Often considered one of the most crucial business operations, customer service has a strong impact on existing as well as potential clients. Research says, that 60-70% of non-satisfied customers are likely to tell their friends and families about a bad experience through social media, and 40-50% of customers tend to switch to a new brand after facing a single unpleasant experience. Therefore, all businesses need to offer prompt and satisfying customer service to retain their brand name in the industry as well as their customers, both old and potential. Good customer service increases customer loyalty, improves word of mouth recommendations and most importantly, it helps a business to understand its customers better. Customers, who are happy with the customer support service of a brand, usually turn into regular buyers, who are often termed ‘loyal customers’. These are the ones who eventually influence their network and vouch for the products or services of the particular brand. As mentioned before, it is quite crucial to understand the customers, their psyche, needs and wants. For that, a brand needs to know exactly what issues its customers are facing, how quick the problem can be solved and make sure the customers stay updated on the problem-solving process. Through efficient customer support service, business owners can have a clear idea about what the customers exactly want from them and what needs to be improved in the existing services/products, considering all customer feedback. Without a customer service department, companies often miss out on the primary facts and figures, mandatory for market study and analysis.
For any aspiring company, it is very important to stand out from the crowd. Only an exceptional customer service team can help a company thrive in today’s highly competitive business environment. Therefore, companies should often review their customer service operations and keep on improving the same, to make sure both their existing and potential clients are happy.
6 excellent ways of improving customer service:
- Customers often get frustrated when they have to repeatedly state their problems tomultiple customer service executives, because it shows that, either there is no effectiveinternal communication in the customer support team or it is just reluctant about solvingtheir problems. This happens when the customer service teams are unable to delivercontext-based support. To solve the problem, the customer information can be unifiedusing a CRM(Customer Relationship Management). This allows the executives to findout the exact context and promptly resolve the inquiries in a single interaction.
- To ensure customer satisfaction, companies can consider investing in automated self-service channels, which enable the customers to solve issues on their own. In case, thecustomers are unable to solve problems themselves, due to the unavailability of certaininformation, human service channels or real-time chats can immediately come to play.The advent of AI and machine learning has given birth to the concept of chatbots, whichare available 24×7. On the other hand, advanced digital technologies like naturallanguage processing enable business owners to understand what customers mean in free-form text messages.
- Companies often lose potential customers when they are unable to provide timelycustomer support service. People, today, are spoilt with choices. If they face even onedisappointing experience, especially late replies or updates from the customer supportteam, they don’t think twice before picking a different brand the next time. To retainexisting customers, companies need to make sure their customer service teams respondpromptly.
- To gain customers’ trust and strengthen the brand-customer-relationship, companiesshould have transparency with the customers, on the mistakes made and how they arebeing rectified. Ideally, companies should accept their faults, communicate with thecustomers and inform them about what measures are being taken to resolve the issues.
- There was a time when people only used laptops or computers to connect with brands.But today, a considerable amount of web traffic comes from smartphones, tablets andmany other devices. Customers, these days, use a wide range of offline and onlinechannels to reach out to the brands. Therefore, it is quite beneficial for companies toembrace an omnichannel mindset.
- To retain customers it is extremely crucial to make them feel special. This can be done byoffering the customers personalized interactions with the support team executives, whowill listen to the issues in detail and give suggestions accordingly. The entire concept ofpersonalization not only makes the customer journeys smoother but also toughens thebond between a brand and its customers.
Some of the common ways of personalizing customer services are:
- Customer data can be used to personalize survey questions.
- To personalize services, based on location, geolocation technology can be considered.
- Marketing emails should be sent with recommendations and vouchers based on past purchases.
- Customer service executives should efficiently follow up with the customers, personally,to make sure they are happy with the service and have no more grievances.
