What Good Customer Service Looks Like [+Examples]

One bad customer service experience can tarnish customers' opinion of a product or a brand indefinitely. But one exceptional experience, on the other hand, can them into loyal brand advocates.

So, how can brands actually earn the loyalty of customers? To answer this question, we've curated a list of B2B and B2C brands that are established as industry leaders -- and that deliver exceptional customer service. But, before we dive into those examples, we need to set a baseline for what "good" customer service is.

In addition to the ones listed above, let's break down the six most common characteristics of good customer service teams.

1. Rapid Response Times

Customers are always looking for fast solutions. In fact,66%of adults say that the most important thing a company can do is value their time. This means your team needs to focus on efficiency and develop a workflow that streamlines different support functions. Consider adopting ahelp desk管理和自动执行各种服务任务的工具。

2. Customer Feedback Collection and Analysis

Since客户的需求vary from industry to industry, good customer service looks different depending on the type of business you're running. The best customer service teams usefeedback collectiontools to identify the specific needs of theircustomer baseand create personalized solutions for them.

Rather than assuming you know what your customers want, reach out to them through surveys and interviews to get their perspective on your business. These tools will help your team uncover new opportunities to enhance your products andimprove the customer experience.

3. Customer Self-Service

When your customers want to find their own solutions to service problems, they should useself-serviceresources provided by your business. For example, one of the most common self-service resources is aknowledge base.

Knowledge bases consist of categorized support articles andFAQ pagesthat supply customers with solutions to common user roadblocks. With more customers wanting to solve problems on their own, self-service tools like these are assets when providinghigh-quality customer service.

4. Omni-Channel Support

It should be easy for customers to contact your support team, regardless of the medium they're using. Your team should be equipped to respond to incoming service requests via phone, email, social media, live chat, and any other communication channel that your customers prefer. Providing this type of全渠道经验makes your team more accessible and creates less stressful service interactions.

5. Emotional Intelligence

情商是指你r的能力ead and react to other people's emotions. This skill is highly valuable in customer service roles because it helps with diffusing difficult customer interactions. Every business experiences a frustrated or upset customer, but the best service teams are able to de-escalate the situation and prevent potential churn. In fact,avoidable churn represents $35.3 billion.

6. Creative Problem Solving

归根结底，最好的客户服务团队解决了客户的问题。他们顽强，决心帮助客户实现目标。在许多情况下，这要求代理商具有创造力，并为客户问题提供独特的解决方案。正如您在下面的示例中看到的那样，有时出色的客户服务意味着找到一个不在普通公司协议之外的解决方案。bob全站app

1. clustertruck

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The customer service at ClusterTruck is so seamless, you may not know whether you're troubleshooting with the customer service team or the marketing team — a telltale sign of superior omnichannel support.

The CEO, Chris Baggott, sends regular emails to the ClusterTruck customers. In one of the emails, a HubSpotter noticed she could get a really good deal on her next order, but during the pandemic, she wasn't able to receive delivery in the area where she lived.

The customer service team sprung into action offering her a long list of exact locations she could pick up her order that were as close as possible to her address without leaving the ClusterTruck delivery range. Another customer service rep chimed in with a map that starred the locations for a visual representation of where she could pick up her lunch.

Good Customer Service Takeaway: That marketing email served as a beautiful example where a team could not only engage the customer but delight them, too. ClusterTruck put the flywheel in motion starting by attracting the customer to an offer, engaging them when they had a question, and delighting them with a solution. As a result, the customer sent the email with all of the helpful information to her network who were fans of ClusterTruck but had the same issue. Now that's brand loyalty in action.

2. OhLolly

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Korean beauty brandohlolly由于他们对客户的奉献精神，他们在洛杉矶美容社区中引起了轰动。业主将他们的业务描述为“一个像朋友一样对待客户的地方”。

客户服务处于Ohlolly业务运营的最前沿。为了使客户体验更加个性化，他们已经开始向他们提供的品牌提供反馈。这有助于团队为客户提供完美的美容解决方案。Ohlolly甚至在重新存储一个心爱的品牌或在其系列中添加新产品时，还可以分享更新。我们自己的HubSpotter Kassandra Mendes经历了这一第一手：

Good Customer Service Takeaway:This example shows us that a simple gesture to show our customers that we are actively listening to what they tell us can grow brand loyalty far beyond our initial interaction with them. Depending on the size of your business, your team can recreate this interaction fairly easily. When you bring on a new product or service, do a search in your customer service inbox for mentions of it. Then follow up with customers who made the request and let them know it's available. If your company is too large to do this manually, you can export a list of email addresses and upload them into your email marketing system to notify them that way. Either way, the outreach is well worth the reward.

