We’re living in the era when customer service is as important as the quality of products or services you sell. People expect immediate responses from businesses they contact, that’s why live chat software has been especially popular among businesses in recent years.
With businesses rising their customer service standards, more and more customers expect great service from all companies they’re dealing with. For example, the 2017 State of Global Customer Service Report, 54 percent of customers have higher expectations for customer services today than they had in 2016. Dig deeper and you’ll discover that this percentage increases to 66 percent for the 18-34 year-olds.
And you just can’t afford to fail to provide the quality of service your customers need because you’ll be losing big-time. A recent survey of customers by NewVoiceMedia found that businesses lost $75 billion in 2017 as the result of their customers abandoning them and leaving for competitors because of a poor customer service.
Ouch!!
If you feel like your own customer service has not been perfect lately, chances are that some of your customers are considering switching to other companies, too. To regain their trust, you need to provide quality customer service, and to do that, you have to find out what problems it may be experiencing.
Here are some of the most important things to consider.
1. Live Chat Option
Does your website have a live chat option so your customers can use it to reach you immediately? If it doesn’t, then you’ve got a problem. There’s tons of evidence showing that customers prefer live chat over other means of communicating with businesses because of it increases the speed of the service.
In fact, live chat has the highest satisfaction level than any other customer service channels, with 73 percent of customers reporting being satisfied with this feature, according to Econsultancy data. It even outperformed such popular options as email (61 percent), phone (44 percent), and social media (48 percent).
Moreover, many customers say they would prefer to buy from a business that has a live chat option because they perceive it as a quick way to reach customer support in case they have a problem. In fact, here are the most common reasons given by customers to why they prefer live chat, according to Econsultancy.
2. Number of Dissatisfied Customers
Let’s suppose that your customer service doesn’t receive a lot of complaints. In fact, let’s say it receives only a few complaints a week. Such a low number of dissatisfied customers means that your customer service is great, right?
Wrong!
Only 4 percent of unhappy customers complain. Moreover, 91 percent of those who choose not to complain simply leave and never buy anything from that business,
claims Colin Shaw, a customer experience thought leader.
So, the fact that your customer service receives just a few complaints per week or even month may not mean that you should be proud of your progress and stop seeking ways to improve it.
3. Working Environment
If you feel like your customer service team is unengaged, unmotivated, and lacks skills to provide an excellent service, this could be the main reason why your customers are unhappy with it. To improve the quality of customer service, it’s your responsibility as a leader to create an environment that allows an exceptional service.
For example, you can:
- Invest in training of customer service members and ensure they have all the skills they need to provide professional service even in the most complicated situations
- Involve customer service in decision making. Ask the member of the team about significant factors related to customer service improvement to demonstrate that you appreciate their opinion and feedback.
- Measure progress. Collect customer service performance metrics and use a tool like Knowledge Management System to ensure that you have maximum data and information on how to improve customer support.
4. Customer Transfer to Other Departments
Another major reason why your customer service sucks may be the inability to support agents to solve customers’ problems without transferring them to somebody else. For example, a customer who contacts your customer care team expects an immediate attempt to resolve their issue but instead he or she gets thrown like a hot potato among different departments.
Of course, this adds a lot of stress and discourages that customer from contacting your customer service ever again. To avoid that, you should ensure that your customer support agents have the tools and authority they need to try to resolve customers’ problems right away.
The Bottom Line is that it’s clear that customer service is an important marketing channel because its poor quality may persuade customers to leave for competitors. If you’ve been struggling with your own customer service, feel free to apply the tips described above and remember: never stop improving! Even a few complaints per month may not mean that you’re doing everything perfectly.
A better way to assess the quality of your customer service is to ask customers directly via an online survey on your website and ask them for improvement suggestions.
Audrey is a visual content and digital marketing specialist who finds her passion in expressing her own thoughts as a blogger and currently works at https://www.assignmenthelper.com.au/ She is a tech-savvy person and likes to write on different topics like social media, web design, mobile apps, online marketing and much more.