Personalized service is more present in our lives than we can imagine and is part of our day-to-day, being often a choice of our own subconscious when making a purchase. Do not believe?
Well, here are some examples: how many times have you stopped purchasing a product or service because you felt that the company did not give you the attention you thought was needed?
Or worse, how many times have you stopped buying with a brand because your experience with it wasn’t quite what you expected?
See, even before you put yourself back in situations that can, in some way, lead to dissatisfaction, your subconscious already guides you to look for options or make decisions that are aimed at making you more successful in a purchase or at least, don’t get headaches in the future.
In case you are making a first purchase, it is also easy to know if it will be a pleasant and safe purchase, after all, the service ends up being the business card of a company, and if you have not had a good experience at first, probably the chances of you going ahead with business are smaller.
But, you must be asking yourself “And what does this have to do with personalized service?” That’s what we’ll tell you in this post, let’s go?
What is personalized service?
We can say that personalized service means a set of procedures that the company develops to exceed customer expectations, ensuring that they are well attended and that their needs are always met.
In this way, it is worth understanding that customizing is assigning characteristics, making something personal. In other words, when we think in this sense within the service, we need to discard that standard approach script, as each client has a way of speaking and a level of knowledge to be worked on.
For example, if a potential customer already has knowledge about your product or service, it is worth using a more technical and objective language, but otherwise, it would be necessary to use a more didactic and detailed treatment, right?!
Well, it is important to ensure that this personification occurs within the personalized service and, even more, that the attendant or salesperson puts himself in the customer’s shoes to offer more than he expects.
Above all, the personalized service can be worked on different platforms, as we will talk later on, and its objective is to provide a unique customer experience.
The importance of a good service experience
Providing a unique experience to the customer is essential for a company for several reasons, such as: retaining and winning new customers, adding value to the company, highlighting it in the market and, of course, achieving growth.
It is as important as what you offer, because only through a good experience in service will customers have a real interest and desire for your product or service.
After all, as we mentioned, customer service can often act as a business card for the company and we know that the first impression is the one that stays, in customer service this is no different.
The first impression that the potential customer will have of your business will determine their purchase decision.
According to data from a survey conducted by Zendesk, 39% of consumers who had a negative experience with a company, do not return to do business with it. On the other hand, 51% say that after a positive experience, they recommend the company to friends.
Therefore, the consumer’s decision will not always be based solely on what is offered, price or quality.
He can take into account whether the company has a personalized service that guarantees your expectations and, above all, exceeds your needs.
However, it is worth understanding, planning and developing strategies to implement a personalized service focused on the customer experience.
How to provide personalized service with a focus on the customer experience
Now that you understand what personalized service is and how important it is to provide a good customer service experience, you can implement optimizations in your communication channels to ensure a unique experience. Below we have selected 4 strategies for getting started.
1 – Humanized Service
Although customer service technology has gained momentum in recent years, with online self-service via chatbots and process automation, it is also important to maintain and show the human side of the brand.
Because, according to a survey conducted by Microsoft, the State of Global Customer Service, 33% of Brazilians prefer to be served by telephone and other voice channels, followed by 21% who prefer to be served via Live Chat.
These two service channels, in addition to providing a more direct and personal contact with the company, ensure more complete interactions and make it possible to transmit a feeling of trust.
Therefore, companies that develop relationships and treat the customer in a humane and directed way, add value to their experience.
2 – Outsourcing of personalized service
Although humanized service is a great strategy to add value to the customer experience and to maintain a positive image of the company, we know that micro, small and medium businesses often do not have a dedicated team for this service, mainly due to the high cults that it is necessary to invest in hiring human resources, infrastructure, equipment and technology.
In this sense, a financially viable solution to guarantee personalized service is the outsourcing of service.
The outsourcing of telephone service, for example, has become increasingly common, mainly due to the advantages it brings, such as the guarantee of human service, economy, optimization of processes and also increased productivity of teams compared to the internalization of this service.
One of the ways to outsource telephone service is through Virtual Secretaries, a human service team, available 24 hours a day to serve on behalf of the company and guarantee professionalism and personalized service. Learn more through the Visual Guide: 10 tips to sell more through virtual secretaries.
3 – Diversify service channels
Providing different service channels is also working with the customer’s experience.
Currently, consumers are constantly connected and do not see division between service channels, quite the contrary, they expect companies to collect their information and provide unique experiences.
According to a survey conducted by the Aberdeen Group, companies that consistently serve across multiple channels retain 89% of consumers, compared to 33% that do not.
Therefore, it is essential that your company, in addition to being present and available to serve customers in various channels, discloses them. After all, they need to know and see your company acting in these ways effectively.
Last but not least, always maintain the humanization even in service channels other than the telephone.
Show the customer that he is interacting with a person and not just a bot. As much as little robots automate service, maintaining the human touch within interactions can provide a differentiated customer experience.
4 – Customer data history
Of course, to guarantee personalized service it is necessary to have a customer database.
In addition to collaborating with the productivity and more assertiveness of those who contact the customer (or potential), whether the pre-sales, sales or customer success team, the information history, when properly updated, helps in the customer experience, as he will not have to re-enter his data as he is well known by his team.
In addition to being a way to centralize all data, your team will have full knowledge about the purchase journey, which products or services the customer has already purchased, how and where each interaction took place, and mainly identify the behavior and purchase profile of each customer.
Now the big question is: where and how can you centralize this information?
The best tool to help you in this management is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management = Customer Relationship Management), through which it is possible to store all sales, marketing and service information and more, it is possible to optimize processes that would previously be manual and still drive increased customer satisfaction.
5 – Offer exclusivities
Another way to personalize service and provide a unique experience is through custom-made exclusives for each client.
Therefore, offer special discounts or purchase advantages, either within the closing of the deal or to attract potential customers during the service.
Also, look to send personalized gifts or first-hand news to add more value to the customer experience and still stand out from the competition.
At this point, it is worth using creativity to make your product or service unique and impactful. Always try to surprise and exceed what the customer expects from your company.
Finally, now that you know the importance of personalized service and how essential it is to impact the customer through the experience, start now to establish strategies or even review how your company has performed in service.
We hope that with these tips, your business will get new results. What’s more, if you want to know even more about tools and strategies to optimize your service. A complete and free material to help your company with new solutions.
*This guest post written by the team at Prestus – Secretárias Compartilhadas, a pioneer company in shared virtual customer service, focused on inbound customer service and active calls. Try to be served on behalf of your company.
