Are you a mid-sized company striving to be a big industry player? Or a big whale in the industrial ecosystem striving to be even bigger and better? How do you plan to achieve these goals? Well, the answer is – by delivering exceptional customer service!
The next obvious question is how to do that? By deploying the right customer service software for your business. It is no secret that customers need to be at the heart of any business (that want to succeed). Customer service software plays a pivotal role in that by creating positive memories for your customers across their journey with your brand.
Benefits of Customer Service Software
There are various benefits of having the right customer service software for business – both at an organization level as well as for the agents. Let us have a look at some of them in detail:
1. Self Service for Customer Empowerment
Customers do not like to wait to get answers. Period. Talking about the millennials in particular, they actively seek options to avoid talking to a customer service agent. They would rather find answers to their own queries. A customer service software powered by self-service capabilities such as an IVR or chatbot integration will solve that purpose. Get out of the customers’ way and empower them to resolve their queries faster.
2. Automation to Reduce Agent Workload
Customer service executives are bombarded with a lot of queries on a daily basis. It becomes difficult for them to answer each of them individually. Automating this process will not only save their time but will also allow them to use that free time to tackle priority issues. Configuring time and event-based rules to set in motion certain actions when an event occurs or some time has lapsed. For instance, a customer drops you an email during the non-business hours. Send out an automated email to the customer with the ticket number and possibly an estimated time within which an agent will contact them. Acknowledging the email will send out a confirmation to the customer and they will not feel like being left in dark.
3. Be on the Preferred Channel
Do not force the customers to come to you, rather go where they are. Be present on all the possible channels that your target audience and customers use. Customers can be unforgiving when not served well. If we talk about millennials, in particular, they expect excellent service across channels. Good customer service software needs to support multiple channels such as:
- Voice: It is the most commonly used medium of communication. Since the time call centers came into place, customers have been calling in to inquire and seek help.
- Email: Sending out an email is easy and convenient at the same time provides the customer with written proof of the conversation. That implies the customer service executives not only need to be prompt with their response but also need to maintain consistency with their response. A customer service software which provides email templates and can automate this process solves that problem
- Social Media: According to social media statistics, 47% of adults believe that social media is an effective channel for customer service. Banking in on that, a customer service software which supports platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber or LINE is what a business needs to improve customer engagement and overall customer experience
- Chat: Be proactive with delivering exceptional customer service by allowing the customers to chat with you in real-time. This can be done via web-chat, in-app chat, Facebook messenger, Twitter DMs, or using WhatsApp for customer service. The executives can initiate a chat to help the customers navigate through the issue for faster resolution
4. Measure to Improve
For things and processes to improve, one needs to identify the gaps and the possible areas of improvement. A customer service software packed with the right set of reporting and monitoring tools solves the purpose. Some of the key features to achieve that are:
- Live Monitoring and Dashboards: Monitor the real-time operations to ensure process optimization as well as taking spontaneous yet well-informed decisions. Configure the important KPIs that you would want to track and observe the performance of the executives on them
- Channel Reporting: Recognize your most effective communication channel in terms of customer engagement as well as the return on investment using the channel specific reports. Based on the data, allocate the resources to the channel is most preferred by your customers and tweak the strategy for channels with low performance but high potential.
Once all this data is available to the managers, it empowers them to take better decisions. At the same time, identifying the pain or gap areas also helps in preparing a good training plan for the customer service executives which will actually yield results.
5. Happy Customers
The end goal of all the customer service or support initiatives is to reduce the customers’ effort which in turn will lead to higher customer satisfaction. With the right customer service software, this becomes easy. If the customer can reach you from any channel of their choice, is always kept in the loop about the status of their query and most importantly, can most of the times get answers on their own, without the need to ask for help – all these factors lead to a positive customer experience and increased brand loyalty.