Your frontline employees offer the first friendly voices and smiles that your customers experience when contacting your window tint shop. They play an important role in keeping and attracting new customers. They also play a role in whether your customers leave positive or negative reviews.
When frontline employees don’t have the necessary skills, they can be detrimental to your bottom line. And turnover can be expensive – especially considering the amount of time it takes for an employee to learn the different 3M films that your company offers. According to the Center for American Progress, the typical cost of replacing an employee who makes less than $30,000 annually is roughly 16 percent of that employee’s salary.
Because of the important role frontline employees play in your company (and your online reviews), it’s important to foster a positive workplace for these valuable people. Here are some tips to consider on managing customer service employees.
Create and Share Expectations for Customer Service
When training frontline employees, be sure to set clear expectations for success. Not only do you want your employees to understand all of the different 3M products and solutions that your company offers, you also want them to be able to greet customers with a friendly, personable attitude – no matter how bad of a day they personally might be having.
Consider developing a list of clear expectations for customer interactions. This can include practicing active listening, showing empathy when a customer describes a pain point (such as a hot vehicle or fading furniture), always following up with customer questions, being personable and avoiding negative language and more. Indeed offers 20 customer service tips to share with employees.
One idea might be to encourage your frontline employees to always ask a customer about their day or to always use the customer’s first name at least once during an interaction. This can go a long way in helping to establish a relationship between your company and the customer.
Conduct Onboarding Training
Create an onboarding training session for new hires. All employees should be required to attend the onboarding training session – regardless of position or title.
The training session should include information about the history and vision of your company, the products your company offers and key customer service strategies and expectations.
Consider requiring all employees to attend the training session at first so that everyone is exposed to the same message. Afterward, require only new hires.
Offer Customer Surveys
Conducting customer surveys can provide important feedback on ways in which your frontline staff is performing. The feedback provides insights on ways frontline staff can improve.
Some tint shops offer surveys for every interaction, while others offer them to a certain percentage of customers. Create a strategy that works for your company.
There are several companies that can help you incorporate this into your business workflow and also ask customers to provide online reviews, including Podium, Birdeye, Trustpilot, Twilio and more.
Celebrate Successes with Employees
Keep your team motivated by sharing with them positive reviews and survey results. Celebrating successes helps team members know that they are doing a good job – and encourages them to continue.
Consider motivating them more by offering incentives or rewards. This can be something simple like movie passes or gas cards – not necessarily pay incentives. Consider individual members of your team and what would motivate them most.
Speak to a Marketing Professional
Properly managing your frontline employees is critical to your overall business success. According to a report by PwC, 73 percent of consumers say that customer service drives their purchase decisions, and 65 percent find great customer service more influential than great advertising. Customer service also goes a long way in helping develop more positive online reviews.
For questions about marketing and online reviews, contact Accent Distributing, which can put you in touch with a professional marketing agency. Reach out to (941) 922-5268 or [email protected].