3. AdRoll

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AdRollhelps D2C marketers reach and resonate with their audience by centralizing their marketing and advertising activities in one platform. By spending less time looking for data, marketers who use AdRoll spend more time doing the work that makes the data.

We've mentioned before that one of the tenets of good customer service is self-service support. AdRoll's robust help center begins the user's customer service experience with four options to choose from: an intro into AdRoll, getting started with setting up your AdRoll account, FAQs, and an option to browse by topic. If none of these get you exactly what you're looking for, there's a search bar at the top. Of course, if all those options still leave you lacking, their customer support team is available to help answer your questions. One customer wrote a review about AdRoll on G2 and said this:

The retargeting has helped generate a consistent conversion rate over the last 6 months and their customer service is helpful and super efficient.

Good Customer Service Takeaway:Your customer service team doesn't have to provide round-the-clock live support to be a champion of the customer experience. AdRoll gives us an ideal example of "work smarter, not harder" when it comes to solving customer pain points. With a self-service solution that is easy to navigate, your customers will be just as happy that you saved them a phone call and gave them a tool to find a solution instead.

4.圣克鲁斯自行车

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Santa Cruz Bicyclesmanufactures and sells high-quality off-road bicycles. Its bikes are known for their high-performance and its customers deeply care about the technology that they're riding.

But, the bike's performance isn't the only feature that Santa Cruz customers love. They're loyal to the company because its service and support teams match the quality of its products. Customers can trust that any problem they have with a bike will be solved swiftly and with excellent service. Kyle Harder, Santa Cruz Rider Support Lead, noted in an采访HubSpotthat,

“What sets us apart as a company is that we want to deal with anyone that owns our product, regardless of where you bought it. If you have an issue with a Santa Cruz Bike and come to us with your issue, we'll help you resolve your issue."

And, Kyle wasn't just talking about problems with the bike. The company is also focused on removing long-term roadblocks from the customer experience.

For example, when the business was first starting out, it experienced a sudden growth. Customers loved the bicycles and the demand for the product rose beyond what Santa Cruz's service team could support. Agents were working tirelessly and the team's email inbox nearly reached capacity.

Recognizing this flaw in its service experience, Santa Cruz adoptedcustomer service toolsto aid its support team. Reps started recording data on customer issues and highlighted problems that were most common with their customer base. They created ashared inboxwith an email alias so customers could easily contact the support team. They also created acustomer feedback loop因此他们可以收集和分享顾客评论with the entire organization.

Good Customer Service Takeaway:当您的公司经历增长时bob全站app，有时可能会产生意外的问题，从而浮出水面。如果这些问题不受限制，它们可能会损害客户体验并阻止您的业务成功。

Santa Cruz recognized a potential flaw and acted immediately. They adopted customer service tools to ease the pressure on their support team while simultaneouslyimproving the customer experience. That way, reps weren't being overworked and had the time and energy to provide excellent customer service.

Additionally, Santa Cruz used its new tools to conduct reporting as well. This allowed the company to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction while itscustomer base继续增长。即使越来越多的客户与业务进行互动，但由于Santa Cruz收集的客户数据，每个互动仍然感到真实和个性化。

5. Lyft

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乘车应用程序Lyft在客户服务领域中取得了成功，通过将其钱放在嘴上的位置并使客户真正关心的情况下，使其客户感到自豪。

For example, Lyftannouncedits commitment to minimizing the environmental impact of the millions of car rides it provides every day by declaring all of its rides to be carbon neutral, thanks to its voluntary purchase of carbon offsets.

And in 2017, Lyft donated $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in response to the introduction of an executive order that restricted immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries to the United States -- an act大多数美国人opposed. Lyft condemned the executive order, writing in an email to customers:

“Banning people of a particular faith or creed, race or identity, sexuality or ethnicity, from entering the U.S. is antithetical to both Lyft's and our nation's core values. We stand firmly against these actions, and will not be silent on issues that threaten the values of our community."

无论您在这些重要问题上站立何处，Lyft的客户都不可否认地关心全世界的这些主题。Lyft正在从事对客户重要的工作，例如上述的计划，并且Round Up & Donate, its program that lets customers round up the price of their rides and donate the extra change to the charitable organization of their choosing (the ACLU is one cause).

