Home Blog Customer Service: why do you need it and how to upgrade it
Date
January 31, 2022
Author
Sunny

Customer Service: why do you need it and how to upgrade it

The goal of any business is sales and profits, and customers bring profits. Happy clients bring more profit and growth to the business. Therefore, their happiness must be taken care of.

The goal of any business is sales and profits, and customers bring profits. Happy clients bring more profit and growth to the business. Therefore, their happiness must be taken care of.

What is Customer Service

Customer Service is the support you provide to users before and after a purchase. The support goes far beyond the capabilities of the call center operator. It is available via mail, chat on the website or in the application, in instant messengers and social networks. Often, support works around the clock – the user can ask a question at any time and in any way that he likes, and he will receive an answer.

But Customer Service isn’t just about answering questions. This is an important part of a brand’s engagement with its audience.

Why is Customer Service important

The quality of support is critical to whether a user chooses your product.

“Customer happiness is important to the company because customers pay money. Unhappy customers will not pay money and will go away to pay money to the company that will make them happy.”

Oleksandr,

Head of Customer Support

Previously, people used to make purchasing decisions based mainly on the price of the product, but now that decision is based on the overall impression of the company. According to Gartner Research, 89% of companies are now competing with each other precisely on the quality of support.

Quality support is an essential part of a successful customer experience, especially when your Customer Service goes beyond answering questions. If your operators are anticipating user questions, or they have an internal service in order to simultaneously carry out up-selling and cross-selling of relevant products, you will definitely win hearts and seriously outperform competitors.

Customer Service has a significant impact on profit

We started with this thought, and now we will dwell in more detail. You’ve probably heard that retaining existing customers is much cheaper than attracting new ones (according to some estimates, it costs 6-7 times more to attract customers).

Poor support is one of the main reasons for churn. U.S. analysts Small Business Administration estimates that 68% of users leave because they have had a negative support experience.

Poor support will kill your reputation

Users are accustomed to getting what they want instantly, and in general, their standards have increased. In addition, they immediately write negative reviews on the Internet, which gain widespread coverage and can ruin your reputation.

It is important to support customers equally well across all channels – any mistake can be fatal.

Customer Service is part of the interaction with the product

The line between product and service is blurring, and customer service has become part of it. On almost any site you go to, you will find an online chat. Many sites embed knowledge base links into product information.

When paying for your service or product, the client already counts on support, and perceives it as an integral part of his purchase.

Customers are willing to pay more for quality support

Focusing on positive customer experiences isn’t just a fashion trend. Each contact you make with a user not only encourages them to love you more, but also increases your income. According to SalesForce research, 86% of customers are willing to pay more if you provide them with quality support. You might even consider a new premium plan with extended support – many will probably be interested.

How to upgrade Customer Service

1. Make customer happiness a top priority

It seems that customer happiness is a concern of the support team. Why should a designer, accountant, or developer care about this?

Support agents are the part of the team that works directly with customers. Their job will be much easier if the entire company is customer-centric in making important decisions.

In addition, this approach will save you organizational problems. Everyone will speak the same language, and information between teams will be transferred quickly.

Let’s say a customer is unhappy with the delivery of your product – it arrived damaged. If all teams work asynchronously, the number of dissatisfied customers will grow: those who are engaged in packaging will continue to do their work poorly, because they are not responsible for the end result – the happiness of the client.

If you make your customers happy as a common goal, these challenges will be reduced.

2. Train operators constantly

Allocate time and budget to train your support team. It is important that each operator clearly understands how to meet customer needs.

According to research from MIT Sloan, users really take the quality of support to heart:

▪️92% want to be treated with respect;

▪️76% expect the problem will not recur;

▪️74% are waiting for an explanation of why this happened;

▪️63% want to express whatever they think;

▪️62% are waiting for an apology.

3. Define the customer journey

Analyze your interaction with the customer. To do this, answer the following questions:

▪️How soon after a purchase does a customer contact you?

▪️How often do customers write (call) support?

▪️What channels do they use for this?

▪️What do they ask most often?

▪️Have customers who end up buying from you have contacted you more or less often than those who stay with you?

▪️How do you measure customer engagement?

Answering these questions will help you visualize the customer journey. In turn, understanding this path will allow you to:

▪️see the context of requests that come to support (at what stage of acquaintance the user is, how loyal he is, how often he uses the product);

▪️screw up the product in accordance with the most frequent requests;

▪️predict requests and distribute the team’s forces in accordance with them;

▪️reduce churn and increase LTV.

In other words, you can anticipate user requests.

