What’s amazing customer service? It’s speedy, personalised, customer-focused, and always positive. Why does wedding business customer service matter? It’s the secret to growing your business. Here’s what you need to know.
Step No. 1: Reply before your competitors get the chance
Following our annual survey of 500+ wedding businesses and 4,000+ couples with weddings in 2020-2022, we reported the above supplier response times. Remarkably, almost exactly half of wedding suppliers industry-wide respond to initial enquiries with the first hour. That’s a phenomenal response rate, and it means your competition is fierce. He who puts his hat in the ring first usually takes the cake.
After 21+ years working with wedding businesses and collecting information from various research studies (including Harvard Business Review), here’s what we know to be true about amazing customer service:
- 50% of couples will book the first supplier that gets back to them
- FIVE minutes is the ideal timeframe to respond to a lead
- Calling within FIVE minutes is 21x more effective than calling after 30 minutes
- Suppliers who reply within an hour are SEVEN times more likely to book a client than those who respond within two hours
To get ahead of your competition and win the gig, the best thing you can do is reply within five minutes or less.
For more wedding business customer service tips, download our annual industry report.
Step No. 2: Go the extra mile to make customers feel good
In mid-2020, the Easy Weddings business coach, Steve McLeod, sat down with our CEO Matt Butterworth for a webinar. He emphasised the importance of going the extra mile to make customers feel good.
Steve suggests working simple, thoughtful touchpoints into your client experience. Things like sending a bottle of champagne or a handwritten note goes a long way toward making a client feel like they’re not just another customer, but rather, a valued relationship. Ultimately, he says, “Think about how you can create your optimum experience.”
What can you do to make your customer service experience feel more personal?
Replay the business coach webinar
Step No. 3: Obsess over customer feedback
The good, the bad, and the mediocre. No matter what the feedback you’re getting, listening to your customers — really listening — is the key to taking your customer service approach from good to amazing.
Don’t have any feedback? Get it. Information is power in all aspects of your business, and you can’t address negative feedback or continue on the positive track without knowing what your clients really think about your services.
We always encourage you to get online reviews via your Easy Weddings storefront, and to reply to those reviews. The average review score for our suppliers is 4.89/5.
It’s equally important to follow up with your customers on a personal level after their wedding and gauge their happiness factor. A lot of medium and larger businesses rely on tools like Survey Monkey for customer feedback. If you’re looking for a free tool, Google Forms are really easy to use and you can customise the questions to suit your individual clients.
Join the biggest wedding biz review network
Step No. 4: Practice authentic brand positivity
Amazing customer service isn’t just reflected in the one-on-one conversations you have with your clients. It’s also replicated across your brand. A great way to show potential customers what you’re all about, and why they should pick you over your competitors, is to embrace brand positivity and think about how customers might see your brand as part of your customer service.
Your competitors might have the exact same offering and pricing as you, but they can’t take your brand — that’s what makes your business unique. Sergio Brodsky, Brand and Strategy Expert of SURGE and co-founder of Australia’s first TikTok agency for business, says, “Would you rather do business with someone that makes you angry, or with someone that makes you happy? With that in mind comes the idea of competitive positivity.”
As Sergio says, brand experience is most felt through your staff. Your brand champions are those who have a full understanding of the brand and an emotional commitment to it. These are the people who are going to give the best possible customer service experience to your clients.
Replay the brand positivity webinar
Why bother? Amazing customer service comes back in the form of referrals
When we interviewed Patrick Lee, co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes, he stressed the importance of reviews, case studies, and referrals. Essentially, by giving your customers the best possible customer service experience, you can actually grow your business. As he says, good referrals all come down to the experience you provide your clients.
By doing the best job you can do, you’re providing an amazing customer service experience that no one else can offer. Not only does that build your brand’s value and reputation, but it also strengthens the trust you have with your clients.
And we all know that trust is everything on a couple’s wedding day — they need to know that they can rely on you to be all the places they can’t be, problem-solving and delivering a seamless experience for them and their guests.
Replay the Rotten Tomatoes webinar
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