Providing a good service that makes your customers feel valued, while maintaining efficiency, is a tricky balancing act for any business. Outsourcing to an answering service or virtual assistant is one way to ensure that the person dealing with incoming calls is focused on that particular job, but this alone is not enough. You need to make sure that customers never feel rushed, but no one issue should be allowed to drag on, costing you money. Achieving this takes skill and practice. Here are a few tips to help you get the balance right.

Own the problem

One of the most common complaints that customers have regarding customer service is that they keep getting passed from one person to another without anyone ever taking responsibility. An important part of good customer service is ensuring that very quickly the caller speaks to a representative who is prepared to own the problem. If they are unable to deal with every aspect of the problem themselves, it is still far better if one person remains the contact point for the customer, even if behind the scenes several people are required to get to the bottom of the issue. It is important that the person to take responsibility for a customer's case should be the first person they speak to when they call, or if that is not possible, the first person they are transferred to. If they are transferred more than once, it will begin to feel as if they are being fobbed off.

Be ready

There is a temptation to try to demonstrate good service by answering a call the moment the phone rings. There is nothing wrong with this in principal -- callers should never be left hanging, after all -- but it is important to make sure that you are completely ready. When you speak to a customer, their case should be the only thing that you are thinking about. If you are still writing up notes from a previous call, or attending to some administration, you will make a poor first impression and you won't be able to give the level of service that the call demands.

Set a positive tone

Building a rapport with the customer is vital if you are to resolve their problem in a way that is mutually satisfactory. More often than not the caller will have experienced some level of frustration or inconvenience that has prompted their call. Therefore, the onus is on you to set a positive tone to the discussion. Treating every caller as someone you genuinely want to help, and every call as an opportunity to achieve a positive outcome, will create a good impression on your customers and will make your job easier and more enjoyable.

Stay in control

In a desire to avoid seeming brusque, there can be a temptation to allow the caller to wander off on a tangent. You must always be on the lookout for this. If you find it happening, you need to get back on track as quickly as possible. Avoid interrupting the customer, but take the first opportunity to say something like, "You mentioned that you were having difficulty with..." and bring the conversation back to the topic in hand.

Listen

Whether your calls are outsourced to an answering service or you are dealing with them in-house, the most important thing that any customer service representative can do is listen. It may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how often it is ignored. Just because you think you know what the customer is going to say, it doesn't mean that you do. Listening carefully increases the chances of resolving the problem first time, which is both good customer service and efficient.