{Excerpted from business know-how.com}

These customer service tips will help you impress your customers and clients and as a result, lead to more sales, more repeat business and more customer referrals.

1. Know your product. You can’t provide good service to your customers if you don’t know your product. Customers expect you to be an expert on what you sell and to be able to answer any questions they may have about your products. Whether a customer wants to know what kind of gas a car requires or what the warranty covers, the customer will expect the salesperson to have the answer quickly and cheerfully.
2. Think like your customers think. Your customers drive your bottom line. Always imagine yourself in the other person’s shoes. Would you want to deal with someone who is slick, or curt, or doesn’t want to spend much time with you? Or do you want to be greeted with a smile? Do you want to and get honest answers to questions or a canned replies?
3. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. How many times have you seen successful businesses lose their way and stumble or fail because they tried to “expand” only to discover that what made them successful in the first place slipped away. When you lose your customer focus, you lose customers, lose business and lose on your bottom line. You’ve stopped providing customer service in favor of providing an arena for failure.
4. Commit to quality service. Go above and beyond your customers’ expectations. Your product knowledge will engender confidence and trust and enable you to anticipate their questions, focus on their needs and guide you both to an appropriate solution to their situation. It’s almost impossible to ask too many questions of your customers. Once you know what they want, you will be able to deliver the right product at the right time. In simplest terms: Listen to your customers and go that extra mile. Listening to customers also often enables you to make suggestions about your services and products the customer hasn’t thought about and they will appreciate your knowledge and your expertise to help them resolve their needs.
5. Treat people with courtesy and respect. You know how you like to be treated when you’re the customer. We all like to be accorded courtesy and treated as a sensible adult. You NEVER argue with a customer. Even if you know your customer is wrong, resolve the sales question or service issue quickly and in their favor and you’ve made a friend. Research shows that helping a customer resolve his or her issue results in continued business and likely makes a customer for life. Repeat business, not to mention word-of-mouth referrals, is the lifeblood of bottom lines.

Read the entire article with the rest of the tips here.