Innovation is seen as key to improving the customer experience. Businesses strive to provide clients with the latest technology as a way to differentiate their services.
According to research by PwC, firms should reconsider their priorities. Researchers found that poor customer service is one of the leading reasons that consumers break ties. 70% of consumers would leave a company that provided bad customer service. By contrast, only 20% of clients would leave due to the company not providing the latest technology. The bottom line is that outstanding service trumps innovation for client retention.
Does your company’s service leave something to be desired? Our tips below will provide you with ideas for improving customer service to get you back on track.
Improve Your Support Team’s Customer Service Skills
You should train your customer support team to deal with clients correctly. Agents need to be:
- Consistent: They provide the same level of service with each client
- Patient: Clients may ask many questions or struggle to make their point. Agents must be patient, ask the right questions, and listen carefully to what the client says.
- Empathetic: Understanding the situation from the client’s perspective makes it easier to solve the problem. Empathizing with them shows that you understand their frustration.
- Adaptable: Agents must be able to deal with a wide range of clients and situations.
- Committed: Consultants should be committed to delivering an excellent customer experience. They should give their best every day. Clients will sense when someone is sincerely trying to assist. It improves service delivery.
- Reliable: By this, we mean that the consultant should follow through on promises that they make. If they say they’ll call back, they must. They should follow up to ensure that other departments fulfill their role.
- Knowledgeable: Agents should be fully conversant in the products or services you provide. The knowledge enables them to make the right recommendations for clients.
There are many factors to providing excellent service. If your company doesn’t currently have the skills required, it may be time to outsource customer service and support from such a popular company as SupportYourApp. Doing so gives you a cost-effective and scalable alternative to the expense of running an in-house team.
Consider Each Touchpoint
Now that you’ve dealt with support, identify other vital touchpoints. Work through each stage in the customer relationship to zero in on problem areas.
Something as simple as a mistake in content marketing may create unrealistic expectations in the client’s mind. A cumbersome registration process might be another sticking point.
Provide Several Options for Your Clients to Provide Feedback
Companies should never rely on just one feedback system. Allow clients to provide reviews across a range of different platforms. Giving them choices reduces the impact of survey fatigue.
Respond to All Feedback Quickly
Companies must monitor their social media accounts and respond to any queries or reviews. It’s tempting to delete negative comments, but it’s more effective to respond and try to come to a resolution.
According to a study published by the Harvard Business Review in 2018, not responding is a mistake. The researchers polled Twitter users who’d previously provided feedback for firms via Twitter.
Respondents fell into three groups:
- No response from the company at all.
- Acknowledgment from the company after a positive comment.
- Resolutions offered by the company after a negative comment.
The results were interesting:
- Up to six months after providing feedback, all groups remembered the experience.
- Customers who received some form of response from the brand valued the brand more positively in the future. All consumers valued responsive brands more highly.
- The positive commentators were willing to pay the highest premiums for service with responsive brands. It’s, therefore, essential to acknowledge positive comments.
- Companies that posted responses to any feedback increased their Net Promoter Score by at least 37 points.
Keep Pace With Changing Consumer Expectations in Supporting Industries
Firms should keep pace with trends in their industries and any industries that support them. Supportive industries include payment and marketing systems. Keeping pace with changes in the client’s expectations is crucial to improving the customer experience.
Take payment systems as an example. Ten years ago, hardly anyone knew anything about bitcoin. Fast-forward to today, and cryptocurrencies are becoming more commonplace. Clients today may prefer to use these payment systems for security reasons.
There are also several new payment systems like Stripe and Apple Pay that consumers are comfortable using. If they become used to using them on other websites, they expect them to find them on all websites.
Firms are not identifying and responding to important trends like these risk looking out of touch.
Final Notes
Firms today should prioritize providing outstanding customer service. They may do so by fostering a professional customer support team, monitoring touchpoints, and being open to feedback. Firms must furthermore keep pace with changing client expectations to ensure that they’re still delivering the best customer experience possible.
Firms that succeed will build client loyalty and reduce churn and price sensitivity. Investing in outstanding customer support is a smart move.
