What do customers want today?
You might be surprised. It’s all about the customer experience.
According to Salesforce, 74% of business buyers, and 67% of consumers say that they would happily pay more for an excellent experience from their chosen company. What’s more, now that today’s clients have so many choices available to them, the businesses that fail to deliver on great experiences could end up losing their target audience entirely. Here are three tips to help you make sure you are providing a great customer experience.
1. Help Customers Help Themselves
50% of today’s customers say they want to at least try and solve service or product issues on their own before seeking help from a professional. Millennials are now the largest consumer base in the world. These digital natives have grown up using the internet to find the answers to all their questions. They feel comfortable searching for solutions using chatbots and other digital apps. Around 70% of consumers even say that they expect to find a self-service application on a company’s website.
To help your customers self-serve it’s crucial for businesses to invest in the right technology, from intelligent IVR systems that guide customers to the right answer to online self-support apps. Chatbots, artificial intelligence, and even online knowledge bases help to support your customers and take unnecessary pressure off your employees’ shoulders.
2. Widen Your Communication Channels
Another crucial thing to remember in today’s customer service environment is that there are more channels to consider than just voice. A channel is defined as a method of communications. It used to be that if a customer wanted help with an issue, they would either need to open a support ticket over email or make a phone call. While both options are still popular among today’s consumers, there are other channels available too, such as instant messaging, social and video conversations. Facebook, twitter, and a myriad of other channels are available, make sure your clients can use their channel of choice.
Crucially, there’s more to giving your customers more service options than merely adding things like video, social and messaging to your portfolio. You’ll also need to ensure that employees are trained to use those channels and that they can access the contextual information required to serve their customers as they move from one platform to another. For instance, 89% of customers say that they get frustrated when they have to repeat their issues to multiple representatives.
Connecting all your communication channels in the same environment will help employees provide a more consistent overall experience.
3. Listen to Your Customers
Finally, if you want to deliver the kind of experiences that your customers are looking for, one of the best things you can do is listen to what your people need. Provide your clients with options to give you feedback on the conversations that they have with your employees, and act on the information that you gather.
If your customers tell you that it takes too long for them to get through to a support person when they call you figure out where the bottle necks are. You may be having an issue with your automatic routing strategy, or you may not be sending the right customers to the correct employee first time around. You can also use the analytics systems built into your communication channels to gather additional insights into your communication strategy. For instance, if you notice that more customers prefer to contact you via Instant Chat, you can push more agents over into that area.
Today’s clients are fickle, they will leave at the slightest excuse. So, make sure you offer “generational routing”. Let customers reach you how they choose. Baby boomers like to talk via a voice call, Generation X use email, millennial's use texting, and Generation Z prefer social media.
Request a quote or give us call at 713.910.1401 to speak with a Technology Advisor to explore available solutions and begin leveraging new technologies today that will improve your organizations customer experience.