Is it easy to be a customer in your business?

Customer Experience - It's the company's top priority

El customer service is an important strategic piece in your business because it creates loyal customers. A Gatepoint survey states that 52% of the executives surveyed recognize customer service as a competitive advantage.

In this article, we offer concrete recommendations on how to develop your business by working strategically with customer service.

Omnichannel experiences in many stores

With an increasing number of channels and limited resources to manage your communications, companies must struggle to create a high level of common service for customers.

According to the Gatepoint survey, 47% of respondents say they are struggling to provide a good level of service across all channels. Everyone talks about omnichannel and unified commerce, but very few businesses have the processes to ensure that customers always get the desired quality of service when problems arise in the Customer Journey.

Distribution of responsibility for the Customer Journey

El Customer Journey is a description of a customer's points of contact with your company to resolve a specific problem. It can be a purchase of a product, participation in an event, a question, etc. There are a large number of possible scenarios.

For each of these customer journeys, there is a specific department that is responsible for them. Departments must design and provide good customer service. The purchase of a product often belongs to a sales department or an e-commerce department. Attending events is part of marketing or communication. Billing issues are spent on funding, and so on. These departments are specialists and can better resolve your queries. Therefore, they must own and design specific customer journeys for customers in their area.

But, the most important feature of many Customer Journeys is customer service.

Customer service is the top priority. This is often where the company hears about the existence of the customer journey for the first time. Probably the second time too. But to prevent this from happening a third time, it is important that the problem be recorded in a centralized manner.

In this way, the problem is transferred to the department in question so that it can be solved. Therefore, it is important to record cases in the customer service software and to establish automatic alert functions when identical situations occur. This way, you can solve the problem once and for all.

Innovation through customer service

Another thing that few companies can do is implement the important knowledge that can be obtained through customer service. It is a valuable source of innovation in the product and service portfolio.

In addition to digital tools and automation, it is important to establish a process that requires senior management and the rest of the organization to systematically use customer service information and results. We are seeing that the most successful companies have senior managers who are systematically oriented and involved in customer service.

Good service has to be fast

Today's customers expect to be able to meet their needs online when they have the time and the needs.. But they also expect easy access to a genuine person in the customer service department when problems become too complex or when the self-service solution is confusing.

El Response time is crucial to the customer experience. According to an HBR study, there is a clear correlation between short response time and the customer's willingness to pay more for a product from the same company in the future.

It should be noted that Five minutes is considered a short response time and, that the effect disappears after 60 minutes, so it is necessary to act quickly. The problem isn't expected to be resolved at that time, but even a quick response increases customer confidence in your business.

Establish KPI's for your customer service

El first step to improving performance is to measure it. Los KPI's (key performance indicators) are the set of the most relevant measures for customer service that detect if it is working properly.

The most commonly used are:

1. Billing: total revenues of the company
2. Lower: Loss of company customers

These two are superior, and a series of smaller measurement points can be established that contribute to these figures - the so-called PIs (performance indicators).

For example, when you want to compete with a fast response time, it is important to measure “service time”, that is, the average response time on each service channel. This data can be automatically recorded in your customer service software so that you can respond to changes in numbers.

Another KPI for customer service is overall user satisfaction. According to the above-mentioned Gatepoint survey, up to 78% of companies use improving customer satisfaction as a priority customer service KPI, simply because it's essential for business and sales.

The statistics are not deceiving, when one of your customers is satisfied they will share their experience with up to 6 people, But if the customer experience It is negative, you will share it with approximately 15 people. But let's not forget that if we write a bad experience on the network, it can reach a large number of people. (32 Customer Experience Statistics You Need to Know for 2019).

Satisfaction surveys can help you keep track of different cases, both positive and negative, and also to check that the service is maintained at the desired level.

A KPI configuration must be reviewed regularly and, if the business grows, there may be major changes in the organization that require a total rethinking of the KPIs for customer service.

Software for a good experience throughout the customer journey

It requires the right software to manage customer service tasks that can be automated and optimized. Customers want personal and relevant service, and they achieve this with integrated customer service software that collects customer interactions across channels.

With a full summary at your disposal, the customer service department employee can quickly see, for example, user purchases, previous cases and the history of visits to the website. Provide the best possible advice and the best conversion with this knowledge that you will have stored in the backend. We recommend that you integrate with selected systems to draw the most relevant information about your business model in the customer service function.

An integrated customer service system, in addition to the service itself, includes a number of support functions that can optimize the workflow of the staff of this department. This applies to self-service solutions, Chatbots, frequently asked questions or a knowledge base that can be merged unnoticed in a dialogue with the customer.

This reduces the time spent per case because resources are easily accessible to the employee in the same system where the case must be answered, forwarded, followed up or terminated.

In addition, the customer problem can be solved in many cases, thus avoiding a time-consuming customer service issue. A Forrester study shows that Zendesk customer service software reduced the average response time per phone call by 15 seconds and moved 20% of cases to self-service functions. This means less pressure on employees and shorter wait times for customers.

Customer service requires a strategic approach

Too many companies view customer service as a reactive feature. That is, the company acts after the customer has had a problem. 67% of customers cite poor service as the reason for leaving the company, but only one in 26 dissatisfied customers will complain before leaving their business.

Few companies, but very successful, are able to convert customer service from reactive to proactive, helping the customer and providing them with an even better experience. These companies primarily get happier and more satisfied customers, but in business terms, the conversion rate also increases, the size of the basket increases, and the “cost of service” decreases.

In other words, you can make a lot of gains if you consider good people in customer service as a valuable strategic asset to a much greater extent than they are today. Customer service isn't just a call center, but a central part of the customer experience your business offers.

Can you offer a great experience to your customers? If you can, customers are willing to pay up to 4.5 times more for your products and services than to go to competitors who offer poor experiences. It's time to give customer service the strategic priority it deserves.

Customer Service Automation: Chatbots

Los Chatbots are destined to be the revolution in customer service.

Consumers spend practically more time on messaging applications than on social networks, this is an indicator that you should consider. So it's logical that you consider having personalized attention on platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.

As we have mentioned on several occasions, users want to be served instantly, and a person can't be in front of a chat 24 hours a day, and many companies can't afford a large workforce to do rotations. Because of this aspect and many others, the Chatbots are an option that your company cannot ignore for customer service.

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