If you want to serve a community better in your businesses, you have to use all the customer data they provide to help educate them.
Customer support has gone through a lot of changes in the past couple of years. With crowdsourcing now a very real trend, it’s hard to find a consumer-facing business that isn’t looking to get smarter about how they get help in return. Now, it’s no longer enough to ask customers what you should do, but you also need to ask them why you’re doing it and why they like your customer service.
Just as many businesses are touting social media for being a great source of helpful tips, businesses are claiming they can use analysis of their customers’ behavior to help get their customer service right. While not all businesses are looking to hire social media analysts, anyone can use data to help guide them in their customer service efforts. Here are four ways that data can help improve your customer service:
- Make service seem a lot more entertaining.
Seeking help with an online product can quickly become a frustrating, time-consuming and boring experience. Combining wit and drive for customer service makes customers feel happier, and everyone looks better.
Gathering data from your customers allows you to come up with ways to deliver the right message based on their insights. This makes your customer service seem a lot more entertaining since you will be delivering messages that are based on their personal preferences.
- Acknowledge problems quickly.
Using customer data will allow you to get a deeper insight into the needs and preferences of each client individually.
Customer service can feel like being someone’s personal doctor and insurance representative. That takes a lot of time and coordination. By learning how to use data provided by your customers you will be able to address requests quickly and you’ll lessen time being spent on something other than resolving problems.
If it’s a consumer request for product advice, having a quick conversation can keep your customer on a wait-free track to providing even more advice. Having that conversation with the customer with someone who’s always at their service can also provide added reassurance to a dissatisfied consumer.
- Use data to show you who, when and where to talk to.
When something goes wrong with your customer service, it’s sometimes the best idea to call and apologize personally. However, your buyers are not the same, while some prefer traditional phone call support, others may want to talk to your agents through live chat, email, or social media accounts. You have to accommodate them all but make sure that every channel of communication is equally efficient.
Data analysis tells you how your customer service functions across different channels and points out the areas where you need improvement.
It can be easy to forget what you hear when customers share their perspectives with you, but by taking the time to listen to what customers have to say, you’ll discover that many people want you to learn from them. Use the real-time information they provide to help you make your customer service efforts the best in the industry.
- Know what your customers need before they ask
Steve Jobs said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” If you actively gather data and as clients about what they need, you probably noticed this quote to be true. Clients are not completely aware of everything they need but still expect a good customer service experience from you.
This could be a frustrating task but with customer data, you should be able to predict what products a customer could possibly be interested in based on previous purchases by other customers. If you know that a certain product is usually bought with another item then you can offer that to your customer by providing the pros of purchasing the items together. Using proper interaction you can prevent future complaints about user satisfaction and at the same time show that you care about that client to anticipate their possible needs,
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