The number one priority for any business is to provide the best possible service for its customers – but how can that process be managed effectively?
To answer this question, we must look at what customer service aims to do and explore how those goals can be met with greater efficiency. Good customer service can be attained by following a set of simple steps that many businesses often overlook when formulating their customer service strategy.
In this blog, we shall explore what each of these steps is, how they can be accomplished, and how they can improve the success rate of your customer service strategy.
Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time
You don’t need to carry out in-depth, survey-based research to find out that customers dislike waiting for their issues to be resolved. Time is precious in all walks of life, and customer service is no exception. If you’re not convinced of this, try talking to a customer who has been waiting in a call queue for the last 30 minutes and they’ll soon change your mind.
Moreover, forcing a new customer to wait for unnecessarily long periods is a terrible way to start the relationship. First impressions are crucially important, and if the customer is angry with the business before they have even spoken to them, it is going to take a lot more work to try and win them over.
Considering this, keeping customer wait times to a minimum should be a top priority when building your customer service strategy. One effective way to reduce this waiting period is to invest in intelligent call routing software that will automatically assign customers with a specific need to an agent skilled enough to resolve them.
Invest in the Right Tech
It may sound like a simple solution, but investing in the right technology is an important step that many businesses miss. One of the main reasons for these bad decisions is cost, as many companies can fail to look at the bigger picture when investing in software for their contact center. Everyone wants to save money, but skimping on tech is one area that could cost you more in the long run.
One example of contact center software that plays a powerful role in customer service management is CRM software. This tool is crucial for maintaining good relationships with customers and acts as a resource for all personal information and interaction with the business. We can’t stress how important a CRM is for managing customer service effectively. Investing in a top-line solution like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or ServiceNow is vital.
Aside from the CRM, computer telephony integration (CTI) is another key tool that can drastically improve customer service performance. Many businesses make the mistake of writing CTI off as an optional add on, but we would argue that it is just as important. By linking a company’s phone system to its CRM, CTI opens up a whole new world of possibilities for businesses to enhance their customer service. It speeds up efficiency, reduces queue time, minimizes call costs, and helps businesses get a much better ROI from their CRM investment.
Ensure Agents Receive Adequate Training
Imagine the frustration of waiting in a call queue for 10 minutes, only to get through to an agent who has no idea how to deal with your problem. Though it’s impossible for every agent to know every answer, the goal should be to reduce the number of times this occurs as it can reflect terribly on the business. Customer expectations must always to be met, and when a customer calls in with a problem, it’s not out of line for them to expect a resolution.
To achieve this, you can start investing more time and capital into ensuring your agents are trained to the highest standards. Typically, this can be achieved by utilizing solutions such as call monitoring and call recording, where agent performance can be monitored for errors and played back in training exercises, to help the agent understand where they went wrong.
Moreover, intelligent call routing can be used to accurately direct customers who require agents with specific skill levels to resolve their issue. This way, the more complex requests can be filtered through to the more advanced agents, while the simpler stuff can be routed to agents with basic level knowledge.
Make Sure Employees are Happy
Throughout this blog we have stressed the importance of customer satisfaction, but agent satisfaction is equally as important when managing customer service. After all, if an agent is miserable in their job or can’t perform to the best of their ability, how can be expected to provide good service that meets a customer’s expectations?
Considering this, it pays to invest in solutions that are going to make life much easier for your employees. CTI, for example, can play a significant role in reducing the amount of time per day an agent spends carrying out menial tasks such as call logging or searching for customer information in the CRM. Even the best tools alone aren’t enough, though. Asking, observing, and listening to your employees is the best way to ensure that they have what they need to do their job, and can focus on providing great service to every customer.