Editor’s note: Looking to increase your clients’ loyalty and trust with excellent customer service? In this guide, Anastasia dwells on improvements worth making to your customer service process to keep your customers satisfied. And if you decide to entrust the task to an established IT services provider, check ScienceSoft’s help desk outsourcing services offer.
If you still doubt whether the impact of customer service quality on your business is that big, check these figures: poor customer service costs businesses more than $75 billion a year. This comes as a result of customers having to wait unreasonably long for an agent’s reply, being bounced from agent to agent, or even facing impolite treatment. Such unfavorable experience is the reason for 67% of customers to cease their relations with a company (and, consequently, switch to a competitor). If you want to offer high-quality services and keep your customers, you might consider some proven ways to do that from my IT support practice.
#1 Decrease your response time
Customers don’t have a lifetime to wait for an agent’s reply. In fact, many of them expect to be answered in 60 minutes by email, in 60 minutes by social media, and in 45 seconds by live chat.
To decrease your response time and improve agents’ performance when using email, you may set up time-based email alerts in your customer service software or mailbox, and create pre-designed email templates. Providing quicker customer support by live chat and social media requires either creating a larger support team or setting up a self-service portal to give customers more opportunities for self-help.
#2 Provide round-the-clock support
Another effective way to improve your customer service is to make it available 24/7. This is especially important for companies with a large number of customers from around the world. To ensure the constant availability of your service, you may hire a few customer service agents to work in shifts. Alternatively, if you have a limited budget and would like to save on customer service, you may use a chatbot, or outsource your help desk support to give it the more human touch.
#3 Leverage multiple communication channels
To make your customer service a real driver of clients’ loyalty, you should create an opportunity to contact your support via any communication channel your customers use. What’s more, introducing new communication channels can help you embrace customer segments that could have remained unattended before. So, to improve your customer service accessibility, you might leverage as many communication channels as possible, including:
- Phone
- Website
- Live chat
- Chatbot
- Social media (E.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
Offering support via all these communication channels ensures your customers get consistent user experience regardless of the channel they use.
Is there anything left to do?
When your customer support is quick and fully accessible, the next improvement measures will be carrying out customer satisfaction surveys, replying to every customer feedback, offering free return shipping, and tracking your customer service metrics. And if you feel in need of assistance to improve or transform your customer service process, ScienceSoft’s team is ready to help.
Looking for a way to improve your customer service? Our specialists in customer service management provide a full cycle of consulting and optimization.
