What does practiced client service look similar? You probably know when you've experienced information technology, and you certainly know when y'all've experienced bad customer service, but for a small business with a pocket-size support team (if y'all have 1 at all), it can be a difficult goal to ascertain.

Even when you try to drill down and await specifically at things like fast service, what does "fast" hateful? Fast relative to what? How long is an appropriate agree time if you're practicing agile customer service?

And then, we've compiled a few real-life examples of practiced customer service, non only what it looks like, but we'll also give you a sneak peek into how it was accomplished—by our very ain customers.

Hopefully, these examples will spark ideas for your ain customer service team—even if it'due south a section of one right now—that'll weave positive customer experiences into the textile of your small business organisation as yous grow.

Because, for small businesses, the importance of skillful customer service isn't merely a overnice-to-take. Depending on your field and business model, it could be the thing that keeps subscriptions going, encourages referrals, and leads to echo business organization.

Basically, good customer service tin actually touch your bottom line.

If yous desire to manage a small business that'due south successful, you tin't just promise that good client service happens on it's own—yous have to actively take the steps and build the systems that'll make it happen at your company.

In this post, let'southward look at:

  • What is "practiced client service?"
  • eight examples of good customer service—from our ain customers
    • Naked Wines: Exist available when customers are calling
    • Porch: Respect your customers' time
    • Optimum Credit: Offering multiple support channels
    • Thompson Law: Don't leave callers hanging
    • Theralent: Increment client service speed with smart integrations
    • 24 Hour Tees: Automate elementary questions to save fourth dimension
    • Essential Federal Credit Wedlock: Monitor calls to improve the quality of your customer service
    • Beauty Solutions: Combine team efforts to create swell client service

🌟 How client-obsessed is your business? Have the quiz to find out how to better your customer experience.


What is "good" customer service?

Before we dive into the examples, let's examine the pillars of good customer service.

For about people, good customer service is one of those "I know it when I run into it" kind of things. You tin probably find a few examples just by reflecting on both negative and positive customer service experiences you've had in the past.

But how can we discover physical ways to create a "expert" customer service feel?

Ongoing preparation

Some things, similar customer service reps merely being kind, are foundational to good customer service. Only even if you lot hire the nicest staff in the earth, you need to empower them with the strategies and tools, like customer service apps, to execute their jobs properly.

After all, a squeamish only ineffective amanuensis is still going to make for frustrated customers. Nobody wants to spend an hour on the phone—and not go their problems solved. Really, there are a few things that people don't like about the experience of calling a company:

How annoying would you rate each of these aspects of calling a company's customer service line?

And so it should exist no surprise that effectiveness is a major facet of quality customer service. In fact, in one survey, lack of effectiveness was the elevation-cited customer service issue.1

And so, how can you brand "effectiveness" happen? First off, didactics is central. Equally your support team grows, brand certain that they receive consequent training and have the resources to speedily reply customers' questions.

Accessible knowledge

Speaking of which, another fashion to brand your customer service more than effective is to make team knowledge easily accessible between everyone. Specifically, anybody should exist able to quickly pull upwards a customer's history and past conversations so that y'all're not making them echo themselves to dissimilar people. In fact, in a contempo survey of consumers, 70% of respondents in the Client Communications Review said they institute it "very abrasive" to be transferred to a unlike rep and have to explain their situation all over again.

Pro-tip:

If y'all use a call routing or interactive voice response arrangement, pattern it in such a way to get your customers on the telephone with someone who can actually answer their questions. Some tools can assistance you pull this off pretty easily—for case, RingCentral's "answering rules" feature lets you road calls to the person who's all-time suited for certain types of questions. Learn more than about how information technology works hither.

Yous can also observe means to empower your client support team to communicate with the rest of your teams—development, sales, and marketing, for instance—so that they can become customer bug resolved without having to forward calls.

If you take a team messaging platform, everyone tin ship messages to each other in real time to get questions answered quickly—some of these apps even include calling and video conferencing for those trickier conversations that are ameliorate over the telephone:

A shared responsibility

Emphasize that customer service doesn't live in i department, just instead is the responsibility of your whole company.

That kind of customer service teamwork is more of import than you may initially remember. According to Salesforce, 70% of customers believe that it'due south important for customer service representatives to have an awareness of sales interactions.three

Your team can't exist working in silos!

At a small company, information technology might be easy plenty to encourage advice between the sales and support teams.

Equally you grow, though, be sure your back up staff has admission to your CRM (yeah, even though it'due south ordinarily marketed as a sales software) so that they can quickly go upwards to speed on each client'south details. Yous can even employ integrations or task automation platforms to have that client information automatically pop up when they call in, saving a ton of fourth dimension.

