Today, customer support is not only encapsulated in providing answers to consumers’ problems and questions, but also contributes to strengthening the image and conveying the message of the business. to customers; strengthen the brand in the market. In this article, we will clarify more clearly what is Customer service? , indicators to evaluate the quality of customer care, as well as future development trends.
What is customer service?
Customer service , also known as customer service , is the support service a business provides to its customers – both before, during, and after purchasing your product or service – to help them Full, easy, and enjoyable experiences. Therefore, having effective customer service is very important for businesses that want to retain customers and grow and develop their business.
There are 3 main stages in customer care:
- Pre-Sales
- In sales. (Sales)
- After sales (After sales)
Most businesses today are paying more attention to after-sales service (After sales service) but neglecting the previous two stages. There is no denying that after-sales customer care is very important, however, it is advisable to allocate resources and costs appropriately for all three phases above to optimize business efficiency.
In the past, when it comes to customer care solutions, companies think about the method of answering through the telephone exchange (Call Center). However , today’s customer care service goes far beyond with a variety of communication channels such as email, website, messaging or other means of communication. (Also known as Multi-Channel PBX)
In addition, for the purpose of optimizing customer interactions, many investment businesses provide self-service tools . So customers can find their own answers automatically at any time day or night.
It can be said that Customer service is the heart of a business with the purpose of making a difference where customers feel respected and valued.
Why is customer service important to every business?
The core of “ Customer service ” is the customer experience. According to the most recent Gartner research, 89% of companies today are competing primarily on the customer’s experience when using a good or service.
A report from the US Small Business Administration indicates that 68% of customers leave because they are upset with the treatment they have received. Once again, this report has affirmed the power of customer experience with the growth of the business as well as the important position of customer service .
What is good customer service?
An effective customer service service will navigate the customer experience in the direction of the business and must meet the logical and emotional requirements of the customer’s mind. That’s when contact centers take the initiative and flexibility when solving customer problems as well as providing more upsell or cross-sell services to increase customer satisfaction and increase purchase frequency. row. Conversely, customers are also willing to pay more for better service.
Therefore, businesses need to be careful when operating customer care centers to spread positive messages and enhance their competitiveness.
Must-have elements of customer service staff.
Businesses, especially the call center department , want to provide the best customer care service, they need to ensure at least 3 following factors:
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Analytical and problem solving skills:
Customer service can only be assessed as good when it solves its core function of solving problems and bringing satisfaction to customers.
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Awareness of the business and products provided:
Customer service provides consumers with a specific solution to a problem they face and provides an overview of the business to shape and strengthen the brand in the hearts of customers.
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Attitude:
This is the most important factor. Your right attitude and respect towards customers is the key to creating good customer service. A very small act like a smile or a friendly greeting can make a big difference to any customer service position.
Customer service metrics.
In the article limit , we will give the 2 most important groups of indicators for your reference:
1.Experience Metrics / X-DataTM Group
This is a group of indicators that measure customers’ beliefs, emotions and feelings when using services and products. Including: Customer Satisfaction (Customer Satisfaction – CSAT ), Customer Effort Score ( CES ), Customer Affection Index (Net Prom oter Score – NPS ) and Vehicle Monitoring Social Media Monitoring ( Social Media Monitoring )…
Through this group of indicators, you can see gaps between what you think is happening and what is actually happening. From there, you can easily build a balanced scorecard that focuses your efforts and resources in the most efficient ways to achieve business results.
2. Group of performance evaluation indicators (Operational Metrics / O-Data).
Seen as a set of tangible and actually useful activities. Thanks to this set of metrics, you can measure your Customer service’s ability to perform by successfully resolving customer requests, response time, and employee efficiency.
This group of metrics includes: First Response Time , First Contact Resolution ( FCR), First Contact Resolution (FCR) , Level of Customer Requests for Problem Solving (Customer Ticket Request Volume) , Average time to handle the problem (Average Ticket Handling Time) …
How to keep customers coming back?
According to a latest study, there are 6 main factors that will keep customers coming back to continue using your product or service:
1. Product quality 88%
2. Customer care 72%
3. Price 50%
4. Convenience 45%
5. Commitment to society 15%
6. Personal factors 12%
7. Other 9%
Customer satisfaction is not just about whether the product is good to them or not. It is also the whole process from purchase, use and warranty when there is a problem.
So how can businesses build loyal customers, here are some basic rules that any brand needs to know.
1. Build trust with your customers
Each customer interaction with the brand affects their thoughts about the product. That’s why trust is so important. Although it is quite difficult for us to measure, there is always a way for us to improve it.
You need to come up with the right marketing and communication campaigns to build customer trust in your products and services.
2. Innovation in products and services
Building trust with customers will start with building good products that help your customers. You need to constantly innovate and improve your products and services so that customers can feel the new things that are more and more helpful to them.
1. Customers will give feedback and complaints via forums, social networks, calls, emails, .. Don’t let that priceless information go to waste. Please collect and analyze to improve the quality of the product.
2. Don’t rely entirely on letting customers make their own judgments. Survey them to see what they like, and where we need to improve.
3. Use social networks to promptly grasp new product trends and sometimes ask customers themselves for good ideas.
4. Provide improvement plans. Create clear goals for the product in the short and long term.
5. Remove excess products or details from products and incorporate more suitable ingredients. Think of the smartphone example. Why add buttons with various functions when you can just use the phone screen.
3. Communicating with customers
Building trust will also begin with communicating with customers. It includes information about you online, social media presence, live support team, and many other ways to interact with the brand.
1. 67% of customers prefer to find answers to their problems on their own over contacting a support agent. Building good customer support information channels will help reduce the work load of the direct support unit. Do you have a “Frequently Asked Questions” section? Does your social media management team respond to customers quickly and efficiently?
2. Chatbot is not yet optimized, no customer will want to talk to robot, or any automated software. Build and evaluate how support staff interact with customers, their enthusiasm or apathy.
3. Optimize search channels. Research the keywords customers search for and then optimize your website.
4. “Educate” customers
To create truly good experiences, you need to make it easy for customers to find answers to their problems. That’s why we need to “educate” our customers. The more useful information you provide to solve problems and how to use your product, the less likely customers will need to call a customer service representative.
1. Create content resources for common customer problems.
2. Use the blog to provide a variety of useful content, tools tips to help them succeed more easily.
Customer service process
In order to provide good customer service, it all comes down to how you select your staff, how you train them, and how you reward them.
Recruitment of customer service personnel
There are 5 important factors when recruiting customer service staff:
1. Match the company’s culture.
2. Good professional skills.
3. Their belief in the value that the company brings.
4. New ideas they contribute.
5. Experience
Try to build reasonable compensation policies, clear promotion opportunities to motivate this team, as well as retain the resources that businesses spend a lot of time and effort training.
Listen to customer needs
Whatever the reason a customer is complaining, the first thing you need to do is listen and respond only when the customer knows that you have completely understood their request.
1. Allow your employees to bring personalization into conversations with customers. Because if you follow a stereotype of the answer, it will create monotony and unreal in the voice of the support staff.
2. Encourage your employees to focus on the tone of the conversation. Customers are wondering, angry, worried, happy or bored?
3. Ask the customer before speaking. Would customers to see how to solve these common problems on the website?
4. Encourage empathy. The care staff’s feedback should show an understanding attitude to the difficulties that the customer is facing.
Focus on customer service
Identifying customer needs is always a top priority, you need to know the places where your customers often appear.
1. Social networks: 53% of Twitter users and 39% of Facebook users expect an answer to their question or complaint within 2 hours maximum. That means, to effectively manage social media channels, and meet customer expectations, you need to meet the above issues.
2. Email: Some users will want to send an email to your company to complain about the quality of the product or service. Please pay attention to use a slightly more formal tone to suit the person who chooses to send mail
3. Phone: Calling support is still the most popular channel. Zendesk found that phone support has the highest customer satisfaction rate compared to other channels. Why? The element of time and the most direct interaction made all the difference. Optimize customer wait times. Make sure you have enough resources to not keep customers on the phone for more than 2 minutes.
Balancing customer service quality and processing speed
82% of customers say that the number one factor in assessing a good quality of customer care is how quickly their issues are resolved. However, 22% of customers , ie 1 out of 5 people, have to call back 2 times to get the problems of the first call resolved.
In addition to focusing on managing customer issues to be resolved quickly, make sure your employees also keep customers informed of some potential issues in the future.
Use feedback to improve care
Obviously, you will receive complaints, questions as well as suggestions from customers. Instead of thinking of it as a nuisance, think of it as a gift to your company. There are many channels through which customers can interact with you, control it well to avoid negative complaints being pushed too far.
20% of customers use social networks to comment on the quality of products and services. And of that 20%, about half expressed disappointment and complaining tone. This clearly shows that controlling the problem on social networks is extremely necessary.
Find customers from the beginning to: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. Track and analyze customer feedback: Where do they often leave negative comments? What time frame do they usually interact with? And finally, recognize which requests need to be responded to and act quickly.
Customer Service Trends
A customer-centric platform with interactions that help connect closely, across different reach channels and make the most of the power of market data, customers will be a powerful trend. future customer experience. Understanding this trend will help businesses improve their coverage in the market and anticipate the needs of customers and the market. In the future, businesses can focus on doing two good customer care trends as follows:
- Create a customer service experience on an integrated omni-channel (Omni-channel) : As the Internet reaches its peak, all customer connections and interactions become more diverse, and contact is quick and easy. and seamless will become a strong point of the business compared to the competition and leave a deep impression in the customer’s mind at every touch point.
- Applying artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize automation, saving resources, time and finance. In the near future, AI will replace humans in many jobs, including some customer service jobs. For example: IVR, ACD, .. function in Contact Center. Making good use of applications from AI will be a revolutionary process, bringing great advantages in optimizing operational processes and bringing a fast and accurate experience to customers.
However, there is one factor that AI is still very long, even never able to replace humans in customer care as well as in all aspects of life, that is “EMOTION” .
