5 Ways to Provide Good Customer Service: A Complete Guide

Good customer service is important — whether we’re receiving or providing it. But what is good customer service, anyway?

Good customer service means meeting customer needs and expectations consistently. This can lead to business growth — even when you’re handling customer problems.

Our research finds that 88% of customers say good customer service makes them more likely to purchase again. However, 86% of service pros say customer expectations are higher than they used to be, increasing the pressure to deliver good customer service.

Let’s look at the ins and outs of good customer service and how to set up for success with customer service management software with AI and other strategies.

What you’ll learn:

• What is good customer service?
• 5 ways to improve your customer service
• Why is good customer service important?
• Benefits of good customer service
• How AI and other technology can help you deliver good customer service
• 4 good customer service examples
• How to measure good customer service
• Learn how Service Cloud can help you deliver great customer service

What is good customer service?

From a customer’s perspective, good customer service is fast, seamless, and easy. It’s also consistent, convenient, personalized, and empathetic. The same applies to your business when providing customer service.

The customer reaches out on their preferred customer service channel – voice, video, email, chat, or even self-service option like a customer portal. Service reps or AI agents, like Agentforce for Service, are available to help when needed, and the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves. The service rep or agent understands the issue, is empathetic, and resolves the problem the first time the customer reaches out.

Of course, such a seamless customer experience doesn’t just magically happen. It takes well-trained customer service reps and agents with the right customer service skills. And it takes supportive, smart technology — specifically an omnichannel CRM, plus connected data, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Thanks to advances in technology improving customer service software, all this is now possible. (Back to top)

5 ways to improve your customer service

As you work to improve your customer service strategy, here are five customer service best practices to consider:

1. Put customers in the driver’s seat. Our research shows that 61% of customers prefer self-service for simple issues. Set up a help center — or knowledge base — and a customer portal where customers can find the information they need on their own, or create a community where customers can come together to solve common issues. Automate common processes, like updating an address, and share those processes in a knowledge base article accessible to your customers. Then they can easily find exactly what they’re looking for.
2. Drive engagement with channels. Customers want to reach out on the channel that’s most convenient for them — whether voice, video, text, live chat, or even in-person at your physical location. To better understand what your customers prefer, analyze how they use your channels now. Where are opportunities to make service more seamless, and which channels could you add to support your customer service goals?
3. Connect your data. To provide excellent customer service, reps and agents need to see all the relevant information about an individual, whether it’s housed in your CRM or external data. That way, when a customer moves from one channel to the next — for instance, from email to phone support — they don’t have to start all over. Connected data helps you avoid this problem, so you can more easily respond to your customers’ needs.
4. Lean on AI and automation. Customer service AI technology like Agentforce – which includes autonomous AI agents as well as assistive AI — can help service reps out tremendously. Agentforce can answer both common and complex customer questions 24/7 within the guardrails your business has set, improving response times and even reducing burnout for service reps. Assistive AI acts as a helper to your service reps right in the console, surfacing relevant knowledge articles, generating suggested replies to customers, and even drafting the first version of a case wrap-up summary for the rep. Be sure to have a human review for accuracy. 
5. Serve with empathy. When a customer reaches out, they’re looking for someone who understands what they’re going through. Both AI agents and reps must deliver service with empathy to ensure customers feel like they really matter to you. Agentforce is designed to provide courteous service and, like your reps, it continues to learn on its own. To help your service reps build both their product knowledge and interpersonal skills, invest in customer service training. Salesforce’s free online learning platform, Trailhead, is an excellent resource for your team to develop valuable customer service skills. (Back to top)

Why is good customer service important?

As mentioned, customer expectations are higher than they used to be. The good news is that 73% of customers now believe companies treat them as unique individuals rather than just a number. To continue to meet rising customer expectations, service teams must prioritize good customer service by listening to customer feedback.

Remember: the majority of customers say good customer service makes them more likely to make another purchase. So providing good customer service will help you prevent attrition and boost loyalty. What’s not to like? (Back to top)

Benefits of good customer service

Providing good customer service is a great way to build a loyal customer base over time. Here are some benefits you may experience because of  consistently great customer service:

• Brand loyalty: It’s more cost-effective to keep an existing customer than recruit a new one. Your support team has an important role to play in customer retention – and therefore revenue. Happy customers, after all, are loyal customers.
• New revenue opportunities: To be of help, service reps must understand the customer’s needs. This puts them in a unique position to spot – and act on – opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. 
• Competitive edge: Good customer service is so important that brands can use it to differentiate themselves from the competition. Every advantage helps.
• Employee retention: Our research finds that 69% of service decision makers say rep attrition is a major or moderate challenge. That’s a pain point, because you need well-trained support reps to deliver outstanding service. Making good customer service a priority means investing in training, and investing in your employees. This can help improve retention. After all, people like to work where they feel valued. (Back to top)

