Tag: Customer Service Experience

Customer Service Complaints on Social Media Gone Wrong

Posted on by rpsstudios

So someone made a mistake and responded poorly to a customer’s complaint on Social Media. What will you be able to do to make things right? Is fixing it even possible?

Crisis Management for Service Complaints

Today, complaints are received through social media and traditional channels. And as a result, it’s harder than ever to step in and help the customer.

Of course, it’s still the human’s duty to respond and as a service provider, it’s your responsibility to help the customer. Of course, unless there is legal liability, doing so is also generally beneficial to the brand.

Since your customers are likely shocked at being criticized online, you’ll want to start your mitigation strategy well in advance. Don’t forget to include information about rescheduling your phone call or meeting the person personally. In fact, sometimes you’ll want to reach out through social media. If you can only resolve it by tweeting, perhaps it’s time to tweet out the inquiry to the company at your name for their sake and to your satisfaction.

When You Won’t Even Be Able to Say No

When a customer does reach out on social media and you can’t help them, you might be able to solve it with professionalism.

So how can you support them when you’re not even able to get in touch? From here, there are some steps you can take to resolve their problem.

The first is to respond quickly. If you can find out who wrote it, the second option is to handle the problem internally if possible. Finally, it may be time to consider taking the situation to a customer service manager who is knowledgeable in this exact area.

Mistakes Can Happen

This is a huge misconception when it comes to customer service. As a matter of fact, mistakes can happen all the time with customer service and you won’t be able to avoid them. But the fact is, they can be avoided to a degree and this is why it’s worth taking a look at what else can be done when a customer service complaint is called out.

Manage the Relationship

The first step is to simply apologize. You can also show them that you take their problem seriously. Understand where the issue occurred and then talk about what you can do to resolve it. It’s a good idea to address the issue with the customer as soon as possible. If you can find out who it is who brought it up, you can address it quickly as well. Do Your Homework

Once you’ve addressed the problem, it’s time to research the issue. You may not be able to fix the problem immediately.

Taking time to research the issue will show the customer you have a good idea of what you’re dealing with.

Listen

When the customer realizes how much effort went into addressing their concern, it will be hard for them to walk away. They’ll feel like you got their problem resolved. Remember, you should never try to resolve the situation unless you can. So keeping your word is a good idea.

It’s not a Guarantee

There are chances that you may not be able to resolve your customer’s issue easily, especially if it is outside your job description. This is why it’s so important to reach out to a customer service manager when this happens.

As a matter of fact, customer service managers can even save you from making common mistakes. When you do reach out, they’ll be able to handle things more professionally than you could. Keep in mind, handling a social media complaint is not a one-time deal. So, always remember to keep in mind the above steps to handle a customer service complaint.

Discount

Taking care of the customer is more than just writing a review, taking a picture of the issue, or offering a discount. Treating a customer well means ensuring they’re satisfied.

Therefore, don’t just send a message to them but instead take the extra step of having a face-to-face meeting with them. Or even better, get a dedicated counselor to help them on their own. It won’t cost you anything to set it up for the service managers to handle it. That way you can deal with the problem before it escalates.

One Tip

As a business owner, you’re in charge of keeping the company afloat. However, you also must remember to treat your customer s with respect and dignity.

Disrespecting them, speaking poorly about them, or alluding to their problems will not reflect well on your business. In other words, treat your customer s as you want to be treated. Do not underestimate them or make them feel like you are treating them with contempt. But if you truly want to win their business, don’t make them feel like that.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

5 Steps to Improve Customer Support

Posted on by Supportbench

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform
Every business has one set of customers who are the best and most valuable to the brand.

And every business has a second set of customers who are the best and most loyal to the brand but who might also be a bit less valuable.

Your best way to capture and retain both sets of customers is to invest in customer support.

Customer support works for both types of customers, but there’s one thing that separates them: A great customer service culture. And it can go a long way toward improving your bottom line.

You can have a killer customer support culture in your company without getting fancy. If you look at your customer support data from the analytics side of things, you’ll see there are a lot of actionable skills and behaviors that your team has that could be scaled up.

But we often hear business owners say, “I can’t afford to train my customer support team” – which is often the underlying belief of most small business owners.

The cost of training a remote team is often very low, but having a basic training program built into the organization from the beginning is the only true path to customer support success.

When new customers come through the door, it can take an extra minute for a support representative to kind of nurture them into a loyalty brand advocate. So, you don’t want to set up a support team that is ignorant of products and services and can’t then reinforce a user-friendly brand experience.

