Most companies out there now provide access to customer service in four basic ways: on the telephone, by email, through a website, and via social media. But there are less common ways to deliver service and engage your customers that are worth exploring.phone-293959_1280

Lights, camera, action!

Many companies are melding social media with their FAQs by responding to customers’ inquiries with videos. This approach cleverly avoids the need to respond within character constraints while providing detailed and thorough responses. It also puts a face on your company, reveals the company culture, and allows employees to break up the monotony of typical communications. If you sell a digital product, consider videos that also capture your screen to simply and clearly communicate to your customers where and what to click.

Be all ears

Do you actively seek out your customers’ suggestions in an easily accessible way? Placing a response field into your website and linking to it in emails is an easy way to collect customer ideas that will help you grow your company and delight your customers. Starbucks instituted a customer input campaign that has led them to some of their customers’ very favorite things: pumpkin spice lattes and free birthday drinks. What might your customers suggest to you?

Go back to basics

In the day and age of quick communications, one of the best ways to connect with customers across the great digital divide is to simply put pen to paper. Following up a customer interaction with a quick personalized note is so unheard of today that it needn’t happen with every customer to have an impact. You can choose a certain number of notes each customer service representative should aim to send out for a given period of time, or have a third party transcribe the notes on your behalf, but the lasting impression that sending those small cards will leave on your customers will make them worth the effort.

Whether these novel ways to provide customer care rely heavily on technology or eschew it entirely, adding them to your current methods of customer service can assist you in your quest to delight your customers in every interaction. Do you have a proven approach that you want to share? We’d love to hear about it!