“There is a danger that a customer will run into problems and end up in a churn at every stage of their user journey. Timely and high-quality support will help him cope with crisis situations and stay in the product.

Oleksandr,

Head of Customer Support

4. Make support omnichannel

It is more convenient for someone to call and discuss all questions by phone. Others will prefer to describe their problem in detail in an email and wait for a detailed response. Still others are waiting for an immediate response in the messenger.

It is important to provide support across all the channels your customers use, and aerobatics is to make the support omnichannel. In this case, the client who contacted you in the chat can clarify the answer by phone or ask for a report by mail. And in any channel, his request will be understood and fulfilled.

5. Set goals for Customer Service

What you need to set SMART goals for your support team:

▪️define specific and measurable goals for each specific area (not “make customers happier by 15%”, but “reduce the number of new users by 15%”);

▪️keep goals challenging enough to keep you growing, but achievable;

▪️Make sure your support goals are directly linked to your company-wide goals.

▪️determine how often you will measure progress.

Effective Customer Service goals can focus on user retention, increased LTV, and overall satisfaction.

For example:

▪️Reduce the average request processing time from 20 minutes to 10;

▪️increase NPS to 15% by next year;

▪️increase the satisfaction rate by 5% in 3 months.

6. Track KPIs

After you have set goals, you need to determine the KPI by which you will track their achievement.

These metrics help you instantly gauge how well your support team is performing. 

The effectiveness of support can be determined by the following indicators:

▪️ User Satisfaction Level (CSAT);

▪️ consumer loyalty index (NPS);

▪️ the speed of the first response;

▪️ average time to resolve a request;

▪️ the number of active requests;

▪️ number of resolved requests;

▪️ customer retention rate.

It is important to consider these indicators in conjunction with each other. For example, your team can successfully shorten the time it takes to resolve an issue, but quality will suffer – customer satisfaction will decrease. Choose the metrics you want to monitor, establish connections between them, and gradually move towards your goals.

7. Choose the right tools

Make sure operators are equipped with all the software they need to quickly find the information they need, make quick decisions, and coordinate multiple channels and conversations at the same time.

Users want to be heard, cared for and understood, and there is no room for error. A convenient platform will allow your operators to respond to everything quickly and not go crazy.

If your customer data is not centralized, you will run into problems every time one of the agents goes on sick leave or vacation. Another important point is that the data must be accessible and understandable. Keeping personal notes is not a good idea, because the other person can get confused in your notes.

8. Give operators the power

So, if you followed all the previous steps, you have a good Customer Service strategy. There is only one step left to make it great – empowering operators.

So they will not only be able to process requests faster, but also do it better. The secret is that each member of the team can make decisions on their own, without breaking through the jungle of approvals.

Determine what actions the operator can take to solve the problem. For example:

▪️ offer a discount to make up for an unpleasant experience;

▪️ arrange replacement or return of goods;

▪️ prepare and present bonuses and special offers to the client.

The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain has an interesting policy: employees can spend $ 2,000 to solve a client’s problem. The manager does not need to wait for approval – he can take any measure that fits within this budget.

Why exactly $ 2000? Because the LTV of each client is $ 250,000!

Our Experience

The Service Desk is one of the main components of the stable operation of the company’s IT infrastructure and the effective work of employees.

GotYourBack Support operators coordinate the work of specialists, control the execution time of requests, evaluate the quality of work, including based on user ratings. This gives you additional control over IT quality and user satisfaction.

The services of our company increase the efficiency, stability and quality of the IT infrastructure in the company, contribute to an increase in the level of maturity of IT processes, and the development of a service approach in IT.

Service Desk outsourcing from GotYorBek Support is:

▪️a single point of contact for users for any IT requests;

▪️receiving, registering, routing and controlling the timing of requests;

▪️increased satisfaction with IT services from users (employees of your company);

▪️reporting to control the quality of IT services.

The Service Desk system from GotYourBack Support is developed based on the best world practices and ITIL methodology.

Instead of Conclusion

There is no perfect solution when it comes to Customer Service. But there are surefire ways to make your customers feel you care. To do this, do not forget:

▪️Introduce a focus on customer happiness across all teams;

▪️Plan the complete customer journey and prepare for the most common challenges along the way;

▪️Set goals and KPIs for the support team;

▪️Provide the team with a convenient internal service;

▪️Collect feedback and make adjustments based on it.

This way your clients will become not a hindrance to work, but a support and advocates of the brand.

In addition, customers can be a source of ideas for the growth of the company – support works closely with customers and knows best what problems they have and what changes to the product can improve their user experience.

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Date
January 31, 2022
Author
Sunny

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