Let’s face it, Customer Service is about expectations. Expectations are shaped by previous experiences which may have been good or bad and it is these past experiences that form the basis of the perception of Customer Service an individual has.  For example, the perception of someone who has become accustomed to receiving bad service may mean that their expectations are lower and so a company renowned for providing excellent customer service are likely to exceed expectations.  Equally, this particular individual may have experienced brilliant customer service at some point resulting in very high expectations. What is consistent, however, is that businesses need to meet or ideally exceed client expectations to be successful.

Having excellent customer service can be a very big competitive advantage on those other companies of a similar market. Get this right and you exceed the expectations of your clients, it will soon travel by word of mouth. Clients never make a point of discussing just ‘good’ customer service – Bad customer service is always brought up, everyone wants to talk about their bad experiences! The same for excellent customer service, if you are offering the best to your clients, always there to help and are friendly to them, they will want to talk about that too.

Here at PSP we are keen to ensure our clients are happy and that they do not require any help, even the smallest of question, we are available to help. Outweigh their expectations!

Top 3 tips for managing Client expectations

1. Being Friendly, easy to reach and happy to help

Be nice to your clients, ensure that you are easy to talk to - approachable - and that they feel at ease. Make sure that they know how to reach you; give the client options, as an example, at PSP our clients have our contact telephone number as well as contact email addresses but alongside that we have a support email address for our helpdesk.  Help your clients every time they reach out, small queries or not so small, this all helps to exceed their expectations and go the extra mile!

2. Communicate

Speak to your clients on a regular basis, we all have clients that we are touch with all the time, in our case doing small bits of development work on a regular basis. But then there is also those clients that are fairly quiet – give them a call and have a chat to make sure they have no questions that they never got round to asking and that they are still happy.

3. Reporting/Updating

Let your clients know what you have been doing over the previous period and even let them know what you intend to achieve over the next one! Here at PSP, when working on a project we send out weekly updates of how far along the project is and what we aim to achieve the following week – often this is sent out to the client and followed up with a conference call involving the project team so that we can answer any questions that they may of thought of when reading the update.

You have to know your client. Knowing their business and what they require from you will help you to deliver exactly what they are expecting and also in a way they expect. Always give the best and do not promise things to clients that you cannot deliver, this is a sure way of them feeling that you have given them a bad experience as they thought they were going to get something different.