In today’s customer-centric era, customer service plays a disproportionate role in determining how a business is perceived. As social media usage and the value of online reviews surge, how an organization captures customer issues and addresses them is extremely critical.
Why it’s important
Providing today’s tech-savvy customers with seamless, quick, and reliable omni-channel customer service has moved from good-to-have to must-have. Modern customers don’t just want feature-rich products; they want to be able to interact with customer support representatives when they have questions, face an issue, or need help using the product.
Here’s why customer service is so important:
- Customers feel valued and respected because they know there is someone ready to address their concerns and help overcome their problems. 73% of customers fall in love with a brand and remain loyal because of friendly customer service reps.
- Efficient customer service can help companies in strengthening their competitive position as well as their business reputation. A 5% increase in customer retention rates can help increase profits up to 25%!
- Businesses can achieve better customer retention levels while reducing the cost of acquiring new customers. Acquiring new customers is between 5 and 25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones.
- Deep and meaningful conversations with customers and speedy resolutions help improve customer satisfaction.
- Businesses can provide personalized experiences to customers and quickly work towards the appropriate resolution. According to research by Monetate, companies that exceed their revenue goals have a dedicated budget for personalization 83% of the time!
Ways to improve customer service efficiency
If you’re looking to drive revenue and maintain profitability, it is important to be able to ensure satisfaction, retain customers, and foster strong relationships.
Here are 3 ways you can dramatically improve customer service efficiency:
Implement a modern Customer Service Management Platform
As businesses begin to increasingly rely on loyal customers to enable and sustain business growth, delivering a personalized, relevant, and always-on customer service experience is irrefutable. Implementing a modern Customer Service Management Platform like ServiceNow can enable businesses to provide the customer service experience that today’s customers expect.
A modern platform provides businesses with anytime / anywhere access to customer profiles, their needs, buying behaviors, and insights into any issues or concerns they have. On the other hand, customers can have access to critical information as well as the option to email, chat, or have voice conversations with customer service reps to get quick resolutions.
With a Customer Service Management Platform, enterprises can:
- Provide resolutions to customer queries quickly and drastically bring down case volumes.
- Obtain new perspectives into product use or customer needs and personalize features or interactions to better meet their needs.
- Easily manage customer interactions and visually track activities, case status, and SLAs.
- Use AI and AR technologies to automate common customer requests and make it easier and quicker for them to reach out to reps (or bots).
- Leverage machine learning tools to route issues to appropriate teams, identify knowledge gaps and take necessary action.
Enable an omni-channel customer service experience
The emergence of digital technologies has led to significant changes in the way customers reach out to a brand. Given the presence of multiple touch points, customers today expect seamless interactions – irrespective of the channel, device, platform, or time of the day. Designing a multi-channel customer engagement strategy that encompasses voice, email, and the web is vital to set the stage for seamless, unified, and consistent communication.
An omni-channel customer service experience can help companies have a bird’s-eye view of customers and their problems. It helps customers switch between various channels and yet receive the same level of support – across every single touch point.
By enabling an omni-channel customer service experience, businesses can:
- Effectively manage customer journeys across multiple channels and touch points.
- Empower customer service agents with the information they need to resolve issues and drive lasting relationships.
- Capitalize on the opportunity to serve customers in a variety of ways that are convenient and effective, and help boost brand image and credibility.
- Pull customer issues from social media channels into the platform and manage them easily for better satisfaction.
- Empower customers through self-service portals
A majority of today’s customers also expect to be able to get answers to any questions they might have – without having to go through the hassle of reaching out to a customer service rep. For the modern, tech-savvy customer, businesses need to provide self-service portals that enable them to look up questions online or on a business’’s website.
By enabling self-service, businesses can provide customers access to an entire repository or knowledge base of articles and information – with answers to commonly-asked questions. Self-service can empower customers to conduct their own search, browse through service catalogs, take part in community discussions, and even browse through tons of other related information.
Self-service portals can allow businesses to:
- Provide customers with ready access to knowledge base articles, instruction manuals, and FAQs, so they can troubleshoot issues on their own.
- Keep customers happy and drive better satisfaction through intuitive, easy-to-use portals – without adding to ticket load.
- Dramatically improve customer experience and reduce support time and cost in back and forth service desk communications.
- Quicken customer support time by allowing customers to get faster resolutions to simple issues.
- Direct customers to the appropriate agent / rep through integrated escalation options – in case they are unable to resolve their problems.
Keeping customers happy is an essential element of successful businesses. Implementing a Customer Service Management Platform, enabling an omni-channel experience, and offering self-service options are some of the crucial ways to enhance your customer service effectiveness and drive the desired results for your organization and your customers.
