How can couriers improve customer service?

Customer service is the heart and central of any business. Even if you provide a truly amazing professional service, but have little or no customer service offering, you will find that your business becomes held back. Word of mouth is also important to many businesses, and this is also where customer service comes in. You wouldn’t want to get a bad reputation as someone who does not care or is not interested in their customers. With all this in mind, a good business should regularly look at how and what they can do to improve their customer service offering. In our latest article, we’ll take a closer look at some top tips.

Like all industries, the courier industry is not perfect and from time to time can benefit from some introspection which gives positive and sustainable ways to develop in the future. In this article we’ll look at what some of the problems could be and how best to move forward to tackle them.

Reliability

From research and many surveys both Rock Solid Deliveries and others have done in the past, there is one word that keeps coming up and it is this! Just as customer service is central to a business, being reliable is central to customer service. If you can manage to have these concepts all complement each other, you should have no problem! No one likes to be let down, or worse still, told an ‘excuse’ when it doesn’t even seem plausible. Whilst circumstances out of control happens to everyone occasionally and can’t be helped, showing your customers how serious you take reliability is one of the most important things you can do.

Communication avenues

How easily can your customers contact you? If your customer has to jump through multiple hurdles and hoops in order to speak to you, or the details are hidden in a page no one ever sees, this doesn’t look good. In fact as far as the latter point is concerned, research has shown that many people associate this with companies who are just not interested, so be warned. Can your customer contact you by phone, message, email, live chat etc? These are some of the communication avenues you should be looking at and the more the merrier for good customer service.

Responding to communication

Following perfectly from the above point, it is all well and good having communication avenues, but you need to be able to respond to them (and have the trained staff to be able to do so.) We mentioned trained staff because that is also important. Having someone who doesn’t care about your customers is probably worse than having no customer service at all! Customer service staff should be friendly, genuine, and have a passion for helping and pleasing people. Anything short of this is bound to cause problems for your business.

All communication should be responded to in a timely way also – no one wants to wait days or weeks for a reply, especially if something is important and needs quick attention. It is always best to think of yourself in the other person’s situation in these circumstances.

Show how important your customers are

There is one rule in business, never ever take your customers for granted, because they can always vote with their feet and go elsewhere. The courier industry is a very competitive market, and there will always be rivals willing to snap up your clients, even if you offer something bespoke like a same day courier service. Instead, treat your customers with respect and gratitude. You don’t need to physically state this, but actions speak louder than words, and if you can portray this as part of your normal work, you are much more likely to build a loyal client base. Customer satisfaction and interaction feeds into this as an integral aspect.

Further areas for consideration and solutions

Standing apart from competitors

There are plenty of delivery and courier companies. The industry has become something of swamped in recent years. This is coupled with the fact that individuals can now set up or become their own couriers quite easy. This can make it difficult for companies to stand out and get their credentials across.

Solution: Find an area you can focus on, but at the same time keep your net casted wide. If you can build up a reputation as an expert in a particular courier area this can help set you apart from others. This is not to be done however at the expense of other areas but should be done in conjunction with a wider courier / delivery portfolio of services. Rock Solid Deliveries for example are experts in same day delivery, but we cater for other specialised and general courier services too.

Adapt to evolving times and changes in the markets

All markets and industry go through cycles and change from time to time. There will be periods when something is more popular than something else or a new trend takes hold (like the rise of online shopping and resultant parcel delivery expansion for example.)

Solution: This seems simple! The answer is to keep up with demand and evolution, but this is often easier said than done. When this is broken down steps can be taken towards achieving this fairly easy however. For example, get to know your customers better and what they are looking for. Recognise the change in needs and demands of your customers and adapt to this accordingly. These type of things can all make big differences.

Managing staffing needs

The courier industry can be quite volatile ranging from exceptionally busy periods (e.g. Christmas) to times when demand slackens a little. Trying to manage staffing levels and work during these different periods can be challenging.

Solution: Get to know your own business aswell as the generalised cycle of when peak and flat times normally occur in the courier industry. Once you have a grasp of this, you can better streamline your staffing load so it works for you aswell as them and your customers.

Rock Solid Deliveries value all the work and custom their clients provide. You can find out more about what makes us tick, by visiting our company values section.