Any good business owner knows that making the right first impression can count for a lot with customers. After all, your business’s initial conversation with a client is what establishes the foundation for the relationship they’ll have with your service. And bad customer service can be hugely detrimental to your small business.
Therefore, no matter how you choose to contact your clients, learning how to talk to customers properly is an essential skill to master, regardless of your chosen channel of communication.
Doing so will not only make the conversation with any customer easier but will also put you in a favorable light, as good customer service is considered one of the more important factors when it comes to making a decision on what service to opt into.
So, if you want to know the secret behind how to start a conversation over the phone or how to start a conversation with a client on chat or over the phone, read our top chatting tips below!
1. Say hello and introduce yourself
First things first, when it comes to how to make conversation with customers, it’s important that you give them a friendly greeting and introduce yourself and your company. That way they know you’re a real person and not a robot.
Introducing yourself by just your first name or choosing to include your last name is up to you, but either way it offers more clarity to the customer on who they’ve gotten in contact with, while simultaneously adding credibility to both your conversation and your business.
2. Get to know your customer
The next step in talking to customers is getting to know them so you can build a rapport and establish a sense of calm and ease. Start by asking their name, or verifying it if they already provided it, and then ask them a little bit about their role and the business associated with why they’re calling.
Doing this will help to make the conversation seem more personable and you can get a little bit more of an understanding of who you’re selling to, all while making the customer feel heard and understood.
3. Keep the conversation short and sweet
A key rule for how to talk to customers properly that is often forgotten, when discussing anything with a potential client, you want to get to the point of their problem as soon as possible.
While there’s never a set method to how you interact with a customer, by keeping things as short and sweet as they need to be, you can respect both yours and the customer’s time and focus on their needs specifically.
3. Make sure your client feels heard
As we all know, a conversation is a two-way street, which means you need to make sure that you come to the interaction with a welcoming energy and allow space for your customer to speak and bring up their concerns.
Fully address their concerns as you talk and do your best to either answer their questions or put them in contact with someone who can. In the event they don’t go with your business, you’ll at least leave a lasting positive impression for either future reconsideration, or general word-of-mouth conversation they might engage in.
5. Say thank you and wish them well
Finally, when it comes to the end of your conversation with your potential new client, treat it more like a see you later than a full goodbye to establish a future connection or action with them.
Be sure to ask them if there’s anything else that they would like to discuss that wasn’t brought up earlier in the conversation that they would like covered now and clarify what’s next in the roadmap of their service.
Whether this is touching base or moving on to the next step, if the situation fits, you can discuss how and when to speak with them again and send them a summary email to cover what you discussed. Again, this will leave a good impression and show your professionalism that they can look back on for reference.
And there you have it – those are our top tips on how to talk to customers. Of course, if you feel you don’t have time to implement all of these personally in your business, then you might want to consider working with the team here at VoiceNation.
VoiceNation is America’s #1, 24/7, 365 days a year live answering service. Our virtual receptionists have expert-crafted scripts that can be custom-tailored to your business’s needs to give your customers the best experience possible today to see how we can help you and don’t forget to visit our blog for similar article to this one, such as advice on how to handle angry customers over the phone and how to avoid putting customers on hold.