7 Things You Must Know About the Psychology of Customer Service

The secret to acquiring new customers, offering top notch customer service, and wooing your existing customers to stick to your brand is as simple as understanding consumer behaviors. Why?

Because when you understand this all-important aspect of your business, you’ll be able to learn what your customers want from your business and how to best serve them.

Make no mistakes about it; people are still yearning for a great customer experience. Providing an excellent customer service will help your business to grow. The premium customer service will help you to retain the customers.  According to ClaraBridge, “45% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer service.” More so, “83% of consumers need customer support while making an online purchase.”

Without satisfying customers, you can’t achieve get success in business. When you’re dealing with too many customers at once, it can be difficult trying to study each one of them.

Of course, it’s doable but it’s time-consuming at the same time. Imagine how many months you’d require to study a 100,000 paying customers—or at least, getting to know them personally—even if you stay at the surface.

Truth be told, the world has changed. What you thought impossible 3 years ago has been simplified today. In fact, you can now understand your customers by tapping into a resource of tested research on consumer behavior.

By applying positive psychology at your workplace will motivate customer service agent to deliver exceptional customer service. Positive psychology leads to customer happiness.

Addition of positive psychology and best customer service leads to positive experiences.

Here are 7 tips which will help you in understanding customer service psychology.

1.  Customers will pay more for a personalized service

“The goal of the company is to have customer service that is not the just the best, but legendary.” – Sam Walton

Personalization is like the antidote to a boring customer service. No matter your business model, one of the ways to connect with customers at a personal level is to personalize the experience.

Your customer isn’t a group of people, but a human being that wants to be treated like a King. It’s your responsibility to locate this person in the crowd and excite them when they visit your website or store. In turn, this can increase your sales by up to 19%.

In an exclusive study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers tested the effects that mints had against a control group (where no mints were given). The objective is to measure their effectiveness in increasing tips.

After the experiment, it was observed that the first set examined had waiters giving mints along with the check, without mentioning the mints themselves. Interestingly, this resulted in a 3% increase in tips against the control group.

Is it about the mints? No, it’s about the personalized experience they created. And you can implement this into your own business, to bring back lost customers by offering free gifts while personalizing the experience.

You don’t have to run a Restaurant before you can put a warm smile and display a positive attitude towards your customer.

Even if you sell digital products, do it anyways. Data from MarketingCharts found that lack of personalization is one of the main reasons customers switch providers.

From your website homepage to the checkout page, even after they purchase your product, use personalization to wind them in.

What are you thinking about when customers come to you? Is it the money or their happiness? Truth is, if the customer is in your mind, you’ll have them in mind, therefore, giving them that special treatment becomes a reflex action—and not an afterthought.

2.  Minimum parameters inspire customers to take action

When it comes to copywriting, how you express yourself is more important than what you said. In other words, it doesn’t matter how awful the customer experience might have been if you can clearly convey and answer customer questions, you’ll re-inspire them. Yes, you will.

I’m sure the term, “Analysis Paralysis” isn’t new to you. But in case it sounds strange to your hearing, it simply means bringing confusion or making it difficult for customers to choose exactly what they want. Is there a cure?

The offer itself might be unique and valuable, but if you’re not able to communicate it, that would create a heavy burden.

But I’m glad because Dr. Robert Cialdini, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University conducted a consumer study to determine the donation process of the American Cancer Society, and how a tiny change in what was said dramatically improved results.

Here are two phrases used to request a door-to-door donation. Researchers tested the effect of the slight variation in the copy (i.e., wording).

(1). “Would you be willing to help by giving a donation?”

(2). “Would you be willing to help by giving a donation? Every penny will help.”

Can you guess which of these questions generated the best results? Well, data doesn’t lie (at least in this instance).

Researchers found that people who received the second variation were more likely to donate. This explains why people prefer to take action when minimum parameters are set.

Case in point: People like to be specific, and they want to make an impact. That’s exactly what the second variation communicated.

