Essentials For Improving Face-To-Face Customer Service

Brands are more and more coming to recognize the importance of customer service. Whether it is face to face or online, they are taking steps to invest time and resources into understanding the importance of it all, and knowing how to best use it to create a loyal customer base and deliver some amazing service for their customers. It can be trickier to nail the face to face store interactions with customers, though, as much more is read into tone of voice, body language, and vocabulary than they are when just said through an email or on social media channels.

So what are the best ways to use that platform to grow your business and create a loyal base of customers?

As consumers, we can sometimes find that the brands that we follow online and buy from online, are somewhat lacking when it comes to customer service from one of their brick and mortar stores. So as a business owner in retail, it is so important to not forget about this element.

There really is a big financial imperative to make sure that your business can brush up on your customer service in stores, as well as keeping things running well online. So with all of that in mind, here are some customer service essentials to help you to run a better service in store. Have you found anything in particular has already been working for your business? It would be good to hear what you think.

Warm Welcome

Good customer service starts from the moment that a customer walks through the door of your store. You want to make sure that you don’t crowd them or intimidate them, but equally, you don’t want them to feel ignored.

Simple things like a smile and a nice greeting can go a long way with your customers.

Make them feel welcome, and target your welcome to them. If the store is a store aimed at younger people, much like brands like Hollister have shown before, the greeting is a ‘what’s up’ to give the young and fresh feel to their generally younger customers.

For a store that is targeted at older people, then that kind of welcome could be a little off-putting. So create a warm welcome as people enter your store, and it can make a big difference in how they feel in store, so ultimately how long they stay in the store.

Body language and being proactive

If you have ever looked into things like verbal and non-verbal communication, then you will know that there are some pretty interesting statistics around these things. Over half of what we mean by what we say can come from our body language or facial expressions, so being careful with the body language or expressions that we use when we work in retail, is really important for our customers.

We need to back up what we say with our reactions. For example, if a customer is trying something on and asking for our opinion, don’t tell them it suits them when your facial expressions give off a look that says something completely different.

It doesn’t take too much to be a retailer that is attentive and proactive either. Watch your customers, understanding what they are doing by their actions, and then you will be able to step in and help if it looks like they are confused or in need of help, for instance.

When you proactively help them to find what they’re have come in to look for, it not only puts money into the pockets of the business, but it helps them to have a positive experience with you, which they will remember.

Review and feedback

In business, you need to make sure that you are moving forward with things, otherwise it can be hard for your business to grow. So by reviewing how you do things at the moment, and then looking to change things as a result, can be a good way of doing things.

For example, looking into switching your current point of sale tech to Acumatica point of sale could help to improve things as it could allow for some quicker processing of over the counter sales transactions. This could allow for the management of cash register, printing of receipts, swiping of cards and scanning items to be improved, meaning a better experience for your customers.

Being able to provide great customer service is something that can feel like it is ongoing. But taking steps to improve, change, feedback, and then implement changes can be a massive benefit.

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