Instead, look at the bulk of your inbound communication as a customer onboarding process. You’re going to want to prepare and train your people to come to your consumers as experts in your brand and in your products and services – but a great customer service culture starts well before those people become members of your team.

Every support representative brings some kind of unique attributes that make them uniquely suited to help your customers. And with real customer experience leadership the organization can scale insights up into employee behaviors, communication and knowledge management.

A unified customer support framework can dramatically increase both customer success and revenue growth. You don’t have to hire people at every individual level for the support organization to be successful.

Luckily for you, there are platforms like Supportbench to help you grow your brand and scale your team in a way that gets results. Even “shy” teams can be refactored to deliver a better experience – and then scale up as needed. Now is the perfect time to get training right.

A lot of high-growth companies are growing their customer support teams, but they’re also ramping up their engagement platforms to support a growing customer experience.

Your business can succeed while never losing its long-term focus on customer satisfaction and value to your customers.

The road to a customer-centric company begins by better understanding the interests and values of your customers and making every interaction with them feel more relevant. Following an agile, iterative approach to customer support can help you change how and where you support your customers to support that effort.

Here are five tips to foster a winning customer service culture:

1. Listen to your customers

Listen for and actively invite feedback from your customers to understand what’s important to them and uncover opportunities to improve how you provide service. Have your customer success team play active listening to customers as you work with them to understand the performance of your products and services, identify and solve recurring challenges that may be preventing customers from reaching their goals, and better predict the next level of conversations and service visits.

2. Understand the business and your internal infrastructure

Employees, product, and business teams all have different operating requirements and goals. People are passionate about their products and services; sales teams are very motivated to increase bookings.

Sellers are incentivized to make a sale and keep their commission as an indication of product success. There are many factors that come into play that affect your service team’s success that vary from the needs of your product management team to employees’ affinity for technology and customer success resources.

Before you can help your customers, you need to first build up your customer support team to adapt to the needs of your organizations.

3. Don’t be too rigid

There are many good reasons you want to offer the highest level of customer support you can, but you need to implement a plan that works in all departments. Start by hiring for who you want to be.

When you have your ideal customer, go for it!

But not all companies want to attract customers that way. Help as many as you can, but remember that your customer success team isn’t set up for fixing problems.

Be flexible and have a plan that uses a consultative, “we’ll explain your problem to you” approach instead of a one-way mode where they’re filling in every single need the customer has with solutions.

4. Use metrics to guide your conversations

You’ll quickly discover that there are many metrics to keep in mind when working with your customer support team. Talk to your customer success team about what metrics matter most for them.

Develop a communication plan to identify bottlenecks that could limit speed of resolution. Build those metrics into your employee performance and evaluation plans.

5. Focus on quality

The easiest way to take a task off your plate is to eliminate it completely. If there’s something that you’re spending your time on that isn’t worth it or could be done quicker, start by reducing the frequency of that conversation. Make a plan to track all feedback and help sell solutions instead of solve every customer ’s issue.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

How to think about the customer from start to finish

Posted on by rpsstudios

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform
Find out more about how you can become a top industry player by presenting your innovation in a compelling way.

We’ve compiled tips on how to plan the best customer experiences for your organization. There are a lot of different ways to create excellent customer experiences.

But here’s what we’ve found is the best method:

Incorporate ‘conversation-centric’ thinking into your product design

Know the questions that your customer will be asking and answer them. Understand the customer’s needs by focusing on those core needs before thinking about any elements of the experience.

Conduct digital surveys

One of our customers used Amazon Kiva robots to collect customer preferences. Our customers’ service, which develops video conferencing systems, utilized Kiva’s speech recognition technology to create computer-generated responses. These responses were then used to build customized consumer surveys.

Use data analysis and intelligence

Data-driven behavior change should start with intuitive, sustainable features. Support teams evaluate which features are attracting and retaining customers in real time and create customized product features based on customer reactions.

Cast your net wide

Create lists of target audiences and use the insights to create rich and engaging content. Don’t just focus on your own market — think about other customers, market segments and existing media use.

Use content that encourages conversation

Intentional content facilitates the ‘ask-ask-ask’ exchange. Start early with survey questions. Your team need to understand the intent of the user and continually test interactive content to make it more effective.

Keep it simple

Make it quick and simple for customers to take advantage of your service or product. Be sure that the interaction is straightforward and use easy-to-understand customer journeys to guide you through your customer journey mapping process.

