any money for your customer service agents to pick up the phone and have a quick chat with your clients. And yet, it can make a big difference.

When you call your customers, you can make a personal connection with them.

It doesn’t take a lot of time or money, meaning that your small business can compete with larger businesses without having an endless budget.

And what kinds of things should you talk about on the phone call?

To start, you can ask your customers service-oriented questions. Also,  even focusing on more informal conversations can be a great strategy.

They personalized your brand in the eyes of your consumer.

Send Out Surveys and Questionnaires

A big mistake you should avoid is neglecting to send out enough surveys to your customers.

After all, you can’t know what parts of your customer journey are positive or negative without hearing it from the source.

There are various ways you can go about this; however, good questions to ask include:

• Would you recommend our service to your friends or family?
• What parts of our brand experience do you enjoy?
• What would you suggest we change or improve?
• How long have you been a customer?
• In what ways do our products or services add the most value to your life?

Asking great open-ended questions like this will help you receive more elaborate replies.

You can gauge what is working and what needs to be revised in your products, services, and customer service.

You may even find ways to change your marketing promises to better align with what your company delivers after the purchase.

Therefore, sending out surveys has more implications than you might realize.

Own Every Customer Problem

In order to really rock your customer support, you need to own every customer problem.

By taking sole responsibility, you and your support team will remain committed to solving each issue as it arises instead of procrastinating.

This helps you speed up your customer service resolution, which is a big factor in customer happiness. You also build trust with your client base.

When they know you will resolve their issues, they will want to reward you with their future business.

Therefore, a proactive approach will help you build relationships, and increase long-term revenues.

This is one of the primary keys to growing your business even in difficult economic conditions or with a small budget.

It is especially important when facing larger competitors in your niche who have unlimited pockets.

Perform Regular Evaluations

Doing regular analyses is a major component of continual customer support. Once per year is not enough.

Ideally, you review your processes and results in customer service at least once per quarter, and perhaps even more often.

If you are not doing so already, start tracking every customer service metric that is relevant to your business.

Thanks to modern software, you can automatically get data on various aspects of your customer behavior.

For instance, you can correlate the speed of issue resolution to your customer retention rate.

Furthermore, by tracking when someone becomes a customer and when they canceled their subscription or no longer bought something from you, you can reveal gaps in your support.

While tracking and analyzing your customer service journey can take some time to set up at first, it has substantial benefits.

Having solid data is always better than merely making guesses. And every insight you unlock will mean more growth for your bottom line.

Great Onboarding

To truly have rockstar-level customer service, you need the best onboarding process possible. That’s the stage at which great customer support and success start.

With great onboarding, you can positively impact your customer retention rates.

Think of it this way — it costs much more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

That means every time you can retain more customers with amazing onboarding, you increase your profits.

A fantastic onboarding process should be something that welcomes your customer and makes them feel valued, but also ensure you set them up for success with your company from day one.

This can include welcome email series, in-depth videos explaining your product, or customized support for each new customer.

By investing in the way you introduce your product to your customers upfront, you make things easier for the rest of the customer journey.

Remember, first impressions are the most important, so don’t avoid the important work of optimizing your onboarding to ensure you start off on the right foot.

Conclusion

Every company wants a way to stand out from the competition—but in the age of globalization, that can be more difficult than ever.

However, there are more ways to get ahead than simply having more flashy marketing pitches.

Customer service is one of the fastest ways to build your reputation and generate customer happiness.

Of course, it is not always easy if you don’t have a roadmap, and many small businesses struggle to provide great support with limited budgets.

That is why the six methods above can be so powerful.

If you apply them consistently in your business, you can enjoy happier clients for the long haul. That means more revenue, more referrals, and less hassle for your customer support team.