Markets in the US and across the globe have entered their most saturated evolution phases. The countless product and service options available online have spoiled customers who are now only one click away from choosing the competition over you. Industry leaders have recognized this trend and focused their business strategy on deploying customer-centric methods and tools to deliver top-notch experiences and beat the competition.
A Forrester study revealed that 95% of respondents would name excellent customer experience as their strategic priority. The same study showed that 75% of business owners see customer experience as a key company differentiator and they want to use it as their competitive advantage.
At first glance, it may seem impossible to satisfy all of your customers and maintain their loyalty. However, recent surveys prove there are general customer expectations that you need to meet to keep your CSAT high and reap the benefits of your hard work. In particular, there are 10 customer expectations that determine the success of every customer experience. Customers seek solutions to their problems, and their reviews greatly depend on how you respond. Thus you must take care of these basic customer expectations to qualify for a sustainable business level.
Additionally, to satisfy customer wishes you need to have well-trained customer representatives who have a solution for any customer need. In order to train them well, you have to set the customer service standards across your company. These performance benchmarks will shape every customer interaction and ensure your branded information is delivered in an adequate manner.
All customer expectations of service boil down to making their experience as rewarding as possible. However, each of the top 10 customer expectations requires a unique approach.
Scroll down to discover all of them!
The 10 Customer Expectations You Must Meet
Today’s customers appreciate efficient customer service the most. Considering that almost 90% of them stand behind this claim, you must focus on improving efficiency to satisfy the vast majority of your customers. In fact, two of the top three customer expectations refer to how convenient and knowledgeable your customer service is!
In order to respond to every customer expectation you need to embrace the new generation customer service technology and conduct regular analyses of your customer service efforts. These analyses should include the top customer service KPIs so that you can detect troublemakers and showcase your key prosperity drivers!
Below you will find an extensive list of the top 10 customer expectations and how best to respond to them.
1. Provide omnichannel support
Going omnichannel for customer communications is absolutely necessary! Modern tech tools such as various helpdesk features have become commonplace for company prestige. Customers expect to have a variety of options for contacting you whenever they want. Moreover, they expect you to use their preferred channel of communication when reaching out or discussing their issues further. Today’s customers enjoy using modern technology and they want you to make it easy for them to contact you. For instance, make sure that AI-chatbot or Live Chat boxes are in a visible spot such as the bottom right corner of your website.
However, it’s not just customer preferences that play a role in the choice of a communication channel, their needs are also important. Depending on the complexity of their problem, customers may opt for quick or more thorough help. If they can’t find the answer on youryiur webpage or if they are confused about a function, they can opt for an AI-chatbot or self-service option such as a knowledge base.
However, if they are dealing with a product failure they will need the help of your agents via live chat or a phone call. In fact, these two options plus email round out the top three preferred methods of customer communication.
Customer communication preferences:
Make sure that you have these communication tools in place!
2. Nurture personalized customer experience
Now more than ever customers want a personalized experience! Moreover, an astounding 80% of them claim they prefer purchasing from a brand that offers personalized experiences. Thus this is surely a must-meet customer expectation.
Not sure how to personalize? Here are the top tips:
- Use a CRM platform: Keep all of the data you collect on your customers in one place while building thorough repositories with their preferences and behaviours to provide the highest level of personalized service.
- Send relevant promotions: When we say “relevant promotion”, we mean you should send coupons, special offers and gifts to your customers based on their purchasing history.
- Proactive support: Determine if they need help based on previous experiences, their location or their language! Then reach out before they come to you!
3. Establish an easy-to-use feedback practice
You simply can’t know whether you have met your customers’ expectations if you don’t analyze your support KPIs or ask for feedback. Helpdesk allows you to create easy and quick surveys to collect customer comments. They will be happy to express their opinion knowing that you care about it and you will know if you are delivering service in the right way. A win-win solution!
