3 Customer Service Tactics to Help Increase Sales

1. Listen when they're talking naturally. Do this in the following ways:

• put your 1-800 number on your website;
• eliminate auto-attend for phone calls in favor of answering them with a live person;
• don't send emails to customers from nonresponse email addresses;
• allow customers to be transferred to a supervisor;
• use Tealeaf or a comparable customer experience management resource to watch random consumers’ online interactions with your brand;
• monitor your helpdesk system;
• set up Google Alerts to know when people are talking about your company;
• follow Twitter;
• look at Better Business Bureau complaints;
• monitor inbound links; and
• check product reviews and chat logs.

2. Look for unusual metrics. Pay attention to indirect messages, Holstein said. How can you tell if your website is relevant? Check out your bounce rates. Want to know how effective your site navigation is? Look at the number of times your product categories are searched internally. Determine if your FAQs’ section is complete by looking at customer emails to see what they're asking. If you find a common question that isn't in your FAQs, add it. Here are some more metrics that retailers need to concern themselves with, as well as how to find them: