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If you intend to build your business on a strong foundation, prioritizing customer service must be your primary goal. In today's highly competitive business and fast-paced world providing excellent customer service goes beyond mere "we're available for you". Customers seek quick and thorough resolution of their queries and aren't afraid to look elsewhere after a couple of poor experiences.
It is critical to building and maintaining a strong reputation, attracting new business, and retaining loyal customers. With so many players in the market, it can be challenging to stand out and deliver truly exceptional customer service. In this piece, we will explore strategies for elevating your customer service game to the next level.
To provide your freight customers with exceptional service, you must balance three key components: timeliness, reliability, and empathy. In other words, you must be timely in responding to customer quotes, reliable in delivering on your promises as a forwarder, and empathetic in understanding and addressing customer needs for exploring.
1. Empower your team with tools
Your staff's performance is only as great as the tools you provide them. Giving your team the tools, resources, and training they need to succeed is critical to delivering exceptional customer service. Prep your team with freight and logistics industry trends and provide them with relevant training regularly. For first-time shippers, your service team may have to handhold them through every step. If you can provide your customers with easy-to-use web-based solutions, you won't even need a huge team of customer service agents. For example, getting documents like invoices, and packing lists from your shippers may require multiple follow-ups. But with a link to upload and store documents, you can reduce the customer's effort and your team's too.
2. Keep your customers away from complexity
Shippers may not know much about the nitty-gritty of customs clearance and other processes of moving cargo internationally. Dealing with empathy is the key to winning the customer's long-term trust. Your support team must have the domain expertise to answer your customer's queries in a simplified and relatable manner, leading to better and faster resolution of queries. Empower your team members to make decisions. This is possible only with the right training and knowledge of the company process.
3. Invest in technology to reduce your customer queries
The right technology helps you derive meaningful statistics from the data gathered. For example, a freight management system can tell you your unanswered quotes, lead status, and pending follow-ups. Use technology to extend transparency, streamline processes, increase visibility, and provide real-time updates to customers, keeping them informed all the time. Integrations with third parties like customs, e-VGM, tax filing, and banks can be a great help to your customers and your service staff as well. Logi-Sys is an all-in-one freight forwarding and logistics management software that enables global logistics and freight services providers to up their customer service game.
4. Focus on customer convenience
Taking the customer-first approach is a great way to ensure your customers can forgive you for a few shortcomings. With timely, accurate, and safe delivery you become a vital part of your customer's business. Less is best. Reduce the number of times you reach out to your customer for formalities and documentation. Shippers are busy running their business and they'll appreciate minimum contact unless you need their intervention for a decision.
5. Solve Problems Quickly and Effectively
When issues do arise, it is critical to work out a best-fit solution and have an alternative in case the customer does not accept the first one. Rather than getting defensive about your company, take the moment of imperfection and peacefully arrive at an amicable solution. To address your customer complaints consistently and successfully, adopt a formal complaint resolution process.
Takeaway
Delivering exceptional customer service requires combining technology, and strategy with effective communication. By balancing these key components, you can elevate your customer service game and stand out in the bustling competition. Delivering impressive customer service gets easier with trusted freight management software like Logi-Sys. Get proactive and anticipate industry demands to be better equipped for exceptional customer service.