Set clear objectives

Define clear customer outcomes and measure results. Focus on the needs of the customer and draw from this information.

Make it happen

Promote your service and product and actively encourage the customer’s participation. Set a frequency of contact to enable your team to get to know the customer more and make them feel valued and valued for their ongoing engagement.

Make it that way

Don’t anticipate customer objections. Don’t try to be perfect all the time — learn from your experiences and make adjustments as you go. Also, be mindful of attrition rates — don’t get pushed to focus on this too much.

Invest in ideas

If you use a client facing technology, consider your team’s ideas. Creative projects are a great way to change your attitude to ideas — and maybe add to them.

Build a sustained value proposition

When delivering results you need to persuade your customers why you are worth the price. With the internet, everyone can shout over your deliverables. Spend time to get to know your customers, to listen to their needs and use this to your advantage. Set a service expectation

Provide a service expectation based on your customer ’s relationship with the company — how do you measure this? How do you make sure that you are delivering this consistent experience day in day out?

Look at complex issues

Find out what ‘the way things were’ looks like, especially in complicated scenarios such as demographic data, market segmentation, geography and technology trends. What are the various ways to deliver better business outcomes if you can bring complexity to the table? Then set steps that build the structures for this.

Be innovative

Look to the latest technologies to create better customer experiences.  Undoubtedly, you’ve learned something during your eight years building your platform. So you know the tricks for delighting your customers.

But what about the dirty work? When you talk to your customers about how they think your service should work for them, how do you know which stories and techniques really matter? When you catch customers doing great things, you know that there’s still plenty you can do to empower them to care for your users.

Take a step back and answer these five questions to understand what’s working for your customers:

1. How can my customers use my service to help them achieve their goals?

What are your customers’ top priorities? Know which features they’re using to achieve their goals. Try out Supportbench’s platform to find out which features are particularly useful to your customers. Think about the features you could add.

2. What differentiates my customer from the competition?

We have our customer personas in place, but you still need to examine how your customers behave. Study successful companies and think of the customer as a whole – which features fit most naturally to the culture of your company?

3. What is success like for my customer ?

This is probably the most important question.

Take a step back and think about what success looks like for each member of your company – it might be a goal or objective, or simply making someone’s lives easier on a day to day basis.

4. What is success for me?

Remember to build this question into your plans – make sure you can measure your own success, otherwise you may feel like you aren’t making progress towards your goal.

5. How do I have the power to influence my customers?

This question is about empowering yourself and seeing who you can influence. Think about how can you bring additional value or delight to your customers experience.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

The Importance of Digging Deeper into Customer Feedback

Posted on by Supportbench

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform
Try to nail your first one as you get started, then expand your customer experience across the rest of your customer base. Whether it’s using technology to enhance your customer experience or a discussion starter campaign, there are a whole slew of ways to make sure your website is leading the way.

Here are six things you need to keep in mind when creating a delightful customer experience:

1. Customer service should extend beyond the website

The website should be a great starting point for creating a customer experience, but it shouldn’t be the end of it. You should always try to touch customers’ lives beyond the website. Take feedback online, offer multiple choice options in surveys or use a chatbot to speak with customers in more convenient ways.

Additionally, do keep in mind the customer’s journey from customer decision-making through customer service.

Want a better understanding of what people are thinking about your brand? Delve into customer feedback data and try to identify the phrases, feelings, impressions, and conversations your customers have with each other while they’re experiencing your brand.

2. Navigate the Customer Lifecycle Strategically

To create a memorable customer experience and ensure ongoing engagement, think through the customer lifecycle with a long-term view. Understand what your customer wants in the first moment and what they want in the future before you start your conversation.

Then serve them in a way that gives them the best chance to purchase or become a happy customer. Look at past success stories from your customers, determine which issues are most relevant to your business model, and design your customer journey to align with their feedback. For example, for a lending software business, if you wanted to acquire new customers, you would conduct in-depth interviews with potential borrowers, ask them about their financial goals, and measure their financial performance over time.

3. Create a repeatable sequence that sells

While there’s nothing wrong with giving people product ideas on a whim, offer a consistent and clear selling sequence that mimics this essential marketing principle. Not only is this incredibly valuable to your customers, but it also allows your content to generate unique user value, automatically aligning your content with what people find meaningful.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and identify your unique selling point.

4. Market your content when your customers are talking

Everyone loves content, so all you have to do is offer up unique content to people who are thinking about it. The magic is creating relevant content for people at different stages of their customer journey by examining conversations that your brand is already having on social media.

