Customer service is highly important in today’s changing world. Customers need answers, and definitely, you must provide them. However, what changes is how you communicate with your customers. It can be done in two ways: via conventional channels or innovative ones. But which one is better?
You should take into consideration three 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 carefully selected channels and master them.
In these days of digitalisation, software solutions can support almost every process. Whichever channel you chose 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 continually evolving world of technology. Here are several popular support channels:
Email – the most widely used and well-established support channel. Emails are conversational and easy to process and manage. A consultant can go back in the conversation at any time and check the previous arrangements. Unfortunately, emails might be frustrating when an issue requires a lot of back-and-forths.
Phone support – the most popular with older generations. It allows for real-time direct, personal conversation. Sometimes it might be one of the fastest ways of getting crucial information. But phone support is time-consuming and costly.
Live chat – this is in-between emails and phone support. The back-and-forth is less problematic, and an experienced consultant can solve many issues in real-time. One of the downsides is that the expected response time is higher than email so it can require more people in a team.
Social media – functions as both a brand platform and a support channel. It might be similar to live chat, but it is also visible to other users. Mostly facilitates conversation around products and services. In a public space, people typically expect an immediate response.
Knowledgebase – is an excellent way to scale your customer service department efficiently by enabling customers to help themselves. It needs an initial investment but allows you to save a lot of time and money at the end.
Chatbot – is a tool programmed to answer the most common questions asked by customers. If well programmed, it is a powerful combination of a live chat and knowledge base but does not require much attention from your employees. When a Chatbot does not have a particular answer programmed, it can redirect customers to other support channels. Like the knowledge base, it needs an initial investment but saves time and reduces the workflow of the employees.
As it was mentioned before, to make the right decision, you should take into consideration 3 factors:
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.
Follow us on LinkedIn | Read reviews on Clutch | Visit our website headchannel.co.uk