Good Customer Service Takeaway：可能难以衡量的客户服务的重要方面是代表对您的客户重要的价值观。客户为代表他们的支持企业感到自豪 - 有70％的人想know what businesses are doing to address these issues- 因此，公司不应该害怕以大型的方式为客户提供服务，使他们为支持他们而感到自豪，这将鼓励他们分享和推荐他们的朋友和同事。即使您没有像Lyft这样的100万美元捐款的预算，让客户参与并对筹款和慈善合作伙伴关系感到兴奋，也可以为促进忠诚度带来很长的帮助。bob综合博彩下载

6. Basecamp

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I recently heard fromKristin Aardsma, who works in customer support at Basecamp. She spoke about Basecamp's customer support team -- more specifically, how the team measured success to reduce employee stress and turnover, and achieve better outcomes for customers.

Part of Basecamp's solution to solving for the customer and reducing employee stress was creating time in the workday for research, innovation, and creativity. To that end, customer support reps spend two hours per day off the phone lines and away from the queue -- and they re-dedicate that time toward other projects. Employees have more opportunities for company-wide impact by collecting research, analyzing data, identifying patterns and trends, and working on projects and processes to achieve better results.

Two hours per day, or 10 hours per week, might sound like a lot, but it paid off for Basecamp. Employees weren't burning out due to overload and stress, and Basecamp wasn't over capacity and unable to solve customer problems because team members were happier.

Good Customer Service Takeaway:Time spent away from the queue isn't time wasted -- so make sure to dedicate time during your week to identifying patterns, analyzing data, and creating processes to work more efficiently. When you're burning through tickets or on the phones non-stop all day, it can be hard to step away, but front-line customer service insights and feedback can help your organization, so make sure to collect and share them.

7. Wistia

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Our friends over at Wistia -- a video hosting and analytics platform -- believe in the power of video to help tell company stories. And that isn't just restricted to marketing videos and social media content -- Wistia uses videos to provide great customer service, too.

Wistia team members create personalized how-to videos and individualized thank-you notes to help customers and demonstrate how to use different aspects of the software using a visual medium.

It makes sense for a video hosting brand to use videos when helping customers, but it's also helpful for the customers themselves, too. As Harper, a Customer Happinessteam member at Wistia says,

When it comes to communicating technical concepts or processes, videos are the best."

他说：“即使我能用单词清楚地解释某些东西，也能够向某人展示从A点到点的几个步骤完全不同。实际上，眼睛会在文本墙上掩盖。“

That's how Wistia has seen such success in achieving good customer service -- by showing, rather than telling, customers how to troubleshoot, they can learn more effectively and remember solutions better than reading an email or hopping on a phone call.

Good Customer Service Takeaway：不要局限于电话来提供卓越的客户服务。取而代之的是，使用技术在媒介中提供支持。屏幕截图，GIF和视频等工具可以大大解释一个棘手的概念，而且它们不需要花哨的工作。类似的工具Jing,Awesome Screenshot,LiceCap,QuickTime Player,甚至可以我们自己的智能手机或网络摄像头ed to create helpful resources customers can refer to again and again.

And, of course, if you're a HubSpot customer, you can与Wistia集成to create and host video using its neat software.

8. Glossier

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护肤品和化妆品牌Glossier被誉为宣讲“护肤首先，化妆第二”的行业破坏者，但其以客户为中心的商业模式和客户服务团队也具有破坏性。

CEO and co-founder Emily Weissexplainsthat she built Glossier around the crowdsourced opinions of real women about the beauty and skincare products they loved -- and the ones they wanted, too. By reading and engaging with readers on her blog and on social media, she built a brand that was about affordable skincare and beauty products that made women feel good to use.

That social media savvy and crowdsourcing prowess hasn't faded from view since Glossier has grown bigger and bigger -- in fact, it's still the guiding philosophy when Glossier brings new products to market, like when it launched its first sunscreen after calls from customers to create a product that wasn't sticky and didn't smell like sunblock. Weiss told Entrepreneur that she received "so many DMs from people on Instagram writing to say, 'Thank you so much for listening; we've been waiting for this moment.'" Most of the products Glossier offers are made vegan and cruelty-free in another example of the brand listening to and immediately implementing customer feedback.

Glossier's customer service department, otherwise known asthe gTEAM, are responsible for collecting and responding to customer comments and messages on social media, and creating individualized experiences with each engagement. Perhaps that's why the team is a team within the marketing department, and why they're called "editors" -- because content creation is a big part of Glossier's customer service strategy. With likes, retweets, emoji-decorated DMs, and blog posts, Glossier strives to make each piece of content engaging and authentic to the brand.

