Customer support organizations strive to deliver exceptional customer experience but often fall short of meeting the expectations of today’s media-savvy socially connected customer. While it is important to deliver the right response to customers in a professional manner, this alone is not enough to retain customers over the long term. To be a front runner in customer support, companies need to engage customers more proactively and personally by creating a sense of connectedness with them. Although key performance indicators provide insight into how well agents are doing and surveys reveal customer satisfaction levels in general, socially engaged customers expects companies to recognize them and deliver a fast response regardless of channel used to initiate contact. As customers continue to use their social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs to request service or to post a complaint, it is time to evaluate if your customer support organization has what it takes to meet the demands of the socially connected customer.
First class customer engagement requires that support teams have the right skills and leadership to drive higher performance and defined processes to reduce call handling time. It also involves an integrated infrastructure that recognizes and responds to customers with the same information across all channels. Customers exert more power today by posting online comments and blogs and have a much stronger influence with potential new buyers. The good news is that socially engaged customers tend to be better customers and spend more than those who are not. However, companies need to consider a new strategy that will fully engage its customers and deliver a personalized connection across all communication channels as social customer will also use other channels to communicate. The following lists six steps that will improve your customer support portfolio to deliver the next generation customer experience.
- Incorporate social response with customer support operations. Social media response needs to adhere to the same business processes, workflow and business rules as other channels for customer engagement. This will ensure that customers will receive the identical level of support as other channels and obtain consistent information regarding their request. Social media support cannot be an isolated marketing function but must be aligned with customer support departments for shared access to customer databases and adherence to business rules for supporting customer response.
- Gather cross channel analytics for insight into total customer experience. Gathering customer information from traditional channels does not deliver a comprehensive view of your customer. Effective analytics provides customer insight from structured and unstructured data to deliver a complete customer view. Cross channel analytics include gathering relevant information from voice, email, chat, web usage and importantly social media. Timely cross channel reports identify emerging trouble spots, provide competitive insight and detect trends early.
- Customize responses with contextual insight. Gathering contextual information allows companies to fine tune their response and provide relevant information to the caller. This may include location information, time, customer relationship and other information that provides a more individualized a response. Contextual response creates a sense that the company has the customer’s best interest in mind and wants to deliver products and services that align with their preferences.
- Integrate agent desktop for rapid information retrieval. Regardless of the complexity of customer support systems and aging back office data bases, companies need to provide agents with a seamless flow of customer information that not only brings up information without toggling back and forth among applications but also recommends next steps based on current activities and past history. The desktop needs to support all contact channels and auto-populate information across all databases. This greatly reduces account handling errors, shortens call duration and also provides an opportunity to upsell an account with relevant offerings.
- Use chat for contacting customer at time of peak interest. When a potential customer is browsing web sites for information, certain triggers may suggest that this is a buying opportunity. Web chat is a way for companies to engage customers and get them to the right level of support to facilitate an actual sale. Web chat also reduces live calls for assistance by proactively sending customers the information needed to solve their problems. It is important that responders have the right skill sets and information available to handle Web chat conversations for it to eliminate live calls.
- Support mobile applications with assisted service. Although marketing departments create most mobile apps, handling mobile requests for service should take place within the app itself and not require the customer to leave the app and make a call. This requires an integrated application that will link directly to customer support where responders can help the customer immediately. As mobile apps begin to become a dominant source for customer contact, efficient handling of mobile apps will create a positive experience for the customer.
All of the above applications offer a means to provide customized support that engages customers. Although there are costs associated with adding new applications, the payback can be relatively fast. Savings occur by call avoidance, shorter call duration and faster times for problem resolution, as well as an improved customer experience.
