Future-proof your customer support with a good dose of E&T
[The #Rebound series focuses on various aspects of business that need to be reimagined for a post-Covid world.]
Failing to plan is planning to fail — that timeless adage has always resonated with the business community. Now, as businesses around the world gear up for a phased re-opening of the economy amid the coronavirus threat, it’s become all the more relevant, especially for the customer service teams of companies operating in the e-commerce, supply chain and logistics spaces.
Panic-buying induced shipment delays and labor shortages have been quite common since the coronavirus outbreak. Customer service teams have had to bear the brunt of this but their real test will begin once life returns to a semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy. With a surge in online shopping inevitable, customer support infrastructure across sectors will be stretched to the limit.
A company that goes above and beyond in its quest to fulfill its customers’ needs would be better positioned to come up trumps amid the anticipated global economic downturn. The secret sauce to success may very well be obscured in another oft-quoted corporate mantra: Customer is king!
Talk to your customers with empathy
The buzzword on everyone’s lips these days is empathy but only a handful of companies truly understand what it means to be empathetic. Support agents are often blessed with an intuitive ability to troubleshoot a customer’s problem but rarely have a feel for customers’ needs. This is illustrated clearly in the below statistic from a PwC report:
Only 38% of US consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs
Identifying the issue, taking swift action, and closing the ticket with a cursory ‘Can I help you with anything else?’ isn’t going to cut it anymore. Agents need to balance empathy with technical knowhow to better serve their customers. Even if an agent is pulled into a customer call just as she’s about to wrap up a grueling 12-hour shift, she needs to come across as friendly and trustworthy. She needs to be cognizant of the fact that the customer’s entire day could possibly be affected by something as simple as her tone of voice.
This seemingly small gesture goes a long way in driving empathy both on the micro (agent-to-customer) and macro (business-to-world) levels, thus helping ensure the customer and their experience always remain at the center of the organization’s mission irrespective of the circumstances. The 2020 CGS Customer Services Preferences in Times of Distress survey revealed:
37.5% of U.S. consumers say “working with a friendly agent” is a major factor in leaving a customer service interaction happy
As competition is expected to turn fierce in the coming months, the more effort you invest in taking care of your customers’ grievances the better your chances of building brand loyalty and retaining your customers for life.
Help your customers help themselves
The ability to provide personalized, humanistic customer support goes hand in hand with the technological capabilities of your support team. As far-fetched as it may sound, in this digital age if you are not prudent enough to leverage the right tools, resources and processes to exceed your customers’ expectations then you run the risk of losing your customers to your competition.
Nearly two-thirds (58%) of consumers will sever a relationship with a business due to poor customer service — Microsoft consumer survey
A pet peeve of customers cutting across demographics and regions is having to repeat their questions over and over again every time they switch channels. An omnichannel helpdesk solution, and agents trained to handle multiple channels simultaneously, can put an end to this customer pain point by giving all your employees a 360-degree view into your customers’ journeys. It stands to reason that adopting an omnichannel communication strategy is the key to addressing customer concerns without compromising customer experience.
But with the social distancing mandate likely to be in effect even when business resumes as usual in most parts of the world, providing personalized support at scale could prove to be a challenge. What do you do then? You make automation the front line of your customer support operations.
Self-service: your first line of defense
When a customer has a question about your product or service, they expect an answer immediately. A robust online knowledge base at your customers’ disposal not only does the job effectively but reduces support volume and improves customer satisfaction to a great degree.
Self-service works because of this simple logic: given the option, people would rather help themselves than turn to someone else for help.
Nearly two-thirds of consumers (64%) go directly to self-service first, rather than immediately engaging an agent — Microsoft consumer survey
Setting up a searchable knowledgebase, dropdown FAQ, or a support community is the easy part. The hard part is steering your customers to these resources.
First things first, make your knowledge base ubiquitous. Deploy site-wide widgets so customers don’t have any trouble accessing your troubleshooting guides or FAQ articles. Additionally, you have to optimize these pages for SEO by keying in relevant keywords so they rank higher on Google. This has two benefits: your customers find your support articles easily when they need to. Second, greater visibility trickles in prospective customers as well in the long run. Just be sure to maintain up-to-date information to prevent the knowledge base from becoming obsolete.
But many a time, your knowledge base alone wouldn’t be sufficient to clarify a customer’s question adequately. What do you do then? You place a ‘Contact Us’ button on each and every page of your website to direct the customer to your chat channel in case they need to communicate with someone to resolve their issues. And that someone needn’t even be a living, breathing human being.
Bots: your second line of defense
If bots conjure up images of bumbling robots from ‘70s sci-fi movies, think again.
The stats below, culled from a recently published Accenture survey, are a testament to the prevalence and power of today’s AI-powered bots.
84% of respondents said they preferred interacting with computer-based applications rather than human advisors due to their 24/7 availability
68% of respondents also said that automated applications were faster to engage
64% said automated applications communicated more politely
With your entire support team working remotely, now is the perfect time to deploy an AI-assisted chatbot to bolster their output. The best part is that chat and self-service are mutually inclusive and can work in tandem to address customers’ issues. Leveraging the complementary nature of these two customer service channels will lower customer dissatisfaction and allow your agents to focus on more complex queries. Research has shown that automating your customer support workflows with a chatbot can deflect up to 80% of routine questions.
Take the case of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. A relatively unknown airline until 2010, it transformed rapidly into a social media powerhouse through the last decade. One of the major contributing factors was their early adoption of chatbot technology. In 2011, the company started offering 24-hour service via their social media channels to “be where customers are.” Soon, they built a Facebook Messenger bot through which they disseminate flight details including boarding passes, check-in reminders, and flight status updates.
Take care of your employees and your customers will be taken care of
Support agents are the lifeline of any business. It’s in the best interests of every stakeholder to make them feel at home (excuse the pun) during these trying times in order for them to continue doing what they do best.
Give your agents their due for going above and beyond their core tasks despite the myriad challenges they have had to face these past few months. A pat in the back or a reward would be the perfect incentive to keep them motivated. Help prepare them for the months of uncertainty that lie ahead. An Amazon gift voucher or even a shout out on social media will truly boost your agents’ morale and ensure they are happy, connected, and engaged when it matters the most.
Remember cultivating team camaraderie is the name of the game. Create a happy work environment for your agents and witness them return the favor in the form of improved productivity even as they gear up to face a stretched period of uncertainty.
Strike the right balance
Empathy and technology are two sides of the same coin. Automation cannot substitute the good ‘ol chinwag that is needed to build lasting customer and employee relationships. This quote, “You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative…” by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and journalist, the late Walter Lippman, best exemplifies the yin-yang relationship between the two entities.
With major tech companies across the world having accepted remote work as their new reality, it’d be interesting to see how the norms of customer service are impacted going forward, if at all.