For example, here's an email I received from the gTEAM after making one of many recent purchases:

The emails were clearly written by a real person, and they feature analytics and feedback tools to get quantitative numbers to support the qualitative feedback editors receive, too. This simple act of proactive outreach and help was helpful and memorable for me as a customer, and it ensured that Glossier would solve a problem I was having with the product before I got frustrated and complained.

Good Customer Service Takeaway:It's not enough to acknowledge and respond to every piece of incoming customer feedback if you're not listening to what your customers are saying. Make sure you're responding to customer feedback, but also make sure your team is identifying and communicating any recurring trends to your company's leadership and product teams so you're able to consistently meet customer expectations and fulfill their needs.

9. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

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The Ritz-Carlton's service policies are so legendary, stories of satisfied customers have even made it into books --like this one.

In it, customer experience expert and author John DiJulius describes the story of his stay at a Ritz-Carlton hotel -- when he unknowingly left something behind in his guest room.

I left The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota in such a rush for the airport that I forgot my laptop charger in my room. I planned to call when I got back into my office, but before I could, I received a next-day air package from The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota. In it was my charger, with a note saying, 'Mr. DiJulius, I wanted to make sure we got this to you right away. I am sure you need it, and, just in case, I sent you an extra charger for your laptop." The note was signed by Larry K. Kinney, in Loss Prevention.'"

If this customer service story sounds over-the-top good, it's not. Ritz-Carlton's commitment to exceptional customer service is so strong that any employee is independently authorized to spend up to $2,000 per day to improve guest experience. That's right -- whether an employee works at the reception desk, in the restaurant, or cleaning hotel rooms, they can independently decide to make a guest's experience exceptional -- as was the case in the example above.

In aninterview with Forbes, The Ritz-Carlton Group President and COO, Herve Humler, describes the organization's key to making customer service so stellar: employee engagement. Humler noted,

I believe in the power of recognition and empowerment leading to great employee engagement. And employee engagement is critical to guest engagement."

Good Customer Service Takeaway:赋予员工权能对于为客户取得良好成果至关重要。迈向员工权力的第一步是参与：使客户服务的一部分是您的使命，并使您的使命成为组织所做的一切。然后，组织并激励您的团队，以便员工可以独立工作以解决客户问题并创造性地思考。

And if you don't have $2,000 per day in your budget, you can still empower customer service reps with strategies like:

• Measuring qualitative and quantitative feedback, and not just how many cases or tickets they resolve in a given day
• Freeing up employee time off the phones or the queue to conduct research, analyze data, create processes, or work on other projects to have greater impact
• Devote creative or monetary resources to helping employees create moments to delight your customer with handwritten thank-you notes, small swag gifts, or discount codes

10. Whirlaway Sports

Whirlaway Sportsis a running apparel and equipment store located in northern Massachusetts. It differentiates itself from competitors through itsabove-and-beyond customer serviceexperience. And, that's not just my opinion.FacebookandYelpreviews give it a five out of five-star rating.

这就是为什么Whirlaway运动是不同的。他们guide you through every step of the buyer journey. For example, I went there to purchase a pair of running shoes. Another disclaimer: I never purchase running shoes. I'm more of an athlete who begrudgingly chose running. So, when I needed a pair of shoes I went on Yelp and found Whirlaway Sports. The reviews didn't let me down as I was greeted immediately as I walked into the store. I told them I needed shoes and they paired me with one of their running specialists.

This rep knew his stuff. He asked me about my running style, where I ran, how often I would run. Then we talked about price range and brand preferences. They even had a high-tech foot scanner that analyzed my feet to match for potential inserts. It was clear that every step of the experienced was planned and detailed.

And, to really go above-and-beyond, the rep knocked the price down because he knew the shoes I chose were going on sale the following week. He didn't have to mention that, but it was clear he was focused on my goals, not getting me out of the store.

Good Customer Service Takeaway: It doesn't matter if you're a multi-billion-dollar company or a local business, your service should be consistent throughout the entire customer experience. Even though Whirlaway is a small business, they've made their mark by committing to the customer's goals. This, in turn, produces loyalcustomer advocateswho willingly refer new leads to the business.

You're On Your Way to Good Customer Service

Every year, customers change their buying habits, marketing preferences, and so on. One thing that will never change is the customer's need for support and service. Companies should always be thinking about the best way to serve their customers and how they can adapt to meet the moment. Now that you have the tips and best practices for good customer service, apply this information during your next customer interaction.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Aug 19, 2021 12:45:00 PM, updated August 19 2021