The best business strategy is a satisfied customer. There are many ways to build an excellent customer service strategy. However, there are few that really work in a long-term perspective. Poor customer service can turn customers away and this as a result significantly affects a company's bottom line. On the other side, satisfied and happy customers will become brand advocates and will help businesses grow.
If you are not sure where to start, check latest customer experience statistics and try these ten steps to build an excellent customer service strategy for your business.
Why successful customer service strategy is important
Recent statistics from customer service leaders show the growing importance of customer service quality. Buyers will recommend products or services only if they have exceptional and positive customer service experience.
What you can do to build a successful customer service strategy
Add live chat software to your website
44% of online consumers believe live chat is an important part of any website. They use it to ask questions or have their issues solved. For customer service agents live chat is one of the most convenient tools since it allows multitasking and assisting several customers at the same time. Live chat on a website significantly enhances customer service quality and adds credibility.
Besides real time communication live chat on a website provides lots of useful features which will help to analyze website traffic as well as the level of customer satisfaction:
- Real time visitor monitoring will show the customer journey in real time.
- Agent stats will provide information about the number of chats, agents' success and customer service load. Based on this information you will be able to see the busiest hours and distribute your human resources to unload them.
- Visitor traffic stats will show not only the most visited pages but will also provide information on the pages where the chat button was clicked most often. This as a result will help to improve website usability and design.
- Customizations and branding will make live chat look like a part of a website.
- Post chat survey will help to collect valuable feedback from customers.
Collect customer feedback
Customer feedback is important because it tells you how they feel about your business and customer service quality. It helps owners to improve all aspects of their business. There are many ways to ask for feedback. It can be either a post chat survey or a product / service review form on a website. In addition, customers can leave their reviews on such websites as TrustPilot or Capterra.
So, what are the benefits of customer feedback?
- helps to improve products or services
- provides information about customers on a deep level
- gives insight into customer satisfaction level
- helps to work with unhappy customers
- positive feedback attracts new customers
Identify your customer journey
Information about customer journey and behavior is important part of building a successful customer service strategy. If you know what your customers do on your website, how long it takes them to order your products or services and on which stage they frequently ask for assistance, you will be able to make the right conclusion and improve your strategy based on the information about your customer journey.
By inspecting the problems your customers ran into while browsing your website, you will easily predict their needs and improve user experience based on the customer journey details.
Exceed your customers' expectations
Based on the information collected on customer journey you will be able to better define customer touchpoints and as a result provide proactive service instead of the reactive one. This will significantly improve the customer satisfaction level.
Various little things, such as thank-you notes, additional bonuses or invitations to events which your company organizes for customers will help to exceed customers' expectations and provide memorable customer experience.
Provide personalized customer experience
The more you know about your customers the more tailored experience your agents will be able to provide. There are many ways to collect information: with help of cookies, website registration, social media or customer service tools. For example, while using live chat service, agents can see customers logged into their accounts, their journey and shopping cart content. This information will help to provide proactive and more personalized assistance.
Customer service is an excellent opportunity to maintain customer relationship and make it stronger. To create an outstanding experience it is important to make it personalized. You can use the knowledge your customer service tools provide to your advantage and build strong relationships.
Analyze and learn
Statistics and analytics are part of various customer service tools. For example, live chat statistics help to measure customer service agents' load, see their rates and the number of missed chats. Let us see which data can be important for your customer service strategy:
- Net promoter score (NPS). By asking a simple question like: "Would you recommend our service?" - you will be able to measure the loyalty of your customers.
- Customer satisfaction score (SCAT). By providing a survey with rating options, you will easily measure the level of customer happiness and find the pain points of their journey.
- Average response time. By checking this metric in your chat stats, you will see how long it takes your agents to accept chats.
- First contact resolution (FCR). It measures the number of issues or tickets which were solved from the first attempt. This metric will show how efficient your agents are and whether you need to work on their training.
Increase issues solving speed
It is very important to solve issues from the first attempt and avoid transferring customers between departments. The best option is to invite your co-worker to your chat if the issue is out of your expertise. Another important metric which will help you improve your issues solving speed is average chat accept time. It will help you see how long it takes your agents to accept chats. Missed chats metric will show the number of chats they do not accept. If these metrics are high, this means your team is understaffed and you need more live chat agents to assist your customers.
Be clear about the purpose of writing
It has always been a great idea to prevent issues from happening. This is the main goal of proactive customer service which is about anticipating customers' needs or issues before they are aware of them. For example:
- Improving customer experience.
- Notifying about issues (service maintenance, shipping delays) before customers notice them and complain.
- Providing information about new products or services.
- Offering assistance if a customer is staying too long on specific pages.
- Following up abandoned shopping carts.
Focus on smooth communication
Effective and smooth communication is the secret weapon for strengthening and developing an excellent and successful customer service strategy. Every chat, phone or social media interaction makes impact on the overall feeling your customers will have about your organization.
The essential element of smooth and effective communication strategy is the team of customer service professionals. If they do an excellent job, your customers will be happy and satisfied. On the other side, if they often transfer them, miss chats or phone requests, the level of customer service satisfaction will be low.
Thus, the right training, monitoring and customer service tools will help to make communication smooth and effective.
Take advantage of technology
Digital customer service strategy is as important as in-person interactions. Digital systems integrated with customer service processes help not only to facilitate them but also collect data, diagnose problems and make the customer experience seamless.
Chat bots together with self-service options take a significant load off agents' shoulders and allow them to focus on more complicated tasks which require human assistance. Today's customers expect seamless and easy experience which can be provided with help of digital tools.
Customer service can either make or break the business. However, if you develop an excellent customer service strategy and build a strong relationship your business will succeed.
