Customers are more vocal than ever about their experiences with your business. Good experiences can lead to a massive influx of new clients, and bad ones can lead to significant customer churn in a single day.
It's extremely easy for customers to make their opinions of your company known on a wide scale in seconds via social media, which is why it's more important than ever to ensure you're delivering your best at all times.
That means finding the right customer service applications to bolster your employees and website so that customers only have good things to say about you online.
What to Look for in a Customer Service App
Customer service applications are one of the most important things that a business can invest time and energy into. Your company's customer service is a huge factor in retaining existing customers and increasing brand loyalty. People who are loyal to your brand will spread the word online through reviews, posts on social media, or by enhancing community forums and will help you attract new customers free of cost.
Like all software, you should always consider whether your customer service app can integrate with your existing environment of applications, current operating system, and if it has the capability to scale with your business. Many customer service apps are web-based and work on all operating systems, but they may not function with other desktop-based applications.
In the following sections, we look at the aspects of a good customer service app and tips for you to implement them to improve your customers' experiences. Not all of these features are necessarily what your business needs, so you should evaluate your current customer service and prioritize which features are most important for maintaining good relationships with your customers.
Customer and Representative Access
Some customer service apps have dashboards for both customers and service agents. On the service agent side, calls, emails, and other open tickets can be routed and assigned to them in an easy-to-access dashboard so that they can properly prioritize their work and ensure that they get to all of your customers' needs.
You should also look for apps with automated assignment features and prioritization features so that agents can be notified immediately when a high-priority customer is on the line and waiting for a response. Plus, by automating the assignments, each customer query will go to the agent who has an open space or who is most knowledgeable about the topic.
On the customer side, having a specialized interface for them to open a ticket in and then check on that ticket's status is a great way to keep them updated about your agents' progress on their issue and when they can expect a response. This feature should also include the ability to define user permissions so that you can keep some of your information back for managers versus users.
Various Contact Channels
There are three primary ways to contact a company: digital solutions, self-service, or a call center. Ideally, your customer service application should cover all three so that your customers will have options about how to connect with your company about questions or concerns they have. Customers love having choices and will appreciate being able to choose how they want to communicate.
Call Centers
Within these contact channels, there are some essential aspects to consider when implementing your customer service app. For example, when implementing a solution for your business's call center, you'll want to ensure that customers are able to both navigate through a convenient voice menu and also be able to speak to a customer service representative. Many customers have unique problems that can't be solved through a pre-recorded menu or need someone to walk them through a process.
Keep in mind that investing more in call centers or digital solutions (which we explore in more depth below) depends in some part on who your target audience is. Older customers tend to want to speak directly on the phone to another person, regardless of whether or not they could have solved their problem through an automated chatbot or sent an email.
In contrast, millennials prefer to do their own research or interact with another person as little as possible and would rather have their questions answered through a live chat than making a phone call. It's important to do research into your customers' demographics, so you'll know which services they're more likely to contact.
Digital Solutions
For digital solutions, it's important to recognize that customers want other options for less emergent interactions outside of phone calls. Live chats, chatbots, email services, and apps that monitor reviews left online are all less expensive than call centers and equally valuable. With some applications, it's possible to allow customers to send their questions or messages to you directly through a query system or by opening a ticket within your website.
With the right digital solutions, you will decrease the number of calls your company receives and lower the costs associated with your call center and its employees. On the other hand, you'll also want a customer service app that helps you monitor customer ratings. Customer ratings and reviews impact how search engines and other customers make decisions about your brand.
Content Management System
With a content management system or CMS, you can easily update and add new information to your website or social media pages. Leveraging a competent CMS means that your company can feel free to schedule crafted content for the future and build up a stock of quality content to deploy over time.
Because you don't require coding knowledge to use one, content management systems make establishing a website much easier. If you don't want to fiddle with sophisticated HTML, JavaScript, or CSS code, a CMS will usually help build your website based on your preferences.
Make Finding Answers Easy
Adding a search bar to your website ensures that customers will not waste time slogging through navigating multiple pages to find the one thing they need. In addition to having a search bar, adding filters to searches lets clients narrow down their results to products and pages that are relevant to their search.
Many customers, especially millennials, would rather use self-service options instead of communicating with a customer service representative. By having FAQs, tutorial videos, and clear instructions for common issues available on your website, you can eliminate the need for them to email or call your support center.
This is both cheaper for your company and more convenient for your customers. Having plenty of blog posts addressing specific topics and answering commonly asked questions is a good way to establish a knowledge base that can be used by both customers and employees who want to learn more about your company's products and services.
Analytics
Keep track of how your users interact with your website by monitoring their analytics so that you get a better picture of their overall satisfaction. Track key components like how long it takes for issues to get resolved, how long it takes for customers to receive a response to their query, or how long they spend on average waiting for a customer service representative in your call center.
This can also help you find places where your business can make some improvements. If you notice that customers are overall dissatisfied with the responses from chatbots, use that as an indication that your chatbots aren't providing the services as they should or their information isn't relevant to the customer's query.
In Summary
Finding the right customer service app shouldn't be challenging. Knowing what features to look for and how to leverage them to keep your customers happy and encourage new ones to join them makes it easy to stay ahead of the competition. You should always check to see how the customer service is for your customer service app provider first since they ought to practice what they preach.
Contact us to learn more about how to keep your customers happy and loyal to your brand by giving them great customer service.
Sources
How to Choose the Right Customer Service App | Salesforce
Customer Service 101: The Ultimate Guide | Hubspot
What are the Must-Have Features In A Customer Support System | Ameyo