And on that note…

Speed

Information technology should be no surprise that time is of the essence when it comes to dandy service. In fact, "the call taking too long" was the pinnacle reason for customers hanging up on a company:

Reasons for hanging up on a customer service call (multiple answers possible)

The previous steps should all help you lot solve your customers' issues more quickly, simply yous can also respect their precious time with flexible communications options (aka omnichannel customer service), automated telephone call-backs instead of long on-hold times, and constructive telephone call routing.

As you'll come across, the following examples of good customer service will reflect different ways to execute on these pillars in your own business.

8 examples of good customer service—from our own customers

We tin can talk about customer service best practices all day, simply, ultimately, one of the best ways to learn is by example. So, here are some of the all-time examples of slap-up customer service stories from our very own customers.

From using data to refine your process or staffing needs, to using technology to route calls to the staff members best suited to receive them, our customers know a lot about what information technology takes to provide the best customer service.

The best role is, whether or non you use RingCentral, there are some valuable nuggets of wisdom in these customer service stories that you tin can take and conform for your business—then dive in, take notes, and get gear up to be known for your stellar customer service.
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1. Naked Wines: Exist bachelor when customers are calling

Nobody likes waiting on concur—but no business organisation wants an overstaffed support team during lulls. Striking the right balance is crucial, especially for small-scale businesses looking to prioritize customer service without breaking the banking company.

So, how exercise you figure out the all-time schedule for your client support team? Use information.

Naked Wines is a visitor that allows wine-lovers to invest in independent winemakers through a monthly recurring payment that they and then utilize to purchase wine at a disbelieve.

And when your customers are besides investors, you don't want to go out them waiting on hold. By using alive reporting data, the service team is able track telephone call volume in real time. They can meet not just how many calls are coming in, but also how many customers are on hold, which queues they're in, and how many support agents are available.

These are all numbers that the Naked Wines team tracks in real time so they can brand the right staffing arrangements to guarantee that customers don't have to wait too long on agree. Whether that means rebalancing staff among their different queues or pulling in additional squad members to assist, information technology all leads to a ameliorate customer service experience.

Having those live reports bachelor makes it easy to access all of that information in real fourth dimension:

Naked Wines call volume real time tracking

According to Mark Hansen, Client Happiness Phone Squad Manager at Naked Wines, the data "really helps us shine a lite and get visibility into what's coming our way and proactively programme our staffing based on these patterns and phone call volume forecasts."

The takeaway? More data = faster service = happier customers

Pro-tip:

Allow your customer information teach yous most your customers. From when they call in, to how they like to communicate with back up staff, the numbers can teach you a lot about the all-time manner to serve your customers.

Merely be sure you lot use a contact middle platform that makes your information easy to access.

2. Porch: Respect your customers' time

Speaking of how customers like to communicate with back up, another way to provide great client service is to provide options tailored to customer needs—and be respectful of their valuable fourth dimension.

Fourth dimension issues like waiting on agree, waiting for an email response, or not having back up bachelor when it works for them are surefire means to make a negative client service experience.

Porch, a service that connects homeowners to professionals that help them improve their home, is fugitive those kinds of timing issues by using the correct communication platform.

As the main connection point betwixt a homeowner and a service provider (like contractors, electricians, movers, and painters), Porch really relies on efficient—and effective—advice.

This is especially important considering if y'all're an electrician (or mover or painter), you're probably spending about of your fourth dimension on-site—which means that your cell telephone is your communication lifeline.

To be able to stay in touch throughout the day, Porch uses RingCentral to offer 2-fashion SMS communications so that their contractors can coordinate and schedule their piece of work right from their cell phones—without giving up their personal numbers.

That also ways that these service providers can offer quick responses and exist flexible if they have to adjust their schedules on the fly.

On the other paw, for their customers who telephone call in, Porch is able to offer alternative options to long concur times thanks to call-backs. When concur times are long, customers can only leave a call-back number, and the organisation will hold their identify in line and call them dorsum when someone is available.

These features might not seem like a priority, simply even seemingly little things similar automated call-backs allow a minor team to manage an influx of calls without inconveniencing customers and keep them happy.

Pro-tip:

Provide this level of service by excavation into your client profiles and the information y'all take. What exercise their work hours and advice preferences look similar? How can you tailor your client service experience to suit these needs?

3. Optimum Credit: Offer multiple support channels

When yous're looking at your client profiles and lifestyles, you lot may want to consider offering support in unlike forms.

While many customers still prefer the telephone, more and more of them are starting to reach out to companies in other means—like through social media.

For instance, for cocky-sufficient customers with a quick question, a cognition base may be all they need. Other customers may desire to chat or email with your support team. For loftier-touch or older customers, you might desire to continue to offer a phone call choice.

Optimum Credit, a second charge mortgage visitor based in Wales, does exactly that. They recognized that customers wanted to communicate with them beyond different channels, so they began experimenting with an omnichannel strategy.

