It's All In The Smile! One Little Way To Improve Your Customer Experience
You will have heard the song that says you’re never fully dressed without a smile - and this is never truer than when you are trying to deliver a high-quality customer experience. But how important is a smile when it comes to customer service? Keep reading to find out.
The International Language
No customer likes to walk into an organisation and see a dour employee who seems unhappy with their job and unwilling to help. Smiling really is the international language that everyone speaks - your employees can communicate an attitude of openness and approachability that will in turn make your customers feel more open and happier. A simple smile costs nothing but can lead to a positive image for your brand, no matter where in the world you are.
Improving Employee Engagement
Employees may not always feel like smiling, and this is perfectly natural. But putting on a happy or positive face for the benefit of a customer can result in employees feeling more cheerful themselves, improving engagement. They are likely to have better interactions with customers and each other and be eager to provide top quality customer experience every time.
Encouraging Positive Interactions
Sometimes customers will approach your employees when they are less than happy. This can be challenging, and smiling brightly is not always appropriate - but a small and reassuring smile is still more likely to encourage customers to feel listened to than a blank expression. A smiling employee will subconsciously cause customers to calm down and interact in a more reasonable manner, making solutions easier to reach.
How Smiles Carry
So what about if your employees are not customer-facing? You might not think that facial expressions have any bearing on interactions that take place over the phone, but this isn’t true. You can actually hear whether or not someone is smiling in their voice. It will automatically translate to a more upbeat, confident and optimistic tone, which can create the same sense of trust, defusing unhappy customers and creating positive experiences, even when they are a thousand miles away.
A smile is one small way that you can easily improve customer experience - and if you can provide an environment that encourages your staff to feel happier, then they will naturally smile more. To discover more ways to make sure every customer experience is positive, get in touch with Investor in Customers to find out more.
Image source: Unsplash