The Difference Between Good Customer Service And Great Customer Service

This is an Alignable guest contributor post by Lucy Huang of COMNIO

Communication is the key difference between good customer service and great customer service. That's why everything we do is all about communication. It's so important to establish a positive customer-business relationship and how to effectively communicate in that relationship. For many businesses, customer service tends to be a reactive relationship rather than a proactive and ongoing conversation. (click that to tweet it!) You usually only learn about an issue when a customer decides to bring it up to you. Businesses don't hear about the majority of customer complaints (at least by way of the customer involved).

According to the Consumer and Business Services, the typical business only hears from 4% of dissatisfied customers. In addition to this, 90% of dissatisfied customers never return to the business (source). That is why it's paramount to resolve issues you do receive (even if they're few and far between). That way, you can take responsibility for the relationship and turn a negative customer experience into a positive one.

Herein is the key to great customer service: Communicate often, openly and proactively to maintain a healthy customer relationship. Moreover, communicate caringly — make your customers feel loved.

If you aren't proactive with customer service, you allow the customer to own the relationship so they're the ones left playing phone or email tag. This leads to frustration and makes the customer experience even more negative than it already was. Don't let that happen. You are the one with the knowledge and resources to help them, and your customer needs your help. You need to be in charge of establishing clear communication in the customer relationship.

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Here's an example: a customer will set up a service appointment for an issue in their home or office. A business with good customer service trains their representatives to be punctual for the appointment. However, a business with great customer service realizes that the client is depending on a complete stranger for assistance. It's the business's job to make their client feel empowered by building trust through open, honest communication.

You can do this by giving the customer a direct-to-human number to call, an estimated time of arrival, and ongoing progress updates if your service technician cannot be present. By communicating openly and proactively, your customers will feel your business truly cares. Not only that, but your customers will feel as though you want them to be informed of the process, thus empowering them.

Another way you can provide great customer service includes explaining to the customer why they might be experiencing a certain problem (before they come to you about it), how to prevent that problem, how to solve the problem, and why you chose the particular solution you did for their issue.

You should also follow-up with a courtesy call/email to check-in on your customer and see how they're doing. Customer service issues are a major source of stress for customers and by explaining the solution and the tools you used, you're empowering the customer, thus building trust. You're showing them that you (and your business) can be trusted to guide them in similar issues in the future. Excellent customer service keeps your customers happy and loyal.