To cope with the increasing competition, business enterprises are coming up with new ways to attract and retain their customers. A company’s most vital asset is its customers. As they are the reason, your company exists. When you satisfy your customers, they not only help you grow by continuing to do business with you, but they will also recommend you to their friends and associates.
Are your customer support strategies already aligned to increase your customer satisfaction?
Too often, entrepreneurs get lost in the business’s technical side that they forget some of the most basic and most important business principles that can help them become successful. This leads to poorly thought-out decisions and weakly conceptualized strategies that don’t work for their target market.
To build a customer-centric company, here are 5 customer service principles that you should always remember:
1. Speed
This has been critical to many organizations. Through speed and responsiveness, you can determine the quality of service provided to your customers. As you know, the ability to quickly respond to the customer’s needs impacts both customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
If you want to enhance your customer service, speed is the first step. Speed can be tracked via various benchmarks such as:
- First response time
- Average response time
- Problem resolution time
- First contact resolution ratio
Customer service responsiveness is dependent on various factors, like:
a. Contact channel: The slow SMS and email alerts are now things of the past. The new advancements and increased messaging apps usage have changed the customer mindsets to an easy and fast communication channel. Currently, the best and fastest support channel for your customer is Conzia Live chat. It gives you the liberty to attend to multiple customers at the same time with ease.
b. Employee skills and empowerment: The problem resolution time is dependent on your employee skills. The more empowered and knowledgeable employees you have, the less the problem resolution time and ultimately fast customer service. An empowered employee can resolve issues, thus adding to your customer service and experience.
2. Accuracy
Besides being fast in delivering information to the clients, the information provided should be correct. If any information provided to your customer is not accurate, this can lead to dissatisfaction. Your organization should always ensure you contain accurate information.
The accuracy principle for customer satisfaction is affected by various factors such as:
a. Training: Employees being trained to provide the customer with exactly the information they want is all about accuracy. While training, where responsiveness focuses on skills, accuracy will expand the employee knowledge and ultimately the customer service accuracy.
b. Teamwork: Solving can sometimes demand a team sport called teamwork. Basically, customer support is actually a team sport. Now the company culture is critical to maintaining their atmospheric support. Internal politics and company competition should be monitored properly to ensure teamwork.
c. Information systems: These are the most integral and important parts of customer services today. The flow, production, and reach of the company’s response to the customer affect service accuracy. A fluid and dynamic CRM, helpdesk, and messaging support systems will help to ensure service accuracy.
3. Accessibility
You may want to ask yourself how important it is to immediately get in touch with people you need to speak to. It’s a pretty big deal. Especially in today’s world where people are so used to getting what they want when they want it, being accessible is a huge plus. The decisions you make about accessibility can have a significant impact. Sometimes, limits inaccessibility can be as simple as technical issues or confusion in navigating a site.
Countless studies have shown that people prefer directly speaking with human beings to get the customer service they covet. Whether it’s over the phone or through a live chat, immediate customer service with a personal touch is the most pleasing. However, research tends to find that getting a live human voice on the phone is most appreciated. Live chat software such as Conzia Live Chat enables your employees to talk to your customers in real-time and overcome the difficulties of inaccessibility. They can quickly get the customers to buy the product and save a lot of time, which is spent on the emails and phone calls for any product questions.
To open your doors to an increased customer base with better accessibility, leap to live chat and messaging apps. Register for a free demo.
4. Knowing your customers
It sounds simple and obvious, but knowing your customers takes continuous effort. Unfortunately, brands skip this step and assume that they know what’s best for their customers. They usually proceed straight to product development and marketing, thinking that these would suffice to gain their target market’s attention.
The truth is, you can’t build a successful product, marketing, or customer support strategy without knowing your customers and their needs. Also, remember that one customer survey isn’t enough. Part of getting to know your customers understands how their preferences and needs are evolving with time. That means regular data collection about your customers and its continuous analysis is a must to know and understand your customers better.
5. Efficiency
Customer service efficiency is not just about speed. Although fast responses and resolution times are crucial, efficiency is also about providing an excellent customer service experience throughout the entire journey.
93% of customers will buy again from companies who offer excellent customer service.
Even small changes can make a world of difference to your business. So why not start with some of our tips and take your customer service experience to the next level?
If you have questions about further optimizing your digital customer service or implementing any of the strategies mentioned in this blog, we are here to help. Don’t hesitate to chat with us or book your free online demo!