4. Enable live-chat interaction
Live chat is a great way to meet customer expectations in terms of human-like conversation. They receive modern and quick assistance in real time without leaving the comfort of their homes! Live Chat resembles the traditional phone experience the most, yet it is far more pleasant due to shorter wait times. With this technology your agents can easily juggle multiple customer chats at the same time! Thus it is not a surprise that 41% of consumers would opt for live chat support first versus 32% who prefer phone support. Have you implemented live chat yet?
5. Be proactive
The 2018 State of Global Customer Service Report revealed that 70% of respondents view proactive support as a very positive business approach. This is one of the highest ranked customer expectations of service that can turn your viewers and current buyers into repeat customers and even business advocates! Proactive support means that you don’t need to wait on your customer to pop up with a question. Conversely, it puts the onus on you to analyze their previous and current interactions with your company and offer help based on the results.
For instance, you can teach your AI-chatbot to ask your customer if they need any assistance when they linger on a specific web page. You can also set live chat triggers that can act in a similar way; however, they will include agent support after! Lastly, make sure to document your customers’ reactions to learn about their needs for the next time!
6. Offer self service
While self-service support tools or knowledge bases are cost effective, they’re also incredibly popular among digital natives. Your customers expect your agents to be knowledgeable about your company's offer; however, in certain situations they might prefer to try and figure it out on their own. For example, they may be in a rush or feel embarrassed for asking trivial questions. Additionally, a thorough knowledge base takes this work off your agents’ plates and leaves a lot of free space for them to dedicate to more complex customer issues. How is this cost effective? You only need to install it once and update from time to time according to your company needs while saving numerous agent hours they would otherwise spend on simple customer queries.
7. Create an internal knowledge base
You probably don’t want your customer to know more about your offer than your agents. Therefore, empower your agents to use an internal knowledge base consisting of all content that will be relevant to your customers. This way, your junior agents won’t need to bother seniors with multiple queries; they just need to surf through your knowledge base to find all of the tips and tricks your employees have collected throughout the years!
8. Deploy a secure helpdesk
A customer support helpdesk is the definition of efficient customer service nowadays. Helpdesk enables remote work practices that are essential during the pandemic. It also skyrockets the efficiency of your support team management and customer communication, making both your customers and your agents happier.
On an easy-to-use CRM platform you can track the progress of each customer ticket as well as the metrics associated with your team's performance. If someone is dragging the productivity levels down, there are triggers to remind these “weak links” to work harder. Automation is king! By automating custom responses such as thank you notes, you eliminate all repetitive work and related human errors This will enable faster solutioning for requests of the same category and it will make your customers feel appreciated.
How do you think your customers feel about instant responses? They love them! An efficient AI-powered chatbot uses machine learning algorithms to enable instant answers to about 93% of customer queries. For example, Carin can respond to requests as complex as “Where is my order?” Considering the fact that your customers expect an answer in less than 5 minutes, AI-chatbot represents an essential customer service tool! Add to that its power to cut your support costs by 50% and you should be implementing this powerful tool right now! However, to reach the maximum support efficiency and satisfy this expectation, you must not compromise the data you collect on your customers. Make sure your helpdesk respects the highest data security standards!
9. Guarantee data privacy and data compliance
Did you know that 48% of consumers have stopped purchasing from a company due to privacy concerns? Yes, data privacy practices can make or break your partnership with your customers these days! Additionally, 73% of them believe that trust in a company is more important now than it was a few years ago! To ensure the maximum data privacy you need to comply with all relevant data laws and deploy a helpdesk that is focused on data security!
10. Deliver solutions promptly
You can use modern tools, you can talk nice, but support is actually about solving your customers’ problems. Besides offering an internal knowledge base and customer histories, a helpdesk enables the most efficient task management. This efficiency means that all your experts will have real time insights into request progress so they can jump in whenever they need. Finally, we’re happy to announce that the need to repeat your problem to every subsequent agent in the professional hierarchy is a matter of the past! If you use all the support assets mentioned above you’ll be able to deliver excellent customer experiences and exceed your customers’ expectations!