The importance of listening to your customers cannot be underestimated. The best people to give feedback on the service any company provides are their clients – they are experiencing that service first hand and their feedback is crucial in order to improve the service that is offered. But, of course, you can only find out how a customer is feeling if you speak to them!

Lots of companies will only contact you when they want to sell you something, but how nice would it be when the person on the end of the phone that tells you it’s “just a courtesy call” means just that? Customers want to feel wanted, customers want to know that you haven’t forgotten them, customers want service.

It’s also important that customers know how to contact you. Some websites are so difficult to navigate in order just to find a contact number for the department you need and then when you do call the number you get the ultimate frustration – “Your call has been placed in a queue…….Your call is extremely important to us” – Yes, so important that it could take up to 15 minutes to answer it!

It’s important to make it as easy as possible for customers to contact you, make the “contact us” section easy to find on the website and make sure that you plan your department staffing levels so that calls can be answered immediately at all times.

By keeping in regular contact with customers and making it as easy as possible for them to contact you, it will help build trust between you and your clients. And even in today’s competitive world, customers are often still willing to pay a little extra to be with a company that they trust. So when you do make that call to sell them the fantastic new product that you have just launched, they may just say yes.

Nick Boycott

Customer Contact Centre Manager