Adding web conversation to their telephone service has been specially highly-seasoned as they expand to offer more than direct-to-consumer products.

Wondering how y'all could possibly manage multiple support channels with a small team? With RingCentral it's not an event.

"With RingCentral, we can manage different channels within a unified contact center queue," said Paul Strinati, Founding Partner & IT Manager at Optimum Credit.

Hither'due south how it looks:

That unified queue keeps support agents on acme of their tasks and lets them serve customers through different channels—all in the same app. When you have customers who have just a quick, simple question or who prefer not to talk on the phone, this is quickly becoming a best practice if you want to provide a personalized online customer service experience.

Pro-tip:

Offer multiple options for customers with questions—you can start with social media, email, and telephone calls, for instance. Mensurate which channels are most oftentimes used to see where your customers prefer to communicate.

iv. Thompson Law: Don't exit callers hanging

Another surface area where it pays to be speedy? Connecting your callers with the correct back up staff right away. Not only can a skilful call-routing organization go along your customers happy—it'll also help save staff workload and improve team efficiency.

Merely ask the team at Thompson Law, an injury police firm with a speciality in automobile accidents, workplace injuries, medical malpractice, product liabilities, and other injuries. When word got out nearly their ninety% success rate at getting clients a cash reward, the calls started coming in.

It wasn't all good news, though—not only were they forced to scale quickly (which their sometime telephone system couldn't handle), simply their receptionists were as well swamped.

"Nosotros were overwhelming our front-desk staff with transferring calls, and not creating a great experience for callers." said Kirk Lee, Information technology consultant for Thompson Law.

The solution? They switched to a telephone system that could handle the volume—and reduce stress on their receptionists.

By choosing a solution with an intelligent routing capability, they were able to automatically road calls where they needed to become.

"We were able to integrate [RingCentral Contact Center] with our case management platform to automatically straight an existing customer to the attorneys or support staff handling that specific example," Lee said.

Information technology's a win-win: clients get directed where they demand to go immediately, reducing concord times and getting them the personalized experience they desire. And their decorated receptionists got a lighter load of calls to direct.

By taking advantage of automated customer service, they were able to give customers a better support experience.

Plus, the organization is more efficient and cost-effective. Where they previously had to hire a third-party telephone call center to help with overflow, they now had call management capabilities internally. RingCentral automatically routes prospect calls to a Phase 1 team of experts and sends overflow calls to second, third, and 4th-level teams—eliminating the need to pay for a third-party call center.

Pro-tip:

Invest in the tools to get customers to the correct squad member, right away. Your customers will be happy non to expect on hold, but to attain someone who redirects their call anyway.

5. Theralent: Speed up customer service using integrations

When your customers call, you demand to make sure that whoever picks upwardly the phone has the information they need to answer their questions.

Just it's a pretty big ask for a customer service rep to know every unmarried petty thing nearly your production. In fact, it'due south pretty rare—and we'd argue unrealistic. This is where having tools and software that "talk to each other" is important. If y'all have the right connections between the customer service apps you're using, you tin help your customer service squad get questions answered much more quickly.

Permit us to explain.

Theralent is a small recruiting business firm with simply a few employees—which means they value efficiency not but for their customers, but for their ain squad every bit well.

Luckily, through integrations, they're able to evangelize quality customer service—fast—simply by making sure their team has all of the data they need at their fingertips.

Specifically, they've integrated their communication platform, RingCentral, with Crelate (an applicant tracking software that the Theralent team uses every twenty-four hours).

What does this integration look similar? Well, when someone on Theralent's team views a candidate profile in Crelate, a RingCentral popular-upward widget appears that allows them to call or text the candidate—right from their screen:

RingCentral and Crelate Integration

They can even have notes in RingCentral during their calls, which automatically sync to Crelate. If they can't reach a candidate, they tin exit a note to remind themselves why they were calling, and then they're prepared when the candidate calls back.

It sounds simple, but according to Jason Lewis, Founder and President, "I'd guess this integration saves me at to the lowest degree an hour or two every day." Not only that, but it's giving him and his squad the ability to deliver neat client service, quickly.

For a concern that runs on effective communications, the right technology makes a big difference.

Pro-tip:

Use one of RingCentral's many integrations (or employ Zapier or Workato to create ane) to connect all of the office apps your support team uses everyday. Not only will this help y'all keep all of your information in the aforementioned identify, but you'll as well be able to create a smoother, more streamlined customer experience.

6. 24 Hour Tees: Automate simple questions to save time

Inevitably, there are a range of customers that come up through any support channel, from large, complicated questions to quick and like shooting fish in a barrel ones.

If you lot're sending every question to the same queue, though, yous might exist losing out on an opportunity for speedy service.

