You can hardly find a prolific industry nowadays that doesn’t depend on customer service. Well, you don’t need to be a shrewd businessman to draw such a conclusion, do you?
When it comes to the sphere of service, only a handful of domains remain on their own, not paying much attention or even neglecting customer service. However, as a rule, the majority of companies and businesses simply have to follow the rules of the game and provide high-quality customer service to fare well and eventually make gains.
The industry of art logistics is not unique in this regard. Like many other fields, it hinges upon the customer quantity and their level of satisfaction. What, though, singles it out against the backdrop of other areas is a highly specific nature of fine art management where the principal commodity is art.
Understanding how art logistics benefits from excellent customer service is a must if you want to set up a business company or just want to see how the industry works inside out. Below is the list of five key elements that constitute good customer service in art logistics.
5 key elements of customer service in art logistics
Quality dominance
There is no equality when it comes to the relation between quality and quantity; in fact, there shouldn’t be any. These two factors have always resided on opposite ends of the marketing spectrum, being at odds with each other. Because every client needs a singular approach, the most fruitful formula of successful customer service is the maximum quality and optimal amount of quantity.
In art logistics, you are supposed to work with all sorts of delicate and high-dollar items, from paintings and sculptures to antiquities and some rare collectibles. Your customers do worry about the fate of their belongings. The stakes are usually very high, so even little mistakes are impermissible. Blunders are the product of quality deterioration that, in turn, adversely impacts customer satisfaction. Always maintain a high-quality level of customer service!
Competence
At first glance, such an element as competence is self-evident and doesn’t require an introduction; nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning how skill and knowledge influence customer service. The thing is that you should be able to provide your clientele with considerable and accurate information about your services.
There is nothing worse than a client who can’t get answers to their questions. Consultants should be highly trained to help people figure out how everything works from top to bottom, know how to offer services, and, most importantly, find the right words to explain the pros and cons of each service. Leaving questions unanswered is damage to reputation.
Clarity
Art logistics, like any other business sphere, has a rich technical vocabulary, and if you want your clients to stay with you, you better keep it to yourself. Thinking that you can impress someone with some fancy words is a mere illusion. What you can do, though, is alienate people.
This element goes hand in hand with the previous one. Being professionals means knowing how to transform tiresome technical explanations into a terse and comprehensible manual. Logistics is intrinsically designed to bring order to chaos, making complex things work together without falling apart.
Accessibility
Being accessible to your customer can mean different things at the same time. The first step to becoming more available and efficient respectively is to reduce customer’s effort as much as possible. It means that a potential client should be able to contact you without much pain. In other words, the quicker, the better.
There are several methods to achieve decent accessibility. First and foremost, it depends on business hours. Of course, not every company can afford 24/7 support, so to help your client outside working hours, you should use automation applications or self-service managers. Time is money, especially in art logistics. You have to keep your finger on the pulse because art exhibitions and fairs can’t wait. To help the situation, let your clients access you as fast as possible.
Respect
Respect is the golden rule of customer service. Each above-mentioned element should be implemented with deep respect to the customers because this is the only way how you can achieve the desired results. Being respectful should be a daily reminder to everyone who is supposed to help others find solutions to their problems.
To summarize
These five elements are not just important for the proper functioning of the company, they are fundamental for the efficient existence of the entire art logistics industry.
About the Author
Fine Art Shippers is a family-owned fine art logistics company headquartered in Manhattan, NYC. For more than 25 years, it has been providing comprehensive art shipping, art handling, and art installation services and has earned the name of a reliable art logistics partner for private collectors, art galleries, museums, auction houses, and artists. You can find Fine Art Shippers online at https://fineartshippers.com/.
