Serving customers can be more complex than it appears at first. Customers and online businesses alike often detest dealing with customer service interactions such as chatbots or calling numbers. Yet, superior service remains a sign of a successful company.
Businesses must streamline their customer service. In this post, we'll explore why streamlining customer service should be one of your company's goals this year and offer some easy methods for making small adjustments that have a meaningful impact.
Definition Of Customer Service
What is Customer service? Customer service is the more personal aspect of the customer experience. This often encompasses non-technical interactions. Even when there may be instances of subpar service on the customer support side, excellent customer service can more than make up for any shortcomings there may be in that department. Without outstanding service, it becomes extremely challenging for brands to develop long-term trusting and satisfied relationships with their customer base.
Customer service differs from customer support in that it provides proactive suggestions, ideas, and answers for how clients might handle potential problems before they arise - helping clients avoid problems before they arise altogether.
An effective customer service representative must possess extensive product or service knowledge as well as extraordinary soft skills, including communication and listening abilities, strong persuading talents, high emotional intelligence, and effective problem-solving techniques.
Benefits Of Streamlined Customer Service
Here are some benefits of streamlined customer service:
Customer Loyalty
Loyal customers offer businesses many advantages; 91% of customers who had positive customer service experiences reported they are more likely to purchase again; additionally, new customer acquisition costs five times more than customer retention; by creating loyal relationships through excellent service provision, businesses can foster lucrative long-term relationships which provide long term advantages.
Boost Profits
Customers built through customer service relationships can help businesses become more profitable. By prioritizing superior experiences for their customer service interactions, businesses may experience revenue gains of 4%-8% above market. By outshone competitors with superior services they may increase sales while standing out amongst rivals and standing out within their market space.
Customer Recommendations
Customers who experience exceptional customer service will likely become advocates for your business and more likely to recommend it to others. 94% of those rated "very good" as customers will recommend companies they rated highly for services they rated. Reviews can have an enormous influence when purchasing goods; recommendations by word-of-mouth or online reviews can increase credibility for any given enterprise.
Increase Conversion
Customer service can help businesses convert leads into sales more successfully, with 78% of customers reporting they had pulled out due to poor experiences; it stands to reason that providing excellent service would enhance confidence among potential buyers, leading them to make purchases more likely and thus increasing conversion.
Enhance Public Image
Customer service can play an integral part in improving businesses' public perception, which protects if their brand slips up. 78% of customers who experience outstanding service forgive a company when mistakes happen, while nearly 90% report trusting companies they rate "very good." In comparison, only 16% trust those they rate "very poor." Therefore creating positive customer experiences and building strong public images are of equal importance for success.
Read More: Power of Exceptional Customer Service For Your Business
Ways To Streamline And Enhance Your Customer Service
Here are some ways to streamline customer service:
Relocating Services Closer To Customers
As your customer strays further away to access support they require, costs increase for you and response times decrease. In future posts we will explore various tools which move support closer to customers like self-service and live chat; but keep this concept top of mind consistently.
Provide Them With A Self-Service Platform
One way of providing customer support more directly is empowering them with self-service platforms such as customer portals or client-labeled interfaces that enable customers to take care of some of their own needs themselves, like placing and tracking orders, reviewing information downloads and downloading relevant files, checking any new announcements and providing self-help resources if available.
Provide Them With Self-Support Resources
Customers should have the freedom to serve and support themselves as well. While your team should always remain available if direct help is required, providing FAQs, how-to guides, and frequent fix posts with instructions that allow customers to help themselves will make them less dependent upon outside assistance. Ensure your content for self-support offers effective steps - written bullet points may suffice. At the same time, screenshots or even videos can sometimes work better.
Establish A Service Request Catalog For Record Management System
Make your customer support services easily discoverable to users through a catalog so they can choose one that meets their individual needs without searching a support FAQs list for answers.
Centralize All Knowledge Resources
Your company must maintain a comprehensive knowledge base containing insights gleaned from support team members, technology specialists, external information sources, and customers - this way, your customers can rely on what has been collected when seeking support services from you.
Locate Your Super Users
Your customers may require some direct help, while there will also be those who have their issues solved through more creative or innovative means without your direct assistance. Your super users are those customers who understand your services and systems better and who could prove extremely valuable when helping to address first-type customers directly.
Recognize, label, and empower these super users as possible aid to first types through such activities as support forum posts or Q&As on products to show recognition for what they bring to the brand community as a whole. People like being acknowledged as contributors rather than neglected members.
Make Use Of Modern Forms Of Communication
Fewer customers rely on phone communication daily, yet many support systems still primarily use phone support as their main mode of assistance. Communication habits have changed, with email being one form, web forms another, and instant messengers now being among them. When considering which contact methods you provide, it is wise to keep both old and modern ways available at once.
Adopt Live Chat
Live chat can provide your customers with rapid assistance much more efficiently than any traditional communication methods - in particular phoning up only to be put on hold for too long. With internet support more easily accessible now than ever before and remote support much simpler to provide as a result.
Socialize Customer Support
Another effective modern communication technique to boost customer support is via social media outlets and spaces like company-run forums, Facebook or Twitter accounts that may more readily recognize your user community and thus become accessible for them.
Leverage Remote Support
Helping people over the net doesn't just involve communication; sometimes you need to take more direct actions. Your technicians could offer to assume direct control of a customer device directly and diagnose and address problems efficiently or install software as necessary - with an ease-back feature so they feel secure at any moment if their control needs return at any time.
Knowledge Management In Your Team
As your customers can benefit from compiling and centralizing all the tools necessary for their support, so too should support staff have easy access to an informational resource center that quickly allows them to find solutions or steps they can take in systematizing processes more effectively and quickly finding answers they may have forgotten about themselves; documenting knowledge will save time as it allows your staff to easily find what they need quickly and more efficiently than they ever could otherwise. Documentation saves your team a great deal.
Gamify Support
Support services can become monotonous and taxing for employees; by adopting gamification software or practices into your support services process you may find ways of engaging them more. Gamification may provide the boost your team needs to remain focused and productive.
Integrate Support Into Other Essential Systems
Connect your support services more tightly to relevant information and functionality from other systems for maximum impact. LivehelpIndia integrates a self-service client-labeled interface with service management, file storage, and team collaboration capabilities, allowing your support system to access better team members who may need support during specific periods. It provides instantaneous connections to critical team information quickly.
Make Work Easier For Your Support Team Using Service Management
Service management platforms go beyond providing efficient customer support - they also include workflow automation and management features to allow your team to provide necessary assistance to clients.
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Conclusion
Outsourced customer service remains a crucial aspect of retail, even as commerce shifts online and automated methods become the standard. You cannot rest on what may appear as ideal customer service - new developments emerge constantly, and competitors vie to outdo one another by giving customers an enjoyable shopping experience and discovering innovative new methods of streamlining processes.
