By helping your online customers, you are helping your business too. That’s only if you are offering quality customer service.

Good and helpful customer support is at the front lines of your operation. So making sure that is on point, will help to build customer loyalty and credibility. By the way, good customer service is an excellent way to compete with big online retailers. These larger companies are not equipped to offer personalized customer support and do not go above and beyond for their customers. They have an in and out mentality. Get the customer in and then get them back out after they buy something.

Small business owners have the capacity to offer exceptional customer service and that will in turn convince customers to purchase from you. Here are some tips:

1. Share what you know:
   Sharing your knowledge will make your customers more likely to buy something from you either immediately, or down the road. One way to accomplish this is a newsletter. Not only will you be able to create a list to market to, but if your articles in your newsletter are compelling enough, it’s also a form of marketing if customers were to share the information online. Pointing customers to sign up for your newsletter is easy, and you can usually get a nice pool of customers simply by giving a one-time discount if they sign up.
2. Be an Email Expert:
   Email is the most important tool that you will use for your online business & it’s important to stay on top of it. Using a great email program, like Microsoft Outlook will help you to keep everything organized, along with scheduling, tasks, flagging important items & drafts so you can write template answers and more.  It’s important to check your email as often as you can, and respond immediately. If you have set hours for your business, then make sure you are working during those set hours and respond to customers within those hours. When you are first starting out, you might not have set hours to respond to customers, and you will answer when you check your emails. But as your business grows, having set customer support hours will give you some breathing room and the chance to carefully craft your responses.
3. Practice!:
   It’s amazing the amount of emails that get sent that don’t even have a hello or your name attached to the email. Our founder and CEO wrote in his free eBook, “Starting Your Internet Business Right” about proper communication, and so many online businesses fall short and that’s who contacts us here at WorldwideBrands.com since we offer a service to online retailers! Being rude or incoherent with your questions is not a way to properly communicate. I have emailed online stores before to ask questions as well and depending on the reply and how quickly I get a response will help me to determine if I want to buy from that store. But if I ask a question like.. Hi There! I really like the dog bowl with the paw prints on it. Does it come in blue or can you get any in blue? and I get a one word response like “NO” or a response like, “The color options are right there on the page”. In my mind I’m like thanks, but no thanks and will go somewhere else, because they obviously don’t care about their business, so why should I?

Customer support is a vital part of your business and should not be handled poorly. The more you go above and beyond for your customers, the more they are willing to purchase from you. Look for services like Qualtrics to help you boost your customer engagement.

Photo attribution: Business image created by Pressfoto – Freepik.com