We are living in a world where customers are always right. Nowadays, more and more companies find it hard to please and satisfy their customers. Customer experience is, therefore, a critical factor that determines the choice of brand preference for consumers.
Customer support is a critical aspect of any business. Given the growing competition in all sectors, the challenge is to offer top-class products and excellent customer service. However, it is not an easy task. There are multiple tools that businesses can implement to improve customer satisfaction.
What are some key factors that determine customer service success?
1. Recruitment of Qualified Customer Service Experts
As more and more companies put so much attention on excellent customer service delivery, the need for qualified customer service specialists is increasing. It is one thing to hire qualified customer service specialists and another to keep them.
Katherine Dougherty, MaidPro National Sales Center Director, said: Reduce Turnover – Keeping a stable team will help you to reduce training costs and time. It will also help you to monitor productivity on a longer-term scale. Do your best to:
- Monitor and generate engagement; check in often.
- Make onboarding & ongoing coaching as stellar as possible.
- Encourage honest and open communication.
- Strive for ongoing learning, skill-building, and development.
- Discover and provide purpose/meaning … set quarterly goals outside of day-to-day responsibilities.
Furthermore, companies should be able to provide mouth-watering benefits and incentives that can support the lifestyle of customer service agents and enhance their productivity. They provide the most important services in an organization, and this is often overlooked.
2. Consistency is Key
Consistency is one of the most difficult challenges to overcome in ensuring better customer service delivery.
Excellent customer service must be provided 24 hours a day to all customers in all business channels. Every customer experience must be excellent and equally acceptable. Research by Duncan, Rawson, and Jones has shown that clients do not care about individual touchpoints. Customer satisfaction is influenced by the accumulation of experience in many contact points and channels over some time. Consistency can be achieved by applying clear principles of excellent customer service. All employees must be aware of these principles and must be strictly observed.
3. Knowing What the Customers Might Expect
Understanding the needs and expectations of customers is the first and the most difficult challenge.
Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Kate Leggett said customers just want “an accurate, relevant, and complete answer to their question upon first contact so they can get back to what they were doing before the issue arose.”
Customers don’t want to have multiples calls for a final resolution. Nowadays, we all have little patience, so we don’t want to call multiple agents and explain our problems over and over again. Therefore, companies must provide the appropriate tools to be able to satisfy their clients from the first call.
Due to the massive competition, more and more companies are digitalizing their customer service department with more than one solution. Customers expect more personalized and intimate communication with companies.
Another major issue in today’s customer service world is the lack of agent competency. When a customer calls multiple times to fix a given issue, most of the time, they receive different answers from agents. Not only is this frustrating to the customer, but it also shows a lack of honestly and professionalism from the company.
Fortunately, for every problem, there is a solution:
Let’s examine Co-Browsing and how it can help with the customer service experience:
Co-Browsing is a screen sharing technology optimized for websites and web applications (and native mobile apps). With Co-Browsing, two users – for example, support agent and customer – can jointly browse and navigate through the same website together.
Much like sitting next to each other and browsing a website, Co-Browsing allows two (or more) users to control one screen, but remotely, while only needing a reliable internet connection.
The best part is: no downloads or installations are needed.
How does it work, you might ask?
- A Simple click of a button on the customer’s end begins Co-Browsing.
- The agent receives an accurate visual representation of the customer’s screen.
- The agent can support the customer by safely co-navigating the website.
- The agent can facilitate contract signing, application forms, signups, and more.
- The agent will be able to view any issue that occurs and help fix it on the spot.
- The agent resolves the customer’s issue on the first call.
First call resolution is the answer to most of your problems. Not only does it save money for your business, but it also gives a great impression and trust to your brand.
Knowing who your customers are on a deeper and more intimate level can give you a better understanding of what they need and expect.
