Customer Service: Why It’s Important
According to Gartner Research, 89% of companies expect to outdo their competition primarily based on customer experience. This is where outsourcing to a company like Replicant customer service call center that uses conversational AI to solve customer inquiries can really boost your customer satisfaction without breaking the bank.
It suggests that customer service – support given both pre and post-purchase – is the main differentiator for companies in competitive domains.
Customer service is also vital for companies to retain and engage customers. You can learn more about the CS opportunities by visiting this link.
Some of the other reasons why you should invest in customer service are –
- Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition.
- Happy customers share their positive experiences with others.
- Good customer service boosts customer loyalty.
- Customers are okay with paying more for better customer service.
Above all, good customer service is a standard expectation that consumers have. In fact, 66% of customers reported that they would switch brands if they did not receive personalized customer support (Salesforce Research).
Now that we have established how vital customer service is, let’s take a look at nine of the best ideas and how you can implement them for your business.
Give company swag away to customers
Offering exclusive company merchandise to some customers is a good example of customer service. You can target customers that won a contest, made their first purchase, have been loyal customers, or spend a certain amount during a sale.
Instead of stocking inventory, you can order custom print on demand stickers, t-shirts, mugs, and other accessories when you want to run a campaign. Using a third-party service also means you are not responsible for fulfillment so that you can focus on more important things.
Optimize your website for mobile
In 2020, 44% of shoppers used their smartphones to shop or research while in stores. So, even if you are not in the eCommerce industry, it is a good idea to have mobile-optimized websites.
This will improve the shopping experience and help you enable an invisible shopping experience (when customers don’t have to interact with sales assistants).
Invite loyal customers to a VIP sale
Make your loyal customers feel special with an exclusive VIP sale. This is a good way to retain and keep them engaged by inviting them to a special sale.
On average, loyal customers are worth 10x their first purchase (Invesprcro). So, a small discount now and then is not going to affect your revenue.
To implement this, you just need to add loyal customers to a separate mailing list and launch these VIP sales now and then.
Offer exclusive access to some customers
When launching a new product, you can create FOMO by offering only some customers a sneak peek. The idea is that these customers then share their experience with the product online, making others want to buy it.
Personalize email responses with videos
Offering support pre or post-purchase via email often includes links to help articles or saved responses that can annoy customers looking to interact with a human representative.
To personalize at scale, you can create videos that offer step-by-step instructions and add the customer’s name in the beginning or show an image of their dashboard through automation.
If you don’t have the bandwidth to create hundreds of videos, you can always outsource your customer service and focus on other things like marketing and sales.
Be playful and fun
The standard customer support emails and responses are usually polite and helpful. But if you want to set yourself apart, you need to infuse personality into your customer support. This is especially important for brands that offer support on social media. Playful responses are more likely to go viral and increase brand visibility.
Have a well-designed help center
Some customers do not want to wait for a callback or a message to solve their problem. They would much rather prefer finding the answer to their query either through the chatbot or on the help center.
Using a help desk software can help you realize the most common issues, and then you can then create tutorials, articles, and videos to create a help database.
Offer unique insights
You likely have access to your customer’s purchase history, products they like, or the industry they are in. You can use this to create personalized insights and send curated emails with new products they might like or industry-specific insights that will help them get the most out of your product or service.
Make customers micro brand ambassadors
Once you have a sizable number of loyal customers, you can make them your brand’s micro ambassadors and offer them incentives to share their unique experiences online to get the word out there.
Alternatively, you can use user-generated content for your social media profile. Instead of hiring models to show off your products, share photos shared by customers using your product.
You can also write blog posts highlighting customers to show your product is used to solve a problem.
At the end of the day
You don’t need a ton of resources to get the basics of customer service right. With a little bit of automation and creating templates and processes, you can offer good customer service consistently.