Improving Your Customer Service Journey Every Step Of The Way
When it comes to ensuring the health and growth of your business, there are few parts of the customer journey that deserve more attention that customer service and support. Simply put, without it, your customers aren’t going to get the additional push they need to keep coming back, which means you can miss out on some serious returning revenue. Here, we’re going to look at why the customer service journey is so important, as well as the different steps you can take to improve it.
Train your team in active listening
If you’re building up a customer service and support team, then it’s important to give them the time and the training they need to offer customers the kind of attention and care that they deserve. One of the most important parts of customer service training is active listening: i.e. ensuring that they are fully listening to and hearing the customer’s pain points and, thus, better able to offer more specific advice. Of course, training in empathizing with customers and using positive language to create a warmer reception is important, too.
Be accessible in all kinds of ways
If you have your phone number available on your website, then you already have one channel by which customers can reach you when they need to. However, it’s a good idea to make yourself as accessible as possible and, to do that, you should be willing to harness the power of technology. First of all, look at your social media channels and be sure that they are available as customer support channels, too. Don’t refer your customers to other materials, take the time to help them out directly as, the more barriers you put up between them and the information they need, the more likely they are to simply give up if it’s too much effort. Similarly, you can install a chat app on your website so you can help them directly when they’re navigating your homepage.
Know who you’re talking too
Your customers are individuals and when you’re able to remember that and show that you do, they feel valued as individuals. It’s easy to get frustrated with an ongoing customer service experience if you are treated like a new case by each different contact you meet along the way. Keeping one point of contact is recommended but even then it can be easy to forget some important details along the way. CRM systems can ensure you don’t do that by keeping detailed records on not only your customers but also all of the past interactions you have had with them along the way. As such, you can ensure that any information you share and the discussions you have with them will be driven by their specific customer experience.
Don’t be afraid to automate parts of it
As mentioned, a good chat window for your website can help customers navigate what is most confusing for them. However, if you don’t have the team to man every part of it, then you might want to look at the AI side of things, as well. Machine learning is driving many revolutions in ecommerce nowadays and one of those revolutions is that of the chatbot. As the name suggests, these are automated bots that respond to chat queries. They have become a lot smarter as of late, not only better able to recognize different questions, but they can also use existing customer data by linking up to their account to that they’re more likely to provide information that’s relevant and helpful to the interests of the specific individual.
Be sure to take feedback
You can be proactive and try to improve your own customer service as best as possible, and it’s a good idea. However, there is a perspective you’re going to miss unless you ask for it: the customers. For that reason, you need to implement a customer feedback system that makes it easy for them to share their opinion on how the customer service journey went. You can even publicly address the feedback when you’re making changes, helping your customers feel a lot more respected and listened to, which can incentivise them to keep coming back. This is naturally good for your overall revenue.
Service is everything, even in online business. Take the tips above into account as you work on building the lifetime value of each and every person that converts into a customer. They will become the backbone of your business as it grows through the years.