How to Build a Customer Care Framework If You are Dead Down on Face to Face Communication
The field of customer support has transformed a lot. Before, businesses and customers would connect, interact, and build relationships only via face to face. But with more users and network algorithms favoring customers and brands, customer support has never been rewarding than it is now.
The moment has now arrived to shift focus on customer support to its best practices – building meaningful relations.
Customers today want to communicate via any means possible, including taking advantage of technological breakthroughs.
The best part is, these interactions are the most productive. Customers who are able to contact businesses by any means are the most loyal, trusting, and can recommend your products and services.
The Real Facts About a Perfect Customer Care Framework
Before we get to the points that can help in setting up a stellar customer care framework, let’s see the advantages of establishing such a structure:
- Brand loyalty
- Revenue growth
- Brand awareness
- Better relationship with customers
- Ability to track different metrics not just in customer care but also in marketing.
Putting a relevant customer care framework can be beneficial to a business and its customers. Here are five ways you can improve your customer care framework.
#1 Social Media Channels
A few years ago, social media was just another ingredient in any business marketing campaign. Businesses would frequent social platforms, share information about their activities or works to an audience that cared to listen. Others would establish presence only to drop off social channels after a while.
But with more people frequenting these platforms and demanding services through social channels, businesses now take a different look at their social media strategy.
A Bain study on social users reveals a successful social media customer experience can cause social users to spend on average 40% of their time with a brand.
Meaning, consumers now prefer social media channels as a mode of communication to establish relationships with brands.
If you are operating a SaaS business, chances are you might run one social media account. Again, it is possible you receive lots of customer service issues because customers want to reach you at whatever channel they can find you.
Now, this may create confusion especially when problems get mixed, and there is nowhere to escalate.
To separate customer engagement and the typical content page from customer service, it is prudent to create a different customer service handle to deal with customer service traffic and queries.
Brands like HP and Apple have separate customer service handle to keep track of their customer service errands and manage them in a better way distant from their regular marketing content. The dedicated social media support branch @HPSupport and @AppleSupport separate their social customer care messages from traditional marketing messages. With this dedicated social media support handle, each company is quick to reply to inquiries, offer support where required and engage with online customers much better with no need for face-to-face interactions.
The benefits that come with creating such a customer service support handle include:
- Brand awareness
- Trust on your brand
- Increase in social buzz
- Recommendations from customers
- Cost efficiency
Plus, a dedicated support handle makes it easier to test and measure your customer service team’s performance.
#2 Integrated Software
Each passing day presents its own set of challenges for customer care agents and the customer service landscape. Different issues like service delivery time, network downtime and technological threats are cropping up. And the demand for a more robust solution to these problems continues to rise.
While many firms know of these threats and the adverse effects they add to a company’s balance sheet, few are taking the required action to stop them.
These firm’s VP’s and CEO’s aren’t aware or have downgraded the security threats which comes with running old instances or systems.
Firms that fail to upgrade their OS and technology cannot deal with challenges robustly. Their systems not only have a higher risk of security threats but also fail to keep up to customer expectations.
In terms of customer service, you need a dedicated team and technology which will respond to customer traffic and business demands in real and ideal time.
One such tool or system to use is Freshdesk which can adequately provide outstanding customer support. Freshdesk software streamlines all customer conversations in one place irrespective of any support channel. The helpdesk software helps distinguish improvement in service point, unifies customer intelligence and service request irrespective of systems including omnichannel.
#3 Lead Magnet
Google has been performing several updates in its search algorithm in recent years. We all know the tech giants perform 500 to 600 updates each year2 to:
- Ward off unethical tactics of some internet marketers.
- Improve user experience
Today’s consumers keep switching brands unless your product or service double to their requirements. You need to give them more value and above ordinary.
Here’s where lead magnets come in.
A lead magnet can be a commodity or offer3 that propose to provide your visitors/customers some importance. Think of a free ebook, downloadable digital content, videos, reports, or services in exchange for customer contacts.
Lead magnets are a highly essential resource in lifting your business marketing campaign and also help in customer service strategy.
How to Apply Lead Magnets to Improve the Customer Experience
To most businesses, fighting customer churn is the most stressful part of their operation.
Most B2B hide their offboarding methods4 deep in their architecture or install painful offboarding tactics that produce a significant loss to a customer. They play this by creating an unrecoverable mess or making a customer make a last-minute sacrifice to their projects when canceling a relationship.
While this may make you hold undecided customers, some churns are unavoidable.
For Leadpages, their cancellation flow not only asks customers why they are deleting their account but remembers them reasons they opened the account. The system provides customers with six self-service options when offboarding.
- If a subscriber needs to delete his account owing to poor customer care, the system notes customers where to contact customer support representatives and added links to access free additional training.
- When a customer’s reasons for canceling is switching to a rival, it suggests them available templates on Leadpages interface they would lose.
- When a customer is finding no value or hasn’t used the product, it provides them software selections, training resources and ability to reach customer support to be resourceful.
- If high cost is what’s causing a customer to take off, it offers them available cheaper options and the benefits of switching to annual billing.
These off-boarding methods eventually improve customer experience and may convince a customer to stay.
Additionally, they help businesses collect sufficient data or list that can profile your customers and develop measures to promote and better understand your customer care activities and customers themselves.
#4 Website/Blog
Customer service shouldn’t end with offline interactions and engagement.
Though having a social media handle is one way to win some of your customer care goals, setting up a blog or website is essential.
Websites allow you to create pages and display your work timings and where customers can contact you. By creating a business profile and website and adding Google My Business for more reach, your customers can contact you quickly with no physical call.
Websites or blogs are highly convenient especially when it comes to dealing with frequently asked questions. Rather than a customer making a phone call to your premises or sending email inquiries, they can quickly head to your website, navigate through the FAQ section to find solutions.
Also, a blog or website is the ideal place to show customers how your product works. It’s likewise the best place to explain how complex problems someone can solve through videos and gif like what IBM and Freshdesk have done on their website demonstration centres.
Additionally, you can use quiz on your website as a tool for converting leads into paying customers.
For example, online glasses retailer Warby Parker uses quiz not merely to prescribe relevant glasses for consumers but also involves customers for their case.
While this may take quite a considerable amount of resources, you cannot imagine the time and money you save a customer who might have gone through the tedious process of traveling to your premises to inquire of a particular brand of glasses you sell.
The final proceeds are not merely for lead generations but improved customer service through their ‘Need help? Take a quiz challenge!’ The instant feedback the customer gets with such a challenge automatically converts into more sales and better customer experience.
#5 Chatbots
With most businesses becoming globalized, the demand to have a fully functional 24/7 customer care infrastructure continues to rise. If you are operating on a global market, your customer care system cannot run on an 8-5 system. Customers need to find you at any moment of the day.
However, this may not be possible with humans always at the forefront of every customer care campaign. Some functions can be executed adequately without human interaction especially outside of business hours.
Here’s where chatbots are a great alternative to resolve customer issues. Instead of placing your customers on queue, chatbots can suggest relevant solution articles to customers. They can also direct them to human agents if the issue is complex or urgent.
Final Thoughts
It is correct to say customer care activities demand more of a face to face communication, but with technological advancement and social media, there are no set boundaries.
As a business, be inspired to try new forms and resources that will sustain your customer service efforts. The two (human and technology) will integrate each other and let you enhance your services if needed.
Source:
1 – https://www.bain.com/insights/putting-social-media-to-work/
2 – https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
3 – https://www.leadpages.net/blog/lead-magnets/
4 – https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/customer-offboarding/
