/ 7 essential elements of rock-solid customer service
Alexander Wijninga
|
5 min
Thanks to the digital advance, the importance of good customer service has become an indispensable element for every company, but what are the essential elements? Should the customer have a question or complaint about your product and not get a (desired) answer, they will have found an alternative within three seconds with the help of all-knowing ‘Google’. On top of that, the concept of ‘word of mouth’ has found its way online too. Through every conceivable social channel, positive and negative reviews are spread in no time.
The digital world moves fast. It is therefore important that your customer service can keep up with that progress. While new terms such as ‘webcare’ and ‘influencer marketing’ pop up like mushrooms, we can imagine that you sometimes cannot see the wood for the trees. What does it take to build rock-solid customer service in 2022? We explain that in this article.
Over the past few years we have seen that a personal service is becoming ever more important. When you walk into a shop you have far more aspects that make a visit personal: a greeting, a little conversation, recommendations, and so on. Should it be a loyal customer who returns often, the service becomes more personal still. Companies are therefore increasingly looking for ways to reproduce this experience online. The customer does not want to be a number, online either. There are by now various customer service software tools with which you can reproduce this experience; a chatbot can also recognise the returning customer and greet them by name, for example. That way you offer an automated and personal service online.
Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook - the number of social media channels has been given a boost over the years and they have therefore become essential elements for your customer service. Many companies were only too happy to jump on that. The result? The customer expects you as a company to be present and available on every channel they want, on every device. On top of that, the online world moves extremely fast. An answer by email taking more than a day is generally still accepted. On Instagram and Twitter you cannot expect that. Research shows that customers expect a response to their question on social media within 30 minutes, when the question is asked within the company's opening hours. Convenience plays a big role, and speed and availability are crucial.
Customer service has become a branch of the e-commerce world that deserves undivided attention. Rock-solid customer service begins with a focus on customer service. When the customer feels seen or heard, they are also more inclined to come back to your webshop. Almost 9 out of 10 customers are willing to pay up to 25% more for a product when they are offered a better service. Research also shows that 61% of consumers read reviews first before choosing a particular product. When you focus on the pain points within customer service, you make sure the number of negative reviews falls.
By taking on customer service staff you ensure undivided attention for every customer. Make sure there is a strategy for customer service, and that there is a clear structure for your staff. That way one voice comes out of your customer service.
To make sure you offer the customer what they need, the customer journey is one of the essential elements for your customer service, and therefore worth examining closely. Imagine: you are a customer. What is the process you go through before buying the product? Are there particular places on your website or within your customer service that deserve some attention? Are there moments when you would drop out and switch to a competitor because of ambiguities?
Are there particular points your customer can run into that you cannot fix? Expectation management is key. Do not surprise your customer with high delivery costs, long telephone waiting times or cumbersome payment procedures. Be clear in your communication, so that the customer knows what to expect.
Do your customer service staff have everything they need to help the customer properly? Can they easily request order statuses or forward customer questions to the right team, for example? Do they see customer questions come in chronologically, or do they have to switch between the various social media channels the digital world has? Do you use customer service software to speed up the process? And if so, does every member of staff know how to work with it optimally?
Make sure your customer service staff can do their work properly. When you train them well, you prevent every member of staff putting out a different message on behalf of your organisation. Without good staff there is no good service. On top of that, a chatbot can support customer service by answering the frequently asked questions. That way your staff spend less time copying and pasting the same answer to the same question over and over, and have more time free for the more complex issues.
We can imagine you might find it more pleasant to deal with that one angry customer behind a screen than face to face in a shop. The disadvantage of this is that many customers no longer report their complaints at all. That means your conversion falls, but you cannot properly work out why that is.
By building feedback forms into several moments in the customer journey, you can work out where the customer may be getting stuck. This lets you ask for the customer's opinion in a low-threshold way, by using smileys for instance. That way the customer also has the feeling that they are being listened to.
Many webshop owners also choose to install a pop-up in their live chat. This means the live chat opens automatically and lets the customer know that they can ask questions there when needed. Research has shown that customers were more inclined to ask a question this way when something was unclear.
At point 4 we already went into the customer in more depth. Tone of voice is also one of the essential elements for your customer service. When you know exactly who your customer is, and what customer journey they go through, you know what the customer would like to see from you. On top of that it is important that your tone of voice is tuned to the customer. Does the customer feel addressed by your communications? Your company's voice makes a bigger impression than many think. Does your way of communicating make the customer laugh? In a good way or a bad one? Or does it mainly get on the customer's nerves? By using the optimal tone of voice, both in your communications and through your customer service staff, you establish a strong brand.
Customer service may be a many-sided department, but you can also make things easy for yourself. Watermelon offers customer service software in which your whole customer service team can work. That way they can easily forward customer questions to colleagues, pick up customer questions chronologically, see conversation history and request and forward order statuses. Thanks to Watermelon's chatbot platform, you easily build a chatbot that always keeps to your tone of voice, responds to frequently asked questions at lightning speed, and works outside working hours too. Want to know more? Read our whitepaper: "Benefits of chatbots".
Share this article
