business advisorcustomer servicemanagement

3 Easy Ways to Improve Customer Service During Employee Shortages at Your Small Business

 
It’s time for me to rant. The great resignation has flipped our economy on end and now everybody you talk to is understaffed. Well, I want you to take a step back and think about what that really means and how you treat your customers. I am having so many issues with getting people to return my calls. When I want to give them money.

I’m actually trying to buy two cars and I can’t get the salespeople to call me back. What is going on? When I finally got a hold of the salesperson, he said, yeah, I’m sorry we’re really busy. That’s not an excuse any more folks, everybody is really busy. Limit the amount of people that you deal with if you need to, but provide good follow-up and customer service.

Let’s talk about what that is. That doesn’t mean you have to spend your whole day returning phone calls. Instead, how about a text? Maybe take a phone number if most people are calling from their cell phone numbers, go ahead and just try to text them back. Tell them we have a backlog. We’ll get back with you in a week. If that’s what it takes, tell them we have our products only available online. Please check our website and let us know what you wanna order, whatever that may be, make it a simple way for you and your staff to follow up with people rather than just leaving them hanging and leaving them mad.

The second way you can do this. Record a video. I’m doing videos for my clients all the time. I wanna explain things, but I don’t wanna leave a five-minute voice message for them if I can’t reach them. And I don’t need to interrupt their day if it’s just me telling them an answer and it doesn’t need to be an ongoing conversation.

So work on some ways to make sure that you are keeping your customers happy. People are not doing a job of this in general right now. So you’ll be the superstar if you can figure it out. Think about common questions that people ask. And if your staff is answering the phone, provide them with answers to common questions.

Ask for an email address perhaps on your voicemail if you’re getting voicemail messages, you can email them a response and have a cut and paste scenario to answer commonly asked questions. Or heaven forbid take the most common questions you are asked, that people call you about and put an FAQ page on your website to answer those frequently asked questions.

Save yourself some time, save your customer some time, and let’s make everybody happy again and offer great customer service.

I’m Donna Bordeaux from Calculated Moves. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Make sure you check out our blogs and our websites from the link below. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when we post. To contact me, email me at donna@calculatedmoves.com.

Donna Bordeaux, CPA with Calculated Moves

Creativity and CPAs don’t generally go together.  Most people think of CPAs as nerdy accountants who can’t talk with people.  Well, it’s time to break that stereotype.  Lively, friendly, and knowledgeable can be a part of your relationship with your CPA as demonstrated by Donna and Chad Bordeaux.  They have over 50 years of combined experience as entrepreneurial CPAs.  They’ve owned businesses and helped business owners exceed their wildest dreams.   They have been able to help businesses earn many times more profit than the average business in the same industry and are passionate about helping industries that help families build great memories.