You could compile a wealth of knowledge that you can spin into engaging content for your prospects, and use a simple algorithm to promote it to people waiting for more information.

5. Create a Conversation by Starting Conversations

Be proactive in your customer experience by creating a conversational tone so that you can both get more interaction with your customers and maintain control over your brand’s reputation. If your customers notice that you’re being proactive, they may start using their questions to convey their own thoughts or turn them into delightful content. Mention key topics of interest during a conversation with your customers, encourage questions, and respect their privacy by not sharing any confidential details.

6. Cultivate a customer community

Community members can boost a client’s visibility on social media, create anticipation around events, and even promote your brand to highly influential individuals. Those customer s can also participate in live Q&A sessions, recommend your products and services, and become advocates for your brand.

Over the past year, we’ve worked with our customers to create a number of experiences that are amazing, and that ultimately lead to happy customers. The following are our Customer Success success tips and insights from observing these experiences. Approach the customer in the most impactful way possible

The best customer experiences live up to the name, and then some. They’re emotional. They tackle problems in some creative and innovative ways. Whether it’s a simple thank you or going above and beyond to delight a customer, crafting messages that force a customer to open their eyes and give a soulful response, can lead to something extraordinary. We urge our customers to take this tip to heart, and to approach every customer the same.

When creating customer experiences that deeply delight customers, make them feel they have truly been listened to, and that you’ve understood their needs. Let your problems speak for themselves

The great thing about creating better customer experiences is that customers are happy to share them with others. When creating customer experiences that are easily resonant with customers, they are more likely to share these with their peers – customers beyond your customer base. This means a better customer experience can eventually lead to greater success. Our customers make excellent use of these experiences to increase their growth, including the post-incident customer experience; ensuring that customers are brought back to their desired action following a product transition; and helping to increase repeat customers. Deliver complex, repeatable customer experiences

Customer success managers often struggle to stay on top of their customer’s needs, because they need to try so many new things to drive the greatest impact. This is a natural part of starting a new company – and the importance of having that variety of customer experiences – but, it can still mean that your efforts can fall short.

A good customer success manager will be able to automate a customer’s interactions with your product by implementing and testing many different customer experiences. They should also be able to provide hundreds of new versions of the same customer experience that they’ve tested. For instance, you could use your customer’s complaint feed to provide a whole new, specific customer experience – without any of the work of attempting to generate new problems. Provide support for a longer period

Once customers are happy with your product, it’s important that they stay committed to your product. We must advocate for product adoption from the customer in the form of frequent self-support and training, and they are much more likely to stick with your product as long as you make every effort to help them along the way. It is also important that customers are able to seamlessly transition their support needs between solutions – particularly post-incident support. They should see no need to jump between products or training channels in order to obtain support, and even in the event that they need more support, we aim to educate them using Customer Success to ensure they are able to find the right person for the right support.

Continue to review, and reflect on these customer experiences as they happen

Most of the customer experience you create with customers will never be perfect. We encourage our customers to take the time to constantly review, and evaluate their customer experiences. Regularly capture and document customer feedback, which should focus on both the process and the outcome. You should always encourage direct conversation with customers, so your Customer Success team can work through their conversations and provide any insights that may add to the customer experience. Once you have the feedback, use it to inform next steps – but make sure to focus on gathering and recognizing the insights that tell you what is working well for your customers, and what isn’t.

Our Customer Success team is designed to play this role, which is an important one.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

Customer Feedback is Critical to Success

Posted on by Supportbench

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform

Does the word “customer” even make you cringe? If you say it a lot, you know that even though it feels nice to praise your customers, the “thank you” can feel empty. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that what mattered the most to a customer is providing something of utmost value. In customer experience management, feedback matters.

We conducted research with the relevant sources, such as customers, analysts, and researchers; and designed a dozen customer surveys, with content that combined detailed questions, applications of observable behaviors, and social media.

These surveys, along with every piece of content created for customer communication, were then developed to reflect the following customer-centric metrics and insights:

Retention: Is the experience your customers have with your organization consistent with their feelings of a strong relationship?

Customer Satisfaction: How will your organization’s actions enhance your customer’s lifetime value, and will it be worth it for a business with only 100 customers to pay for the lifetime value of one customer?

Sales Opportunities: Do customers leave your business in large numbers because they encounter their best opportunities elsewhere?

Vision: Does your organization have enough leadership clarity, resources, and vision?

Innovation: Are your customers adopting new systems and processes when they realize you don’t offer this feature?

