Customer service is highly important in today’s changing world. Customers need answers and you should provide them. What changes is the means of communication. It can be done with conventional channels or innovative ones. But which one should you choose?
You should take into consideration 3 factors while making that decision:
It’s better for your customers, your team, and your business to focus on a few support channels than it is to spread yourselves thin and provide an inconsistent service across all of them. Customer service will be faster and more efficient if your employees focus on scrupulously selected channels and master them.
In these days of digitalisation, almost everything can be supported with a software solution that increases efficiency even more and adds more features. Also, whichever channel you chose it should correspond with your software and other systems, in short, your systems should be integrated.
The range of options is changing all the time and you should keep up with the pace of the constantly evolving world of technology. Here are several popular support channels:
As it was mentioned before, to make a good decision you should take into consideration 3 factors:
1. Understand your team
You must know who are you working with because not every service agent or consultant is suitable for every support channel. For example, some of them might have exceptional written skills but find phone calls stressful. Of course you can train them and develop their skills but before doing that, you should take an audit of their current skills and preferences. Answer questions like: how busy they are? What interests have they expressed regarding different types of support? What channels of communication do they prefer? What tools and systems do they use?
Firstly identify channels where multiple team members already have experience. Try to increase the performance by training, integrating systems to increase workflow or acquire new software to work more efficiently. Then, offer these channels for customers on a trial basis and look at their reaction.
2. Know your customers
There is a lot you should know about your customers. Where do they spend time online? Which channels do they want to use to talk to you? How old is your customer base? What types of questions do they have? What have your competitors to offer? What preferences do your customers have? If you have help desk software you are probably able to run a report and answer these questions. If not, you should conduct research in order to improve your efficiency and performance. You should know how your customers want to contact you not how they do it right now.
3. Keep an eye on industry
Apart from paying attention to your customers’ needs and wants, your staff preferences and skills, you should also take into account the current situation in the industry and broader business changes. The whole landscape of customer service is constantly changing and customers tend to use innovative channels such as social media or chatbots to find answers. Knowing the industry will allow you to make conscious choices also in terms of support channels.
To sum up
It is highly important to give your customers the possibility to contact you in case of any doubts, questions or feedback. It is crucial to choose the most suitable communication channel but equally important is the software solution that will give you the ability to process and manage the whole communication, problem solving and quickly find the answers. To work the most efficiently, you should be equipped with a powerful software solution or have your systems perfectly integrated. In both cases, Headchannel Ltd. can help you to develop a suitable and vital software solution.
