How Customer Service Can Help Your Small Retail Business

Dipping your toes into the fast-paced world of retail can be a risky business. In recent years, many small businesses and household names have succumbed to the fall of what people know as the traditional high street or retail complex. 

Across the world, the power of internet shopping and being able to purchase what you need online has put tremendous pressure on physical retail stores to do business in a way they have never done before and adapt to a whole new way of selling products if they want even a glimmer of hope as succeeding. Many businesses of varying sizes have risen to the challenge.

If you are looking for ways to entice your customers to keep coming back time and time again, you need to make it attractive and offer them something they can’t get elsewhere.

Customer Service

How many times have you jumped online to see people complaining about customer service? While there is a fine line between pandering to every whim of your customer and doing all you can to help them, it is a balancing act to protect the interests of your staff, company and the customer.

A good way to develop how you deal with customers is to look at every point they come into contact with your company. From listings online of local businesses, your website if you have one, the branding and impression the front of your shop gives out, to the service they receive via telephone or online enquiries.

 Once you know how customers interact with your business, you can work on improving the service they get at each step

• Easy to navigate online store or website
• Dedicated phone services
• Through staff training
• High-quality products
• Ease of payments
• Health and safety requirements

It will also be helpful to train your staff on how to deal with customers who require more careful handling and how to diffuse difficult situations with customers. Once they have the skills to resolve the issue, this will lead to fewer people demanding to speak to someone in a higher position and will result in happier customers and staff too.

Loyalty Schemes

Offering something for repeated purchases, loyalty cards can be a way of thanking your customers for their continued support. If you offer this service via the form of a loyalty card then the versatility of an in-house card printer will allow you to keep up with demand with less of a delay than relying on a third party to do so.

You can also choose to take customers details to keep on a database so you have a record of their spend for future reference. Offer a free product for spends over a certain limit, a free product with the purchase of a set number of items eg buy 5 coffees get your 6th free. Or offer discounts based on total spend, you can even split this into tiers, the more they spend the bigger the discount. It is entirely up to you but loyalty schemes have proved to be popular time and time again.

The Hidden Costs Of Running A Successful Business

So you think customer service is the only thing that will take your business to the next level? Think again! Unfortunately, with running a successful business come costs. Because, you have to pay for business expenses but also for a few unknown costs that nobody talks about, so I wrote an article here that will show you all the hidden costs of running a successful business.

You might also like to read:

• 6 Things no one tells you about starting a retail business
• Clever strategies for encouraging customer loyalty
• Three simple ways to improve your retail business
• The 3 steps towards improving your retail business
• 10 Practical tips to make your company’s sales figures more attractive