Data-Driven Approach: Is your organization committed to providing the best outcomes for customers with the right data, facts, analysis, and outcomes?

Connections: Do your organization’s customers feel heard, understood, and believed in?

Visionary Leaders: Are your organization’s leaders courageous enough to trust the customer and to think long-term about the future of your brand?

Providers: Do customers perceive your business’s providers as allies or competitors? If you’re new to the concept of customer experience management, or if you’re new to online customer engagement, we have some suggested ways to get started.

We also give you a glimpse of what we’re doing to help other businesses succeed, alongside our customer-centric approach for every page of a blog post.

What if you could create exceptional customer experiences with less effort?

Not possible? Better use existing customer data to offer customer actions that seem more convincing and have better chances of customer satisfaction.

We’ve all had those customer experiences – that annoying, ill-informed person who just won’t make a change despite the experience being horrendous. Or let’s say there are many issues and the issue with each person is different, so to say that there isn’t one right solution is to do a disservice to the customer.

It’s a problem that all businesses face when trying to think of valuable customer insights that can enable better business decisions. Reality check

Research analyst IDC stated that the potential value of a customer experience is $117 for each dollar spent, and a new report by Forrester found that companies with an exceptional customer experience win 73% of their customers back, while losing only 8% of their customers.

They found that in order to create better customer experiences, businesses need to have customer data available to them from the very beginning. More than three quarters of companies surveyed said they had some kind of customer intelligence product and software to collect and analyze customer data.

Different businesses need different solutions in place to drive better customer experiences. Plus, they are not simple to implement and could be expensive, which most businesses simply do not have time for.

Fortunately, there is technology out there to help business understand their customers better.

Supportbench has a growing ecosystem of solutions that businesses can use to enhance their customer experiences, taking customer feedback even further. Supportbench works by building and connecting experiences with businesses across multiple channels and to various companies in real-time.

We are confident that if you are currently using a customer intelligence solution, you are missing out on the benefits of this technology in order to drive better customer experiences. Make the most of customer intelligence

The answer to creating exceptional customer experiences is giving customer insights a chance to shine. Whether that means identifying marketing shortcomings or finding more relevant ways to connect a customer with the right employee when a customer has specific issues.

We work with the top brands in the world to create great customer experiences, from 3M to Budget and these companies are setting great business goals by creating insights that can help them do just that.

Here are some of the top ways in which companies are using customer intelligence software:

When it comes to implementing new features, Supportbench creates customer success solutions that embrace the philosophy of moving fast and breaking things to understand how people are actually using the app. By helping a team understand what a new feature needs to do to ensure success, businesses are able to take steps to protect their customers and drive improved functionality. Intercom users are able to put customer insights into action through real-time action actions. Identifying and improving applications with customer insights can help increase work efficiency and reduce time spent on manual tasks. Transform a customer experience by continually learning from user feedback.

As a result, you can solve multiple critical business problems, making it possible to turn failures into successes and failures into discoveries.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

How help your Customer Support team perform at their Best

Posted on by rpsstudios

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform
Your company’s customers should benefit from a culture that expects them to succeed in their efforts to purchase from you.

A winning customer service culture implies that people that work for your company have a highly flexible and approachable attitude towards providing service to customers. In turn, this will not only cause your business to grow, but it’ll also result in your customer base becoming more satisfied with you in a unique way.

Knowing how to build a winning customer service culture in your company will be essential if you’re looking to attract and retain clients. However, there are plenty of things that you can do to ensure that your company’s customer service culture is seamless.

It starts with building employee engagement

Employee engagement is extremely important in the workplace. As the saying goes, people buy from the people, not the company. Therefore, if you can deliver a high-value customer experience to your employees, then it will lead to other benefits that you can’t anticipate.

This includes lower turnover rates, higher productivity, and improved customer retention. It can also mean making more informed decisions, further increases the effectiveness of your marketing and sales teams, and even reduces technical challenges you could face while trying to sell something.

Therefore, it’s important to build employee engagement into your overall strategy for creating a winning customer service culture. This will help you to expand your business through existing and potential clients. When you can keep your current employees more engaged, you can be sure that they’ll share your vision of your company and work toward improving their business processes.

It’s also vital to have some sort of employee training program in place if you want to build a winning customer service culture.

Train your employees on processes they’ll find it easier to use as well as on the available tools they’ll need for their work. For instance, you should have an in-house training program for employees in customer service and sales so that they can provide you with a consistently quality service.

