3 Ways To Practice Clear Communication For Excellent Customer Service

Getting customers through your doors is only part of a much bigger process to make your company a successful one. Once they enter your place of business, your job becomes finding ways to ensure that they return – over and over again! While your products and services as well as your advertising campaigns may have attracted shoppers to begin with, it’s the customer experiences that will keep them coming back.

The bottom line is that you should always prioritize providing excellent customer service. And one way to show that you take customer satisfaction seriously is to be a clear communicator. We all know what happens when messages get passed along incorrectly. The old “broken telephone” game never helped any business become a success. It’s important to make sure that your true message is always being delivered.

How do you do that? Here are three ways to practice clear communication for excellent customer service:

1. Pronounce your words correctly. This is especially important if you’re providing your customer service over the phone. Remember that sometimes, you’re not always able to hear everything so clearly over the phone. Do your best to speak as clearly as possible and enunciate all of your words. Especially when you’re speaking to a customer who may not have had English as his/her first language, speech clarity is necessary.

“The ability to understand what someone is saying on the phone separates a productive conversation from one filled with tension,” says Laura McConney on SkillsYouNeed.com, “Whenever you are on the telephone, speak clearly. Enunciate and use simple words and phrases. Don’t employ overly complex vocabulary. The last thing you want to do is confuse the customer on the line or make them feel inferior.”

2. Remember that it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. Customers appreciate genuine interactions with the people they do business with. A customer service representative who says “have a nice day”, but isn’t even smiling isn’t likely to come off as very impressive. Be mindful of your body language and facial expressions. Your tone of voice and the inflections in the way you speak have huge impacts on the impressions you give your customers.

You should also be mindful of using professional language. On HelpScout.net, Gregory Ciotti explains the importance of having clarity in communication. He believes that it impacts everything you do. “Styling affects communication,” he writes, “Tone affects communication. Common mistakes to be made are using passive-aggressive language (‘Actually…’) or confusing customers with slang, colloquialisms, or technical jargon.”

3. Be honest with your customers. The average person can tell the difference between someone who is being sincere and someone who just going through the motions of doing his/her job. Most people can tell by the look on your face if you’re even happy being at work. Believe it or not, a person’s genuine nature can also be detected over the phone. It doesn’t take a face-to-face meeting to convince a customer about your sincerity.

“Starting with the greeting, conversations over the phone must be sincere,” insists McConney, “Say hello and be genuine. Try to avoid scripted greetings as most sound artificial and inauthentic. Include the company’s name, your name, and offer your assistance as soon as you answer the phone…Answering a customer’s questions with sincerity and positivity will not only satisfy them by the end of the conversation but will also help calm an angry caller.”

At Canadian POS Corporation, we always do our best to provide our customers with excellent customer service experiences. See for yourself! Give us a call at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost and ask us about our Countertop and Wireless POS terminals today!