Customer Service: Does Your Home Cleaning Company Meet 21st Century Expectations?
In the last 5 years, customer service has advanced from voice and email communication to online chat, text messages and reputation monitoring services so you can respond instantly to feedback. Here are 7 suggestions for upping your game when it comes to meeting customer expectations and their need for instant customer service.
5 Customer Service Tips to Help You Keep Up With Instant Gratification Expectations
Customer Service Tip #1: Provide more than one way to reach you
Don't make it hard for your customers to contact you. I recently visited a website that had a phone number at the top of every page, but when I tried calling it always went to voicemail. When I searched for a Contact Us page there wasn't one. I couldn't even find an email address. Prospects aren't going to keep searching for ways to reach you so they will leave your site and contact your competitor instead. And when you add your phone number to the website, make sure prospects can tap on the number on their phone to instantly call.
Consider adding a chat feature to your website like the one we have on MyHouseCleaningBiz.com. We're always amazed at how many people start a conversation with us. It has enabled us to convert many website visitors who started out as tire-kickers, to engaged visitors. Getting their questions answered quickly keeps them on our site and makes for an easy conversion.
Customer Service Tip #2: Take Advantage of Social Media
Social media is another way your prospects will find you so make sure it's easy for them to reach you through your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn pages. Your social media pages are like mini-websites and need the same ease of use that your website does. Link to your website, post your phone number and encourage them to contact you.
Note that when people contact you through your social media pages, they're looking for instant feedback so turn on notifications so you can answer their questions quickly. Make it a policy to respond within 24 hours whenever possible. If not, your prospect will have moved on to another cleaning company.
Customer Service Tip #3: Answer the Phone and Create a Customer Communication Process
Everyone hates it when you call a company and can't speak to a real person or worse, are passed around to different people because no one wants to help the customer. In a small cleaning company, you may be the only one answering the calls but as you grow, you need a customer communication process.
If you hire a bookkeeper and also task her with answering phones, then she needs training on how to treat the customer and how to answer their questions. She will need to know how to quote prices over the phone, get the message to the right person when a client calls to cancel, and know how to handle an upset customer. That's just for starters! If she needs to pass a call along to someone else in the company, document which situations need a process and who is responsible – and then make sure they follow the process.
Customer Service Tip #4: Make Customer Service a Team Effort
Does it feel as if customer service is solely your responsibility? Not so! Everyone in your company must be involved and it must be part of their job description. Sure, many of your cleaning technicians don't see most customers because they're away at work. But some customers stay home, some come home unexpectedly or your cleaners see them as they're leaving. And some of your employees even talk to your customers by phone or text. These are all opportunities for your team to engage with your customers and they must be trained on how to do it well.
If you don't know where to begin with customer service training, start here, with the Customer Care Training Program for Residential Cleaners.
Customer Service Tip #5: Offer Self-Service Options
In today's fast-paced world, and especially for the millennial generation, self-service is important because it's quick and easy to get things done. Rather than having your only option for getting a price quote be an in-person visit, give them other ways to hire your service.
- Phone quotes are common these days if you have a standard form sitting by the phone so you can ask the prospect a series of questions in order to provide an accurate price.
- Have an online form with some of those same questions. When they fill out the form you'll receive an email notification that someone is requesting a price quote. But you must call them right back because they aren't going to want to wait long for a price.
- The next step up from the standard form is to have an instant price quote form on your site. People want the instant price so they know if you're in the ballpark of what they can afford. And it helps you to weed out the tire kickers that might otherwise waste your time.
- If you want to take the instant price quote another step further, integrate it with online booking and they can make their own appointments! Services like Launch 27 offer this type of automated booking service.
 |
PDF Download Customer Care Training Program for Residential Cleaner Your customers generally judge you, your reputation, and your quality of service by the way your employees handle themselves and deliver on the promises you make. Do your employees really know how to represent your company in the way you want it to be represented? The Customer Care Training Program for Cleaning Technicians will pay big dividends with your customers! To learn more about this system and purchase, visit our store. |