For example, the team at Windmill Foundry, a solar integrator, claims that their customer retention rate has increased by nine percent thanks to their customer training program.

It also pays to run some internal surveys to gauge what the key issues of the organization can be improved upon. Ask staff about their level of satisfaction with company policies and procedures, which can be found on the company website.

Ask employees what their customers want to see more of and it can show you what your company’s goals for building a winning customer service culture really are.

A great way to streamline processes and make your customer service department more effective is to find a customer service platform like Supportbench, that can help you automate and streamline certain tasks. A customer service platform can be set up to handle particular tasks, such as responding to enquiries or writing orders, and when used correctly, it can boost your productivity as well as cut down on other employee’s work time.

This could be valuable if you’re looking to automate tasks that are unrelated to core business tasks such as responding to customer queries. We see our customers use the Supportbench platform to help streamline a number of different tasks:

Chat – This conversational tool facilitates online communication using text or email, and you can set it up to handle the majority of your customer service inquiries as soon as they appear in your inbox.

Schedule appointments – By messaging a user’s mobile number, it can let you schedule appointment reminders on email.

Require users to pass out documents – It’s just one of the many ways you can use this system to automate everyday tasks.

Contact the customer – It’s smart to ask customers when they’re free for a meeting or should they give you a phone call.

Visualize and plan – Gather the feedback from employees, customers, and other stakeholders to build a future plan for how you’ll improve customer service. This will then allow you to identify the areas that need improvement and will help to improve the customer experience.

It’s important that you’re continuously reviewing these processes, processes, and standards to improve customer service. This is especially important if you’re running a call center. In fact, if you regularly make changes to your processes, then it’ll be much easier for your customer s to tell whether they’re getting a quick, successful response from your customers.

In summary, a winning customer service culture involves a lot of communication between your employees and customers. Alongside improving processes and systems, the use of customer training, employee feedback, feedback from consumers, and automated systems are all key factors in developing a thriving company culture.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

The Era of Digital Transformation for your Customer Service channels

Posted on by rpsstudios

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform
In the modern business world, human beings are progressively being driven to be users, not only in their work but also within their personal lives.

Within a decade, almost one billion people will be interacting with the web, with human resources, with sales and promotions.

Why? Because virtually everything that becomes the communication medium of today will be influenced by the digital medium.

This trend will not go away until something innovative happens with the organization. Of course, some organizations are dealing with a more-than-hopeful attitude towards digital transformation and reinventing the way their own work is done.

This could have as much to do with the fact that organizations are in the best position to adapt and benefit from the coming changes.

But sometimes, when the truth is not well known, it can actually be a positive. Consumers, as a relatively large segment of the global population, have grown accustomed to a more-and-more complex flow of information and communication, and good organizations will be able to successfully implement such changes. But technology often leaves them confused, wondering where to begin, and how to get there.

Making the necessary decisions regarding the terms and functions of people, processes, and innovation that should be integrated in everything we do will definitely go a long way towards improving the overall experience for our clients.

As some organizations will soon discover, the best way to get the required performance improvement is with collaboration and collaboration technology and programs.

Working with a customer-centric team and team member, all the necessary information is shared freely and the operating principles are reflective of each company’s individual industry, market size, and its readiness for digital transformation.

Traditionally, organizations involved in customer care and the customer experience have been very isolated from their corporate corporate communication. Instead, organizational practices are a naturally lower priority within an organization, and it is now more important than ever that the organization is able to keep up with the changes that are changing our culture and altering the direction of our businesses.

To engage and leverage the knowledge and skills of those in the customer care team as integral to the success of their mission, organizations require to be more open with their communication. It is also important to use third-party developers who can teach us how to adapt our functions for the digital age. The best way to do this is through the development of innovative technologies and automation tools. What is required is for all stakeholders in organizations to work together to share and learn.

And to continuously identify challenges and opportunities and take action to address them, thus making the services they offer more user-centric. Because new and innovative approaches are continuously replacing those which are tried and tested in the past, it is important to be able to adapt to these new technologies at a rapid pace.

Most IT departments are good at continuous learning, as well as internal departments are good at short-term learning. But for organizations that have been in the customer care business for a long time, it is also important to be able to continuously look at current and future products that are ready to be integrated into all systems and methods to keep up with the current needs of our customers.

How will a technology entity be able to deliver the best-in-class service experiences to its customers? The answer, as many will be shocked to know, is through digital transformation.

When digital transformation is embraced by the leadership of an organization, all facets of the organization will be considered and transformed in ways that will help ensure the business as a whole is not disrupted. The process of digital transformation must become a priority to meet the demands of our customers and employees.

