How to prepare your staff to deliver top customer service!
We’ve compiled a list of targets you can focus on that are sure to elevate your staff performance and ensure top customer experience. Here they are in a nutshell:
- 🎯 Target one: Be polite without being impersonal
- 🎯 Target two: Find new ways to serve at speed
- 🎯 Target three: Give your staff the knowledge they need
- 🎯 Target four: Keep your promises
- 🎯 Target five: Train your team to listen to customers
Stick to these goals this summer and your staff will be sure to have a bright season that brings you all the success you’re looking for. So let’s get to it!
🎯 Target one: Be polite without being impersonal
Have you ever been to a shop or restaurant and felt you couldn’t be yourself around the staff? Maybe they were too timid, or too formal, like they were reciting a speech rather than speaking to you. On the other hand, you’ve probably had an encounter with a professional who was too relaxed and said the wrong thing.
Finding the balance between friendly, memorable customer service and polite professionalism is a key goal for any business looking to provide quality customer service. Serving customers with a light touch, the occasional injection of humour, and an easy manner creates a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere where your customers feel free to speak their minds and be themselves.
However, it’s important not to let this friendly side of your business leave an impression of amateurism. Ensure your staff are both polite and professional by setting an example, praising good customer interactions, and having open conversations about customer service strategies.
Top tip! Epos Now users can build both friendliness and manners into their sales process using handy pop-up notes when making sales. Prompt staff to ask the right questions in the right way and set the tone for a customer interaction with notes such as an ask 25 prompt like “I’m sorry, but could I check your ID, please?” or an upselling prompt “If you like X, could I show you Y? I think you might like it”.
👉 See our guide on setting up pop-up notes here.
🎯 Target two: Find new ways to serve at speed
If there’s one surefire way to impress customers with your service, it’s by saving them time during sales. No matter your industry, your customers hate having to wait around, and love when they get a little of their day back because you aced their experience.
Get your staff working to a system that streamlines sales from start to finish. Think about ways you can simplify the process, removing steps where possible and taking out time-consuming barriers.
Don’t just think about the perfect sale, however. Your team is sure to encounter problems such as misplaced items, stock shortages, and (heaven forbid) technical issues such as powercuts or internet outages. So put fallbacks and contingency plans in place so your staff know what to do when things go wrong.
After all, the easiest way to ensure you serve at speed is to not have to spend time thinking about what to do next!
Top tip! Epos Now users have lots of ways to improve service speed and help staff focus on customers.
- For instance, set up simpler staff roles to help new or temporary staff get quick confidence when processing sales.
- Use your time interval reports to ensure you know when you get busy so you’re never caught off guard and have enough staff on your rota!
- Or, go the extra mile for your customers and equip floor-roaming staff with a mobile POS device so they can make sales with greater convenience, saving your team (and any customers with them) over 4,000 steps every day!
👉 See more information on our mobile POS devices here.
🎯 Target three: Give your staff the knowledge they need
The most intuitive way to help your staff wow your customers is to equip them with an encyclopedic knowledge about what your business offers. Top customer service always includes quick answers to customer questions. Do you stock this product? Maybe you have an alternative they might like instead?
With new staff members, give them time to familiarise themselves with your range. Teach them and test them on the USPs you provide, and where the value of your products lies, so that when a customer asks them a testing question, they can provide an answer that attracts them towards a sale and warms them to your business.
While it can be tempting to keep a laser focus on your own products (and that’s certainly the place to start), customers bring in their own understanding of your industry. So when you’re working on this aspect of customer service, be sure to communicate your knowledge in a way customers can understand, that engages with a wider industry-focus, but highlights the value of your product range.
Top tip! Use Epos Now’s Product Plus app to keep your staff in the know. Product Plus lets you add extra details such as allergen information, ingredients, suppliers, and any other useful information that customers need to know.
👉 Find out more about the Product Plus app here.
🎯 Target four: Keep your promises
Once you’ve wowed your customers with impressive product knowledge, the best way to woo them is to prove you’re worth your word.
At some point in their lives, everybody has the terrible, helpless feeling of being played around by a company. Maybe they said they’d deliver a product at a certain time and failed to show up. Maybe they offered a product at a certain price and then overcharged you. Either way, can you remember how your trust and loyalty just evaporated?
Can you remember going back to that business? No, you probably never went back.
As a business, your word is your reputation, and your staff will always be the driving force behind it. Teach your staff to stick to their word, even if that means going out of their way to keep a promise to a customer. A customer’s trust is hard-earned and easily lost, but is valuable to the business as it’s what keeps them coming back!
Top tip! Looking to craft better, longer-lasting customer relationships? Check out the loyalty program options on the Epos Now AppStore. Using Epos Now loyalty options, you can help your customers earn redeemable points when they purchase from your business, to keep them coming back for more!
🎯 Target five: Train your team to listen to customers (and listen to your staff too!)
Your staff spend as much time with your customers as you do, which makes them the eyes and ears of the business. So when a customer comes to your team with a query, issue, or even just some feedback, it presents you with an opportunity to improve your service. This sort of feedback loop is essential to delivering top customer service, but only works if your staff are really listening to your customers.
Encourage active listening in your team by asking them to share what customers are saying back to you and to keep their finger on the pulse of the business.
Make your staff a key part of business decisions by included them in the conversation, and by extension, making customer feedback a part of your business improvements.
Top tip! Keep a record of customer preferences on their Epos Now customer account so that your staff know what returning customers prefer and can deliver their favourite products and services before they have to ask! Then check your product performance reports to see what customers love, and what they’re not interested in so you can refine your range.
👉 See our handy guide on how to set customer accounts on the Epos Now Back Office here.
We hope you found this blog useful! If you’re looking for more tips and tricks to improve your business, take a look at our resources for more business-focused blogs.