Just ask T-shirt manufacturer 24 Hour Tees. They've been able to maintain a lean team despite significant and fast growth—and they did it using elementary automations.

For instance, they go a lot of relatively easy questions from customers like "What's my guild status?"

Because they use a phone system that gives them the same business number for voice calling and texting (RingCentral), customers tin hands send these kinds of quick questions via SMS.

Then, their organisation automatically searches the database to see if that customer has an open up order and what the status is. An automated, pre-written response then goes out right abroad. You can larn more nigh how it works in this prune:

Non only does the customer get their answer speedily, just it saves fourth dimension on the company side as well. No need to take a call center representative respond the telephone or write repetitive messages every time someone asks where their T-shirt is.

That's the kind of smart automation that serves both customer and company goals.

Pro-tip:

Keep customers happy by getting them uncomplicated answers quickly. Track your well-nigh frequently asked questions and create systems so that these simple requests aren't waiting in your support queue.

7. Essential Federal Credit Marriage: Monitor calls to amend the quality of your customer service

Once your customer service department grows to more than a couple of people, it becomes of import for managers to go on a finger on the pulse of the service that your customers are getting.

Even if you lot think you're non quite at that signal yet, tracking your data over fourth dimension is crucial to agreement your growth, allocating resources, and optimizing for the best client feel.

The correct technology can make information technology easy to get both qualitative and quantitative insights into your customer service—the kind of insights that help everyone improve.

For Essential Federal Credit Matrimony, it was easy to draw a direct line from this increased visibility to an improvement in customer service quality.

Their original problem: "we had no visibility into who was picking upwards calls, how long those calls were taking, or which agents were available for a call—not without literally walking the floor and monitoring the whole squad all day," said Catrice Lee, Call Center Manager for Essential FCU.

Plus, without the information they needed on their phone call data, they likewise faced issues in both over- and understaffing their call centre.

They needed ameliorate information.

So, they switched to a contact center platform that gave them detailed reporting. (Yes, it was RingCentral). Now, they could measure agents' operation and ready goals for individual squad members to make sure the team is continuously improving.

Plus, supervisors could now monitor support calls, leap in to solve circuitous issues, and identify opportunities for improvement—ultimately, creating a amend customer experience.


🕹️ Go a hands-on look at how RingCentral works by booking a production tour:

💰 You can besides use this calculator to encounter roughly how much your concern could salve by using RingCentral to support your team'south communication with each other—and clients.


eight. Beauty Solutions: Combine team efforts to create great customer service

Equally we mentioned, client service isn't only the responsibility of your support department. Everyone who communicates with your customers direct—and even those who don't—can be working together to make certain customers have a great experience that keeps them coming back.

Dazzler Solutions is a wholesaler and education resource for salons in the western United States, and they've done a great job of baking a collaboration hub into their business organisation systems to offer meliorate customer service.

For instance, their brick-and-mortar store employees are also fully trained on their products, and then when call eye wait times go besides long, they tin can log in remotely and first answering customer questions.

While support may non be the main focus of their job, this flexibility gives them the opportunity to step in and support the squad. Plus, it makes customers happy since they spend less time waiting for support.

The Beauty Solutions team has also created a arrangement for sales and support to answer questions quickly through their communication tool. How they did information technology was really pretty straightforward. They simply created a team called "Education Questions" in their internal communications app, which became a forum for anybody to get real-fourth dimension answers. Reps can post questions in real fourth dimension, and someone will answer quickly:

"That's then important because it ways our rep doesn't have to break the momentum of the conversation with that customer past calling in to our role," said Shane Brown, IT Marketing Coordinator for Beauty Solutions.

They also recognize that busy reps don't always have the time to check voicemails right away. So other squad members pitch in, checking voicemails to weed out those who should be forwarded straight to the customer service team—and flagging the ones that demand firsthand attending.

This efficient flow of advice is possible considering they chose the right technology for both internal and external communications.

With anybody sharing the workload, Beauty Solutions is able to offer their customers the best possible customer service experience.

Pro-tip:

Especially for minor businesses, it's crucial to instill the importance of customer service across the unabridged company. Share the workload past training all team members on the importance of client service and empower them to share information internally that contributes to a great customer experience.

What does good customer service look like for your business?

Client service can be a challenging expanse for small businesses to manage—at that place's a lot that goes into it, and information technology can quickly become overwhelming.

And whether your concern operates on a subscription model or relies on referrals (or wants to go more than repeat purchases), skilful customer service is virtually always crucial to your lesser line.

Through these examples from our very own customers, we hope you can larn the skills and tactics you lot need to make sure your business is providing smashing client service. With the right techniques combined with the right engineering, fifty-fifty the smallest of businesses tin can have a large, positive impact on customer satisfaction.


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Originally published April 01, 2020, updated Nov 17, 2021