Learning and Collaboration tools are truly pivotal components of successful digital transformation. It is important to put them to use in all areas of the organization , both in customer care and in driving progress.

The digital transformation process starts with designing, identifying, and testing new solutions. In the IT department, IT needs to be at the heart of the decision-making process around the future software that will affect everything from systems, processes, and technology.

The IT department, therefore, needs to be adequately equipped with the tools needed to ensure that the company will have a best-in-class digital experience.

Digital transformation programs are more powerful when implemented at the national and local levels and involve the entire organization , with people, processes, and technologies being transferred to the customer service unit and across to applications and processes across all businesses. Many organizations have opted to have all stakeholders involved in all aspects of digital transformation, from the IT to the teams that deal with corporate communications.

The final word on all these aspects is that of all its stakeholders, which needs to be the customer care team. In order to make the necessary impacts and achievements, it is also important to take the learnings, adapt the approaches used, and apply them across the organization.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

Leveraging the Power of Proactive Customer Service

Posted on by rpsstudios

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform
The first step in resolving any customer service complaint is to set up a relationship with the company. If your company employees are always calling, emailing, or texting complaining customers, their relationship with you isn’t ideal.

They’re the only ones who know your company’s standard and want to make your business an easy place to work. The first step to fixing a customer ‘s relationship with your company is establishing a relationship and asking questions.

1. Set up a system to investigate complaints.

Make sure that your company is taking the time to set up a complaint investigation process and make sure you have a system in place to hand it out to customers when they call in a complaint. The complainant and the first party will be the focus, but as a business owner, your company must be on the same page.

Use different timelines for different parts of the investigation. For example, if a complaint is called in at 1 p.m. and you’re still late to the office at 6 p.m., they may still get support from you. “Set up a system for monitoring actions you take to make complaints less likely to occur in the future,” says Michael Schneier, Head of Operations at Hilliard Brands Group. “This allows you to take proactive steps to address issues in a timely manner to make those complaints less likely to occur in the future. ”

Take notes of what your employees are doing, and reference the written procedures that specify when and how they will respond to customers who have issues. In addition, find ways to assist the complainant and make sure that they have a voice in the decision-making process.

Take notes of what does and doesn’t sit right with a company representative.

2. Stand behind your IT systems and procedures.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: IT should be the first line of defense for your company. Your IT department should be aware of everything that you are doing to your customer service infrastructure. “To the extent that your IT is present and helpfully supporting your company , your customers will hopefully be benefiting,” says Jason Park, Director of Operations at Freshness Software, a provider of software solutions.

3. Track complaints internally.

The same goes for customers. They need to be aware of any problems they have with the customer service process. This will be the first step in resolving the customer’s relationship with your company. Locate the complaints that your customers have to go through and track what happens within the system, according to Park.

When your business is ready to address the complaints, the issue can be identified, either as “happy-hour” or “problem-solving” depending on how the customer does their job, say the experts.

Do this before you write any notes or recommendations to your manager.

4. Respond quickly.

If you don’t find your customers’ problems solved within the first 24 hours after receiving a complaint, you’ll need to be fast to solve the issue. There’s nothing more annoying than waiting several days for help to arrive or when they appear to be receiving a lot of complaints. These excuses will generally be unfounded, and if a customer can’t be right all the time, they’ll turn to you.

5. Show your understanding.

If your customers keep complaining and the brand doesn’t understand their concerns, or even tries to hide them, your customers aren’t likely to keep coming back. Some companies don’t share their real feelings when dealing with customers, but your company should do so. If they don’t, you should respond to them often and without the need for intermediaries. If a customer does call your company in a complaint, let them know the truth.

Even if they feel helpless, they can still voice a concern and you will hear back.

6. Refer questions to other departments.

If a company starts to have issues with their customer service, consider outsourcing some of the skills they’re hiring as employees. You should also get help from other departments that can help you develop an appropriate response for customers.

7. Be transparent about situations.

When a company gets ready to fix the same issues with their customers, it’s important to give them some time to react and test their processes. They’ll likely have a lengthy message to send, so it’s important to notify them as soon as they have their first feedback.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

12 Tips for Improving Customer Chat Experience

Posted on by Supportbench

In today’s fast-paced world, customers prefer to chat for a faster and more convenient way to interact with businesses for customer service. It is considered superior compared to traditional methods like telephone calls for the following reasons:

Chat is less personable. Customers can convey their message easily with less emotional investment in the conversation. They have time to think and they have to build less courage to talk. It is more convenient to type a message rather than interacting in real time with another person.

