Your customers are increasingly demanding in terms of after-sales service. Improving the performance and quality of your after-sales service will have an impact on your turnover and customer loyalty. How can you concretely improve your after-sales service?
Why should after-sales service be a pillar of your company?
After-sales service is a key element of the overall customer relationship. After-sales service, as its name suggests, refers to all services provided to customers after the sale.
These services can be very diverse and depend in part on the type of activity of your company. They can concern the delivery of products, installation, repair and overhaul services, but also more generally all remote interactions (telephone, email…) with your customers who have purchased a product from you.
After-sales service is one of the main components of customer service. Discover the 7 keys to quality customer service.
After-sales service is of major importance for at least two reasons:
The quality of after-sales service has an important influence on the purchasing decision, especially for large purchases. To sum it up in one sentence: your customers not only buy a product, they also buy a service. For example, Darty has established his reputation on this service.
Secondly, the quality of after-sales service and, more generally, customer relations is a central element for your loyalty. However, retaining customers is much cheaper than acquiring new ones.
Discover the 7 reasons to build customer loyalty.
More generally, you must always have this idea in mind: it is not enough to offer quality products, you must also offer services that are appreciated by your customers. Customer satisfaction is based at least as much on the ancillary services as on the nature and quality of the products purchased.
In other words: you can offer the best products on the market, you will not be able to ensure sustainable growth of your business if your customers complain about your customer service.
The quality of customer service, and particularly after-sales service, has a decisive impact on your brand image. It is also the basis of the relationship of trust and the emotional bond built between you and your customers.
Know your customers well to provide the best after-sales service.
Once you know that it is important to have a quality after-sales service, the essential practical question remains: how to improve your after-sales service?
First, you must put the customer at the centre of your concerns. Customers are the source of your turnover. You must be listening to them. In a word: to become a customer-centric company.
Your company’s areas of development (e.g. improving your after-sales service) must be based on feedback from your customers. It is on the basis of your customers’ opinions and a good knowledge of the customer that you must develop your strategy.
To improve your after-sales service, the best solution is to ask your customers what they think about your after-sales services through the use of satisfaction questionnaires. The practice has spread and it is now common for a customer who has requested after-sales service to receive an email or SMS asking him if he is satisfied with the service provided.
Several customer knowledge software programs allow you to design intelligent questionnaires for your customers. You have the possibility, thanks to these questionnaire software, to target respondents in a very precise way. The aim is of course to offer the questionnaire to people who have already interacted with the after-sales service.
The quality of respondent targeting provides highly qualified data. The data collected from these questionnaires will allow you to better identify the strengths and weaknesses of your after-sales service. Some customer knowledge tools allow you to integrate this data in real time into your CRM or customer service software for optimal follow-up.
On MyFeelBack, for example, you can create tickets in Zendesk following a dissatisfaction reported in a questionnaire. These integration methods offer the possibility to effectively manage your after-sales service and react in real time to negative feedback. As we know, responsiveness is the key point in after-sales service.
Knowing your customers well and being attentive to their feedback is the most effective way to improve the performance of your after-sales service and adapt it to changing customer needs.
The quality of service depends on the internal flow of information
To offer an effective after-sales service, you must also be attentive to the feedback from people in your company who are in direct contact with customers. You must adopt a horizontal or transversal operating mode that allows the personnel in charge of after-sales service to quickly share the feedback they get from interactions with your customers.