Tips to Ensure Excellent Customer Service
1. Effective Business Communication
How you communicate with your customers has a lot relying on it, and communication goes beyond one-on-one meet-ups. It includes answering questions, emails, calls, all of it – with as much clarity as possible. Starting from the first question and consultation meet-up to the follow-up and confirmation emails, everything you say is a reflection of your professionalism. Also, since you might not always be available to answer questions, you could automate the responses to be prompt. These days, there are CRM software that help you personalize even your automated responses so your clients can feel like they are talking to a person instead of a machine.
Further Read: IPS Photography Business Tips For Wedding Photographers
2. Responsiveness
Imagine asking someone a question in your email and then not getting a response for days or weeks. You’d consider this as poor customer service, right? When you promptly reply to a potential client (through whatever mode of communication), they feel heard and get the assurance that someone is trying to address their issues. And who doesn’t appreciate that feeling as a customer?
Prompt responses weigh in as an essential factor for excellent customer service. Whether it is a question, feedback, or update, try to get back to your clients as soon as possible. Within 24 hours works best. And if there is an issue that might take longer than usual to resolve, let them know by sending an email stating the turnaround time. It’s best to always keep the client in the loop.
Suggested Read: Top 5 Tips To Create Automated Systems For Your Business
3. Online Presence
Nowadays, most couples (aka your potential couples) start their research on the internet. This means that your first impression of you or your business will be formed based on the look of your website or social media platforms, making it crucial to keep both of these not just visually impressive but updated too. Make sure that your website has all the relevant information that a potential client would want to know about your business. Including an FAQ section can be of substantial help. It will help answer some of the most common customer questions and perhaps even questions that your clients didn’t even know they should be asking.
Making your website a go-to resource for wedding planning is another way of serving your clients. In addition to that, it is also essential to make your website easy to navigate and mobile-friendly. Even if you have updated your website with relevant information, if it is hard to access it, you are probably going to send your potential customers back. To keep your social media game at its best, update your accounts with inspiring images from your past weddings to help your customers better visualize the experience they are about to sign up for.
4. Your Photography
Another important aspect that can help you stand out from the crowd is your photography. After all, isn’t that what you are selling to your customers? And it is not all about being the absolute best, but more about being your best. Be your own critic. Develop a sense to detach from your artist headspace and look at your work from a professional perspective. Think about what you can make better. Is the lighting doing justice to the scene? Can you experiment with a different angle or a lens? This critical thinking will help you identify your problem areas and work on them.
Besides that, also ask yourself what makes your photography business different from the rest? Is it your photography style or your experience? Is it your ability to photograph all seasons and during difficult lighting situations or your ability to seamlessly manage people? Analyzing such things could help you better understand your strengths and weaknesses and work on them. This can further help you sell your plus points better and, as a result, serve your customers better.
Suggested Read: Photography Composition Techniques For Beginners
5. Pre-Wedding Communication
The way you treat your customers before they have booked you or before their wedding day also says a lot about your customer service. To streamline your workflow and remember everything about your clients, you could also turn to business management software such as Táve, Asana, etc. Another thing that you can do to improve your workflow is to automate. Automate emails to keep following up on clients. Most of them will appreciate you checking in and keeping in touch.
6. Post-Wedding Communication
As a wedding photographer, serving your clients doesn’t end on the wedding day. And sometimes, it is the days that follow that can really help you strengthen your relationship with them. After the wedding day, let your clients know what to expect next by emailing them all the details about the upcoming process. This helps in keeping them posted when they are eagerly waiting for the images. So even though they are anticipating their wedding photos to come in on a set date, reassuring them that everything is going according to plan could help make that waiting period a little easier for them. Also, if things are not going according to plan, remember to keep your couples informed.
Related Read: Nail The Client Experience: Featuring Orlando Oliveira
7. On-Time Delivery
Once the wedding is over, couples and their family members are often eager to receive the wedding photographs, making it more important to deliver what you had promised. The ideal way to go about it is to underpromise, overdeliver. Carefully analyze your turnaround time and add 1 or 2 weeks to it when proposing your deliverables to your clients. This way, you don’t keep them waiting for too long, give yourself some buffer time, and more often than not, are even able to deliver the photos before the promised time.
Further Read: How To Deliver Photos To Clients
8. Ask For Feedback
Even when the day is over, and you know you have done everything that was previously agreed upon for your customer, ask them if there is anything else that you can do for them. Sometimes, these little things can go a long way in establishing a good impression. Also, get in touch with them to ask for honest feedback and testimonials. This will help you grow, but more importantly, it will make your customer feel that you are genuinely listening and are committed to offering them excellent customer service. If your business and personal motto is continuous improvement, this will help you with that too.
9. Take Up Problems With A Positive Attitude
Problems are an inevitable part of the business. Sometimes, they can be about things that have to do with you, other times, you may have no direct control over the said problem. Whatever be the case, it helps to address client issues with a positive attitude. Hear them out and try to understand the root of the problem. Try to make quick amends and work on a speedy resolution. The more you delay addressing the issue, the further it can escalate. Moreover, listening to a client’s grievances and then managing the situation with a positive attitude could turn a bad review into an example of exemplary customer service.
Further Read: A Roadmap To Market Your Wedding Photography Business
Ensuring good customer service is one of the many things you will have to do to keep your wedding photography business running and be on the way to become the “first choice” for couples planning their weddings – in your local area and perhaps even across state lines. However, good customer service is hard work. It takes different wheels to work together at the required pace to make it efficient and constant. But the more inclined you are towards making it a memorable experience for your client, the more it will help you stand out as a professional that delivers excellent customer service.
At ShootDotEdit, we aim to help you dedicate more time to doing things you love – whether that’s shooting more weddings or spending time with your family. And to help you do that, we lessen your post-production workflow by taking editing off your plate. To learn more about how we can help, check out our pricing plans.
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