They can have it in writing. If there’s a matter that needs clarification, there’s a message trail that both parties can refer to later on.

It takes less time. Customers can also resume whatever it is that they were doing while waiting for a reply from the chat representative. They can open multiple windows and do different activities, not wasting too much time waiting for a response.

In our years of dealing with businesses and customer concerns, here are our suggestions on how your website should have this tool on your website.

1. The Contact Us page

Website visitors usually look under Help or Contact Us when they want to find the chat so it would be helpful to place a “link to chat” on the Contact Us page.
When the link to chat is not clear on the Contact Us page, users see it as an indication that the company does not want their customers to contact them. Even if the Help page contains a lot of information, or if the website has an FAQ page, customers still prefer a chat option when they can’t find an answer specific to what they are experiencing.

2. Don’t Just Rely on Floating Buttons

Some websites offer chat options but only through floating buttons on a corner of their home page. Some customers who are looking for something in particular on a website tend to ignore popping up buttons. Customers appreciate seeing a big Live Chat Now button as it saves them from navigating through pages they feel they don’t need.

3. The Floating Chat Button Should Contrast with the Rest of the Page

We’re not saying that floating buttons on a website are completely useless. Actually, it is a very helpful feature but people tend to ignore them when they are placed somewhere else other than the standard one (bottom right corner of the page) or their visual design does not make them stand out enough relative to the rest of the page.

4. Use Live Chat instead of Ask a Question

Chatbots have been recently used to replace human-assisted chat and because it technically is not “live chat” they can’t label it as such and generally label it as “Ask a question.”

While chatbots and FAQ pages can be helpful tools, some customers prefer to skip them all in all and directly ask their question to a customer chat representative who will surely have a response to their dilemma.

5. On Product Pages

If you have a site that sells products or service, it would be helpful to have a chat link not just on your contact us page but also on your product us pages. Sometimes, when inspecting products, customers may require clarification regarding features and specifications that might not all be listed in your description. People don’t have to navigate elsewhere if you have a chat link on your product pages.

6. Inform Users of the Usual Response Wait Time or Specify Available Chat Hours

Not all businesses can afford a 24/7 customer care service. Informing customers when they can expect a response is essential so they don’t waste time glued on their screens to get a response when there are no reps available.

There are also times when there are too many inquiries for your chat reps to accommodate, periodic messages that inform users about the state of the agent allows them to have more patience waiting for a response.

Customers also appreciate getting messages like, “Still checking” or “I’m still working on that” if their request takes unusually long to respond to. It lets them know that the agent has not abandoned the chat entirely.

7. A Separate Chat Window

Chat is one of the few exceptions where we advocate opening up a new window or tab for a business’s website navigation. It is easier to user refer back to information (such product details or order numbers) that they may have questions about when they can switch to different tabs or windows. It also makes it easier to explore whatever links the agents will provide

8. Have Precautions for Possible Interruptions

Internet disconnection or other reasons can cause chat interruptions. It would be frustrating to have to wait on queue just to continue a conversation or get a different chat agent who is not aware of their issue. Chat reps should provide a reference number to the customers to avoid this. It could also help if they ask for their phone number or email address in case of a chat session interruption.

9. Send Customers a Transcript of the Session

Customers appreciate having a transcript of their conversation with a chat rep. They could use it as a reference to quote the agents in case there is a dispute or some type of issue.

A transcript also restrains customers from being rude as users can use it as proof to complain about their behavior.

10. A Canned Response Should Not Take Long

As a business, you should know what customers usually ask and your agents should have prepared responses to them. Users are aware when their questions are common and simple and they expect quick responses to those uncomplicated questions. Your reps should have some “copy-paste” answers in their arsenal.

11. Avoid Starting the Conversation with “How Are You”

It is important for chat agents to be polite but efficiency is a matter of importance. Users want to get their issues resolved as quickly as possible so instead of asking “Hello! How are you?” a better starter is “Hello! How can I help you today?”

12. Disclose that You Using a Bot

People tend to have a higher expectation when they are corresponding with a human rather than a bot. They also tend to be more polite when they know that it is an actual human on the other side of the chat window. 

Bots require messages to be clear and understandable and customers can better calibrate their language when they have this knowledge. Sometimes they feel they have wasted time with pleasantries when they realize that it is a bot that they were talking to so it is good to be upfront with them when you are using a chatbot.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!