How AI and other technology can help you deliver good customer service

Providing good customer service was once a matter of taking detailed notes on paper. Now, technology lets reps quickly help more customers while keeping quality high. Here are the key technologies that make excellent service possible, even as the volume of service interactions grows:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) software: An AI-powered CRM platform acts as your central source of truth, where both service reps and AI customer service agents can access all the relevant data about each customer and their interactions with your business. It’s the foundation of fast, personalized service.
• AI and automation: These technologies speed up service delivery. Automate manual processes that support reps do frequently and you’ll save them time and boost productivity. Add Agentforce, and you’ll boost productivity. Agentforce’s autonomous AI agents can answer customer questions without the need for a human in the loop. Agentforce assistive AI acts as virtual assistants to your service reps, as discussed above. Surfacing relevant knowledge articles, generating suggested replies to customers, and creating first drafts of case wrap-up summaries and knowledge articles are a few of Agentforce’s skills.
• Robust data platform: We’ve already talked about the power of connected data — but how do you actually connect it? Each time a customer reaches out to your business, more data is created. How do you keep track of it all? You need a powerful data platform like Data Cloud to unite and harmonize all your data. Data Cloud brings all your data, no matter where it’s housed, inside Salesforce for a full, 360-degree view of your customer.
• Service analytics: To improve your customer service, you need to know where it currently stands. You must be able to visualize and understand key pieces of information. This includes which channels customers use to contact you, how long each service interaction takes, how satisfied customers are with your customer support, and more. You need customer service management software that turns contact center data into customer service analytics, in the form of easy-to-understand charts and reports. Service Intelligence can help you here by turning your customer support interaction data into actionable insights. In addition, Customer Experience Intelligence helps you interpret customer sentiment across both service interactions and feedback surveys. It reveals which topics, products, service issues, or team members drive customer satisfaction higher or lower. (Back to top)

Good customer service examples

Good customer service makes customers feel valued and recognized. Here are four real-world examples of standout service for both B2B customer service and B2C customer service to inspire you:

• Manufacturing: A large manufacturing company experiences a sudden outage in their supply chain management software and contacts their provider’s customer service team. An AI agent quickly diagnoses the issue and coordinates with the technical team to implement a fix within hours. The next day, a customer service rep follows up to personally ensure the system is fully operational and provides a detailed report on the incident, generated by the AI agent. This quick and comprehensive approach to incident management not only resolved the immediate problem but also strengthened the customer’s confidence in the software provider.
• Financial services: A bank experiences a recurring issue with their high-tech security system, which seems to malfunction at random. Before the customer reaches out for help, the security company’s field service team identifies the reason for the failure with AI-powered sensors that track back to their field service management system. A dispatcher proactively contacts the bank to schedule a service visit. The technician then addresses the root cause of the issue and optimizes the system for better future performance, all before the bank’s manager has even contacted the company with a complaint. This is good customer service for asset service management in action. 
• E-commerce: A customer receives a sweater from a clothing subscription service and wears it all the time. After just a few months, the edge of the sweater starts to fray and unravel. The customer reaches out about the problem using an AI agent and asks if it’s still in stock. The agent not only refunds the customer but also automatically notifies their stylist to keep an eye out for a replacement. Once available, the sweater is sent to the customer free of charge.
• Retail: A grocery shopper inadvertently buys expired food. They return the product to the store and are met with a hassle-free refund process, receiving their money back plus a gift card. Going forward, the store leans on customer service analytics to identify common quality complaints and train staff on how to handle returns. The store retains its reputation and earns trust with the customer, who now knows they’ll receive nothing but the best from this particular business.

These examples are made possible through deliberate investment in the customer service experience. These companies have well-trained agents and service reps. They have connected, reliable data about their customers. They use AI for customer service to help them identify issues. All this makes the customer experience — even in the face of a problem — overwhelmingly positive. (Back to top)

How to measure good customer service

If you want to improve customer service, it’s important to measure and track your progress. Tried-and-true key performance indicators (KPIs) like case volume and average handle time are still important. But you also need to capture the broader customer experience. Here are some customer service metrics to consider: 

• Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT): A company gathers customer feedback, usually through surveys, about how  satisfied customers are with a company’s products or services. Customers rate your business, often on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 denoting the highest level of satisfaction. Your CSAT is the share of satisfied customers. So if you have 100 respondents and 60 of them rate themselves as either “satisfied” or “very satisfied,” your CSAT score would be 60%. 
• Net Promoter Scores (NPS): This metric gauges customer loyalty by asking how likely customers are to recommend your business to their friends. People answer on a scale of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (definitely will recommend). Those who score 9 or 10 are considered promoters of your brand. Those at 0 to 6 are considered detractors. Your NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. For example, if you have responses from 100 customers with 50 promoters and 27 detractors, your NPS is 23.
• First Call Resolution (FCR): Also known as First Contact Resolution, this metric tracks whether a company was able to resolve an issue the first time the customer reached out. To capture it, you divide the number of complaints successfully resolved on the first try by the total number of customer interactions, and multiply by 100.
• Customer Effort Score (CES): This measures how easy it is for customers to use a product or service, find the information they need, or get their issue resolved. Most organizations measure CES through a customer satisfaction survey after a service interaction, aka “How easy did we make it to resolve your issue?” Customers respond on a multi-point scale (strongly agree, agree, neither, disagree, strongly disagree). Your CES is the percentage of respondents who select the “agree” options. 

And remember, Customer Experience Intelligence is your friend for all types of customer surveys, helping you quickly analyze and make sense of customer sentiment. The insights it provides help you take action to improve service delivery. (Back to top)

Learn how Service Cloud can help you deliver great customer service

If you’re looking to improve your customer service operations, you couldn’t get started at a better time. Technological developments like Agentforce are streamlining customer support and dramatically boosting productivity. At Salesforce, we’ve been able to resolve 83% of our own cases with Agentforce autonomous agents, without a human in the loop. 

Getting started with AI-powered agents, assistive AI, and Service Cloud is possibly easier than you think. Agentforce includes a set of tools to create and customize agents, and a library of ready-to-use skills for any service use case. 

Good customer service is always well worth your time and investment. Your reps and agents will become more productive, your customers more satisfied. Your brand reputation will improve, customer loyalty will rise, and CSATs will soar. (Back to top)

Devon McGinnis contributed to this blog article.