If you want to offer invaluable customer service, eliminate confusion. Shows people what they stand to gain, be clear when communicating. And instead of telling a customer that you’d give them a call in the morning, tell them the exact time (e.g., I’ll call you by 9.30 am tomorrow, will that be cool?).

3. Be Active on Social Media

“The customer’s perception is your reality.” – Kate Zabriskie

One of the most important customer service psychology tips is to remain active on the social media platforms where your customers are present so that they can instantly interact with you.

As per the report, more than 2.7 billion users were active on social media in 2017. This stat shows that most of your users would be on social media. Providing customer service on social media idea can be a great idea to convert customers into brand advocates.

4.  Learning new things changes customer’s brain, even if they’re older

What can be done about our minds? It’s so powerful that we’re yet to explore all its potentials. When you’re dealing with customers (and you should), do everything you can to educate customers on the value of your product, and not on price.

Truth is, whenever you teach, instruct, guide, give insights, or recommend a new idea or thought to your customers, their brain will plunge into action.

This new idea will change their brain power. If they were thinking of switching to another brand, they’ll have a rethink.

According to research, “Learning causes changes in your memory campus.” And “enriching your mind by learning new things rewires your brain,” says Meg Selig, in a recent post on Psychology Today.

Educate customers on how to use your product, how to upgrade or downgrade, or anything that would change their brain in a positive way.

5.  Customers want to hear your brand story

Are you ready to create a memorable customer experience in real-time? If yes, then you need to tell your brand story.

Marcus Sheridan, the founder of River Pools and Spas, was on the verge of calling it quits—he dabbled into all sorts of marketing strategies but none of them produced the desired outcome.

As fate may have it, he started telling his brand story. Then, something happened. His Fiberglass Pools Company that once nose-dived came alive. Funny enough, his clients who were paying thousands of dollars to have a pool installed in their homes started to trust Marcus and his team.

If you study the research work which was led by Melanie Green and Timothy Brock, you’ll find that trying to persuade people by telling them stories work extremely well —especially, when the story is relevant to your offer in some way.

Through storytelling, you can engage customers so strongly, and transport them into the scene, without directly asking them to buy your product.

You don’t have to tell customers how great your product/service is, just tell them a short story of how it helped someone else. Don’t hit on the product, but rather, focus on the relief the person got.

6.  Address customers by their names and they’ll remember your brand

The sweetest sound on earth is “Your Name.”

Personalization goes beyond addressing customers by their names. But it’s a great start. According to several studies, people will stick to your brand if you always address them by their names.

Would you like to visit a store where the salesperson knows you by name and actually calls you in a loving manner?

I’m sure you will.

If you want to appear competent and articulated, get to know your customer’s name and if you use it more often, you’ll be seen in a better light by the customer. This is often referred to as “Halo Effect.”

7.  “Thinking” is the best way customers encourage themselves

“Kindness and courtesy are at the root of a positive customer service experience.” – Shep Hyken

Self-talk and thinking are like two Siamese Twins that can’t be separated. They’re actually the same, although, they might not apply to the same situation.

For your customers, one of the ways to get them to believe in your product, stick to your brand, tell others about your customer support wit, and buy more, is when you give them reasons to talk to themselves. This will drive the message deeper into their hearts.

If you can get customers to say it to themselves, by thinking, they’ll make quicker decisions.

For example, if you sell digital cameras, instead of shouting at the top of your voice trying to drive the ‘awesomeness’ of your camera into their brain, why not whisper it and allow them to mutter it to themselves?

This would produce excellent results.

Conclusion

Don’t approach customer service with a half-baked approach. Make it an intrinsic aspect of your marketing strategy.

In fact, make it the core because it controls your marketing, sales, technical, and even the management departments, and their decision making processes.

As a final thought, learn to listen to customers. Give them opportunities to speak, and if you must speak to them, do so with respect—knowing that using “Positive Language” will most assuredly create happy customers which your business needs to thrive in this competitive era.

If above tips are applied correctly can be really helpful in understanding psychology of customer service.