Providing customer service is something you should do before, during and after a customer or potential customer makes a purchase. By creating a connection with customers and potential customers you will automatically develop a relationship with them that will make purchasing and repeat purchasing more likely.

 Here are ten amazing tips to improve your customer service.

1.  Anticipate customer needs --  You should know your customer inside and out. Conducting research into who your customer is and what their needs are you can create the best products and services that fill these needs.
2. Apologize effectively -- If something goes wrong in the product cycle, customer service personnel should know how to say they are sorry the right way.  Don't place blame on the client or anyone else, accept the blame, and make things right.
3. Appreciate your customers -- A lot of companies give discounts to new customers, why not show your appreciation and offer discounts and freebies to current customers. Your retention will go up by showing your customer that they matter.
4. Ask customers for feedback -- You have a great resource at your fingertips, your customers! By continually asking clients for feedback, and by paying attention to what your clients say, and enacting some of their suggestions, you can increase customer satisfaction by going straight to the source.
5. Know your why -- Sometimes when a business gets bigger, we can easily forget why we are here. Why do we do what we do? We do it for the customer. Without the customer, we would not exist. We have to always remember we are here for the customer and the customer pays our salary!
6. Listen to the customer -- Most customer service issues can be solved simply by listening. When a customer calls with a complaint the agents need to be trained to listen for the solution, because most customers already know what solution will please them the most.
7. Empower employees -- All employees need to be empowered to solve problems for the customer without transferring more than once or twice through the chain of command. I am sure you're familiar with having to wait in line while a cashier rings for a manager to deal with a problem that she or he could easily deal with, if only the company would allow it. Don't hold back employees from dealing fairly with any situation.
8. Teach your customer -- Provide a continually updated FAQ as well as online training regarding your product and services. Most people who are computer savvy will look at the FAQ and online training before contacting you personally with a complaint. Another fun way to teach your clients is to provide interactive and interesting infographics like the one below about customer service.
9. Under promise and over deliver -- You've heard it before, but it works! If you promise the moon and stars, but only deliver the stars, then your customer will be disappointed. But if you only promise the stars and deliver the moon and the stars your customer will be ecstatic.
10. Use an effective CRM app -- Finally, it's important to find and use an effective customer service application to automate and organize as much as possible about CRM in your company.

Click to see the full infographic: