Any business that aims to thrive must be service oriented. Brands are expected to adopt different methods to improve customer satisfaction and focus throughout each stage of interaction until the transaction is completed.
Everyone wants to feel important, and customers are no exception. That is the essence of maintaining an excellent customer service experience. A customer service experience could either be satisfactory, which is a plus to the image and revenue of the company, or unsatisfactory.
What is Customer Experience?
The term’ customer experience’ is often used interchangeably with terms like; customer service, customer aftercare, and customer care. All these related terms are merely individual aspects of the customer’s entire experience throughout the transaction.
Customer experience encompasses how the customer feels about the quality of goods or services rendered. These interactions could be direct, one-on-one, or indirect through mediums like a self serve kiosk which assists businesses in reducing personnel costs through automated processes.
Types of Customer Service
Each brand must determine the most suitable type of customer service to render its customers depending on the nature of its goods and services and the level of customer satisfaction they aim to attain.
Below are the types of customer services available;
Walk-in Service Department
This is the most conservative type of customer service. It’s common among brick-and-mortar businesses. The walk-in service department is a four-wall enclosure that provides physical access to customers. It’s common to find long queues of customers buying goods or lodging complaints over defective goods here. This department requires a lot of staffing. Thankfully, this type of customer service is almost extinct due to technological innovations. The services provided here are usually slow and inconvenient for consumers. However, a few businesses still offer in-house customer service departments.
Phone and Email Support
Phone and email support may be great for some businesses but may not cut the ice for others. Customers across the globe demand quick responses in business transactions, which phone/email support might not offer.
As a result, customers often get frustrated listening to automated voice messages and delayed responses. A survey shows that businesses lost $75 billion in 2017 alone due to poor service and obstacles such as long hold times and multiple phone trees. If you must employ the phone and email support system, don’t make your company’s customer service hard to reach for customers. Avoid phone-tree menus, and staff your customer support team appropriately.
Live Chat Support
Live chat provides instant support to customers. Interestingly, this type of customer service comes with a blend of traditional and virtual systems. It is pretty convenient for customers and helps the company to save a lot of time and money. Live chat support ensures you spend less in staffing a customer service team while handling problems virtually. It helps to prevent long queues over the counter, which could be a significant turn-off for some customers. The live chat support system is most suitable for businesses with a steady online presence, international customers, and a desire to be close to customers.
Self-Service Content
This type of customer service makes it convenient for customers to search for what they need without the physical presence of the customer support team. Apart from being a digital advancement in business, self-service content has many advantages for businesses and consumers alike. It helps save time and cost of staffing a support team. Incorporating self-service content is also an opportunity to upsell your products and services, especially with customers who don’t prefer direct interaction.
A study conducted by Dimension Data reveals that 73% of customers prefer to use a company’s website rather than social media, SMS, or live chat for support. Self-service content is very efficient but also costly to acquire. However, your tablets could serve the purpose in place of big self-service providers.
Why is Customer Experience Important?
An excellent customer service experience is a win-win development for businesses and customers alike. Research by American Express found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. an excellent customer experience can strengthen customer relationships with the company. It also helps the company to win new customers and retain existing ones. Here are some reasons why customer service experience is essential:
- It’s an opportunity for businesses to upsell and cross their products and services.
- It gives your business an edge over competitors.
- A great customer experience is a decisive factor for the customer to seal more deals.
- Excellent customer service experience tends to build customer loyalty and retention.
- Reduces complaint
- Improves the image of the brand.
How to Improve Customer Service Experience
Improving your customer service experience is a worthy investment for your company and customers. Here are some of the ways to improve customer service experience.
- Get a customer experience vision: Once you understand who your target customers are, you need to develop strategies to help you attain the level of satisfaction you intend to offer them. Your vision should make your customers the center of your orbit. Every team member must stick to this vision to achieve the desired goal.
- Respond to feedback in time: In a world where everyone expects their needs to be met instantly, timely responses to customer feedback show that you prioritize their concerns. It also opens up opportunities for future transactions.
- Treat complaints as opportunities for improvement: To render a qualitative customer experience, complaints should be seen as opportunities to improve.
- Employ self-service content: Sometimes, excellent customer service means providing customers with the opportunity to help themselves. This is very convenient and helps to reduce pressure on the company’s support team while your customers are happy.
- Show empathy: Empathy towards your customers is a must-have skill for exceptional customer experience. Make your customers know you have their interests at heart.
Imagine a world full of millions of brands with no customers or consumers. This illustrates how vital the customer is to any business. Without customers, there would be no need for businesses. Delivering an excellent customer experience is vital for every business.