Customer service can feel like a chore. After all, it’s all about dealing with customers who are complaining that things are going wrong and resolving annoying problems.

Actually, if you have this attitude, you’ll end up offering a terrible customer service — it will be memorable in the worst way. You could even end up losing customers, gaining negative reviews, and ruining your chances of a recommendation.

On the flip side, if you offer exceptional customer service, you may receive the exact opposite: loyal customers, positive reviews, and word-of-mouth marketing. To achieve this, you need to know at least the basics of customer service.

Setting Customer Service Goals

You have your core business goals and all your business strategies (such as marketing and sales) have their own goals that relate to these. Customer service should be no exception. Some ideas for goals you may like to set include:

• Improve your understanding of customer needs.

• Exceed customer expectations.

• Gain repeat sales from customers.

• Resolve problems in a timely manner.

Provide Your Team with Appropriate Tools

Customer service software has a variety of functions: it can help you track the status of requests, set priorities, respond to queries, or just manage your customer service overall. Consider implementing some of the top tools to help your team provide a better service.

Train Your Team

Tools will only get you so far — you also need to train your team to provide a great customer service. In addition to training on how to use tools effectively, this should include helping team members to develop their interpersonal skills, looking at tactics to use with challenging customers, and emphasizing the importance of staying positive when faced with a problem.

Know Who Makes Up Your Customer Base

It’s difficult to provide the kind of service your customers are seeking if you’re unsure who makes up your target audience. Use the buyer personas you’ve created for your marketing strategy and gather data from your interactions. Use this to learn more about who makes up your customer base and what these users want from your company.

Set a Reasonable Timeframe

Key to providing great customer service is resolving issues fast. Setting standards about how long you will take to respond to a query and how you will provide updates to customers can help you achieve this.

However, fast resolution doesn’t mean dealing with queries at lightning speed — some concerns are complicated and take time. For instance, you may need to talk to the customer to make sure you have all the relevant information or discuss the right solution with other team members. Rushing the process will increase the risk you make a mistake and end up lowering the quality of your customer service.

There’s far too much to say about customer service to fit here — this is just the start. Download our free ebook to learn all about the different types of customer service, see some examples of great customer service to inspire you, and read customer service quotes from industry leaders.