Improving your customer service doesn’t require a wholesale change in the way you do business. There are many very small, very easy steps you can take to improve customer service for your sales customers. Most of these steps won’t cost you anything but a few moments’ time. The ones that do have a cost are so affordable as to be well worth the price for the goodwill they’ll engender in your customers. You can implement all of these changes at once, or roll them out over time, depending on your needs. Either way, these seven steps will help you improve your customer service.

Be a Customer

Take the time to go through any process that your customers have to go through. It may be as simple as getting through the company switchboard, or as complex as placing an online order. Until you’ve tried to follow the steps that your customers have to follow, you won’t truly understand the benefits and frustrations of your customer service system.

Be Easy to Contact

Often, trying to find contact information on a company’s website can be incredibly frustrating. All of your contact information should be clearly labeled and easily found, not only on your website, but also on your social media pages and on popular directories like the Yellow Pages. Also, try to give your customers several options for contacting you-being forced to fill out a generic form and wait for a response is extremely aggravating to someone who is having a customer service issue.

Keep Customers in the Loop

Your customers are busy people, and may not open every email or read every social media post that you send them. That being said, they’ll still be frustrated if they miss important information from you. Your best bet is to make any information easily available in a variety of formats. Use a combination of emails, social media, texts, or any other channel you have available to make sure your customers can access important information on their own terms.

Keep in Touch

Make a list of your top customers. Set aside some time, once a month, to call them or send them a personal email. This will keep you fresh in their minds, and help keep them from bouncing out of the sales funnel. Part of your customer service should always be maintaining relationships with long-term clients.

A Simple “Thank You”

Customer service is also about customer appreciation. A simple hand-written note, delivered through snail-mail, is much more powerful than auto-generated emails. You don’t need to write a novel or spend a fortune on embossed cards-simple cardstock with a quick “thank you” will let the customer know that you value them personally. The few minutes, and few cents, that you spend on thanking customers can quickly turn them into long-term clients.

Share the Love (and Hate)

Since you can’t fix customer service problems that you don’t know about, you need to have some means of gathering customer feedback. You should be reviewing that feedback on a regular basis, and sharing the positive and negative points with your sales team. Look for emerging trends that may indicate an area that needs additional attention, and encourage your team to focus on improving any areas that are generating criticism.

Take Notes

Writing down notes after any customer service interaction will help you in a number of ways. When you enter the information into your CRM software, you’ll have a fresh record to draw upon. It will also help you organize your thoughts and impressions about the interaction, and spot any common trends. With so many thoughts in your head, it can be hard to spot patterns that are just emerging; however, when you go through your notes for the day, you may spot small customer service issues before they become full-blown problems.