Customer satisfaction is important for overall success of a business. In order to achieve this, a company should invest on customer service and on the other side, technology tools which are necessary to deliver. When you attempt personalized customer care to make servicing more heartfelt and sincere, it won’t work alone without an efficient system. But in the instance that you use technology to streamline the process and save time, personal touch is easily lost.
A flexible but unbreakable strategy is required to get the best of both worlds. It is indeed difficult to get an exceptional customer care rating. However, there are some steps you can do to make it work while leveraging with the best technology around.
Provide Name and Signature
Apart from the purpose of being addressed right, it is important to make the customer feel that they are transacting to a customer service representative who is a real person. Providing your name also gives insurance that whatever happens, someone is in-charge. Find time to personalize the letter and adding your signature. There are new technology tools that can help make this happen. This attempt to provide good customer service is very difficult to ignore.
Utilize Trigger-Based Automatic Emails
At these times, you can send a personalized-looking email that is actually automated. This function sends automatic emails related to customer service and follow up that may look like it was personally composed by the sender. An example of these trigger-based automatic emails is a message labelled with a specific tag that makes the recipient feel like the sent mail was exclusively engineered for her.
Merge Data Cohesiveness and Interactions
Keeping transaction records of the customer is more effective with integration of social media and other channels. Apart from calling, a customer can also send requests or inquiries through email or Facebook. Other means of communication involves live chats, web forms, Twitter and more. It is important for companies to create social media profiles, online communities and hire people to manage them in order to attend to customer’s needs and merge them all in one database for record-keeping. This will help future transactions and investigations which can greatly lead to better customer service experience.
Keep in Touch with 24/7 Chat Features
Necessities vary from each scenarios and customers. Some customers may be located in an area with too much noise while some are too busy with many things that they need to multitask. With 24/7 chat features, you can help customers to lighten up their load and make business transactions with you a whole lot easier. It would occur to customers that you value their time and that your team is always ready for full support.
Manage Social Media Effectively
Be active on social media networks. Frustrated customers or those who have huge complaints may resort to posting their concerns on your company’s FB wall. These kinds of customers should be dealt with urgently and professionally. Competitors lurking in the corners of your social media walls may be waiting for complainants or detractors to add fire and eventually recruit them. Keep everything in control by hiring a social media manager who can moderate the online community, promote your services online and answer customer enquiries effectively.
Automate Some Parts of the Process
Look back at the workflow of your sales or customer service operations. Identify which steps are repetitive and are same for every client. This may include intake forms or paperwork printing. Automate these processes and when the time comes for some real work, inject a human element on reviewing inputs and providing responses.
About the Author
Jensen Carlyle is a freelance business and technology writer currently working on JobTraQ, a Lean BPM solution designed for retailers.
Photo credit: Kai Kueken
