As more and more companies realize the importance of customer satisfaction, the focus has become increasingly redirected towards improving overall customer experiences. Companies are now investing in more customer-friendly services, offering quick responses to clients, and operating fully under the principle that states "the customer is king."
According to a study by PWC, 80% of US consumers say that knowledgeable assistance, speed, convenience, and friendliness are the key elements of a positive customer experience. This study holds a lot of truth. However, it is also found that once you provide top-notch services and communication, it oftentimes doesn’t matter if any concerns or complaints are not resolved instantly. The customer will have an exceptional experience with your business regardless of the troubles you both faced if you’ve explained the whole support process properly. But, yes, if you can resolve their issues instantly, that certainly would be a reason for them to like your brand more.
Keep in mind that happy customers make for happy businesses! Your satisfied customers are extremely likely to spread the word about their positive experiences with your business, and this is the easiest form of promotion that your business can ever get. Hence, if you are looking to create better customer experiences by boosting the quality of your services, here are some ways to go about it that don’t require the use of a dedicated customer experience management agency.
1. Know What's Important to Your Customers
Regardless of the industry you're in, it is vital that your business understands what makes your customers tick with your products or services. You can discern this by studying customer behavior and mapping their customer journeys. For instance, how long does it take customers to decide which product or service they want to purchase? How many times do they visit your website before taking solid action (like reaching out, placing an order, etc.)?
Studying these kinds of consumer behaviors will give you a good starting point in determining what in your business is working towards providing an excellent experience to customers and what isn’t. Now you can do it in the traditional way that includes a lot of documents and storage extensions, or you can enjoy the cost and time effectiveness of a secure CRM platform Helpy.
2. Get Subjective
Every customer interaction is a learning experience. Beyond general surveys and analytics, you must take each liaison with a customer as a learning experience. Regardless of theoretical generalizations, the truth is that all clients are different. Honing your ability to identify the likes and dislikes and overall preferences of each of your clients will enable you to optimize their client experience to the maximum.
Even as you get subjective in your analyses, there is still some technology that can assist you in doing this. For example, with call recording software, you can listen back on calls made by your customer service reps to easily track where things went right or wrong and pinpoint what actions can be taken to improve a particular customer’s experience. However, you must always keep in mind that client data security is crucial. Ensure that only authorized people have access to any sensitive information.
Similarly, however, more efficiently, you can analyze your customers histories as well as employee achievements on a single CRM platform and find a culprit within seconds! You can also prevent employee mistakes and improve customer experiences by setting up triggers and reporting system that can save your business loads of money! This is a truly exceptional technique that can skyrocket your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)!
3. Prioritize Data Privacy and Security
Your customers' information must be kept safe at all times. This includes their personal data, credit card information, and any other sensitive information they share with you. Good measures that you can put in place to guarantee client data privacy and security include multi-factor authentication, prompting the use of strong account passwords, and cloud safe storage. Learn more about multi-factor authentication and passwords from our previous article.
Data privacy and security are legal requirements in almost every country. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has ushered in a major shift in how businesses and even government agencies handle and protect the personal data of their customers and citizens. This means that organizations can no longer store people’s personal data on third-party platforms or use them for marketing purposes without obtaining a consent of the person(s) involved first. You must ensure that your business is compliant with the GDPR.
Helpy is a customer support platform that is made for companies looking for effective ways to protect their customers’ privacy. With Helpy, it is easy to ensure that your customers’ data is safe and uncompromisable while you provide them with stellar customer support!
4. The Role Your Employees Play Is Key
Your service team plays a huge role in boosting customer satisfaction, especially among team members responsible for making immediate decisions in client interactions.
Your customer support team members must possess all the necessary customer care skills to be able to play their role right. You must also train your team in the right MOs for providing customers with adequate assistance so that every customer interaction is positive. Furthermore, employing an effective helpdesk software with features that enable superb customer support is another way to make your customer service employees twice as efficient at the work that they do.
Helpy provides your customer care team with services that will expedite and upgrade how they interact with customers. These services include an AI chatbot that responds independently and instantly to customers that reach out, providing them with common questions and answers that may cover their requests or concerns without having to chat live with an agent, a customizable omnibox channel that compiles all support interactions on every platform so that your team never misses a customer’s message, a self-support help center so your customers can easily find answers on their own, and so much more!
Employee satisfaction also comes to play in this aspect. If your employees are doing an awesome job, rewarding excellent employee performances gives them more incentive to keep doing their best in their jobs.
5. Reply Swiftly Through Live Chat or Social Media
The traditional way of responding to customer feedback and inquiries is through email. And while this isn't a bad method, it is certainly not the safest and customer preferences have shifted in recent times towards using other channels such as live chats to reach out to companies.
Consider investing in an actionable and well-designed helpdesk software. This kind of software will enable you to swiftly respond when customers contact your business as well as create detailed knowledge bases so customers can easily search online for the information they need, communicate directly with customer service reps, and organize physical or virtual appointments where necessary. Helpy’s auto-response AI chatbot and helpcenter are features that enable you to provide these kinds of services. The best part is that all these communication channels can be only yours, and the maximum data safety is achiavable only with Helpy!
6. Focus on Customer Retention
You can make your customers return for more business with you by offering them services and products that meet their needs and giving them an excellent experience each time they interact with your business. Another set of factors that facilitate customer retention are measures that make it easier for them to connect with your company whenever they have inquiries or need solutions to any problems they encounter.
More techniques that will enable your business to obtain maximum customer retention include offering added incentives such as gifts and discounts, making use of customer surveys to discover what customers think about your business and using the information gathered to implement improvements and changes where necessary, providing customers with easy-to-use interfaces if you run online operations such as an e-store or a knowledge base website, and providing personalized experiences to your customers.
7. Offer Multiple Payment Options
Payment constraints are a negative element that oftentimes hinder sales solely because a client cannot find their preferred payment option during checkout on a company’s website. Offering multiple payment options shows clients that you are considerate of their needs beyond just taking their money. Nevertheless, it is important to provide as many payment options as possible so you won’t lose money just because a customer is unable to pay.
8. Support Ticketing
Ticketing is a tried and true way to provide excellent customer support. Support ticketing allows customers to submit queries, issues, or complaints while providing them with instant updates on the progress of their emails or messages. One major benefit of support ticketing is that it gives your company the opportunity to resolve problems before they escalate into larger ones that could put a dent in your exquisite customer service record.
Helpy’s software ticketing service provides an omnichannel inbox that customer service agents can use to track all customer emails and tickets in one place. Once messages arrive at any of your support addresses, they will appear on Helpy’s dashboard from where each message will be assigned to an agent to handle. This process prevents your customer support from unintentionally missing any messages because no notification was provided.
Helpy’s software ticketing is 100% reliable and provides your team with the opportunity to streamline support processes, because mass updates and replies can be discharged to a group of similar tickets from different customers. The software also provides complete history and operational tracking of all interactions so that you can perform 360° assessments of your customers through your interactions with them.
Do not forget that every interaction with a customer counts, so it is important that everyone in your business is on board with your customer experience goals. Teamwork and innovation towards achieving these goals can yield success that will create excellent customer experiences and earn your customers’ admiration.