You can allocate a good chunk of your resources to developing high quality products, but all of that can spell failure if you have poor customer service.
After all, building lasting relationships with customers isn’t enough just to sell your products and get customers to buy them, so providing exceptional customer support is crucial.
However, this is easier said than done.
You will need the right strategies, tools, and resources to ensure you are delivering the type of customer service that exceeds your customers’ expectations and retain and retain your customers.
The good news is that there are some proven strategies to help you deliver exemplary customer service, and that’s what we’ll cover in this guide.
1. Create your own app
Building an application allows you to tailor your solution to the needs of your customers and your business. This helps you deliver a better customer experience and better support since you have near total control over your customers’ experience.
Compare that to when you engage your customers through email or Facebook, where they’re exposed to other merchants and other push notifications that distract and even ruin their experience.
A crucial part of building your application is ensuring that your critical data, repositories, and code are secure and intact, making it essential to back everything up regularly.
Failure to do so can lead to application issues and crashes that can ruin your customers’ experience.
The solution? Invest in a third-party tool such as Backrightup to run your Azure DevOps backups automatically and painless.
Image source: Backrightup.com
The tool does the heavy lifting for you by automating your backups, preventing you from doing them manually. This saves you a lot of time and energy while protecting your data, preventing data loss and preventing application crashes.
Building an app can take a bit of elbow grease and resources, but the investment is worth it when it can help you deliver exceptional customer service.
2. Use cloud-based tools
Some factors that contribute to a great customer experience are efficiency and convenience.
With cloud-based tools, your customers can access their documents and information without going to your physical office.
This bit is crucial in providing exceptional support.
Not only does this give your customers better experiences, but it also helps you provide improved support as it speeds up your processes and removes unnecessary barriers to your transactions.
High performing equipment rental companies, for example, use cloud-based tools with equipment inspection forms rent and return their equipment in record time.
Image source: Record360.com.
With digital equipment inspection forms, rental companies can provide rapid assistance to their customers as they can release their equipment faster. Those who need to sign the documents to release and return them can sign through their internet-connected mobile devices.
By using cloud-based tools, your business becomes more accessible. You can also engage and support your customers faster.
3. Use reliable support software
Using reliable support software allows you to streamline conversations with customers across multiple channels from one place. It also helps your team track user requests and effectively manage customer support issues.
However, not all assistive software is created equal. Some are extremely cheaper than others, but lack crucial features that can make or break the quality of your customer support.
While some support platforms are slightly expensive, they can provide you with the features your team needs to deliver exceptional support to your customers.
For example, Zendesk helpdesk software allows your team to connect all of your customer data sources and seamlessly deliver the right information.
The software provides a unified agent workspace that allows your customer support representatives to easily communicate with customers via chat, email, SMS, voice. This also includes social messaging apps like WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Facebook, and other channels from one place.
Image source: Zendesk.com.
With reliable support software, you get a robust customer support solution that meets your team’s needs while streamlining your customer service delivery and improving its quality.
4. Personalize your service
Exceptional customer support isn’t just about efficient service delivery. It also includes providing a memorable and positive customer experience, which fosters trust, loyalty and, in turn, good relationships with customers.
A great approach to achieve this is to personalize your customer support services.
Add a personal touch to your customer service to make your customers feel that you care about them and the issues they are having with your products and services. It can be something as simple as addressing them using their names in emails and during calls.
An even better strategy is to use data to personalize the customer experience.
For example, you can link your customer relationship management (CRM) software to your customer service software. This can automate the collection and sharing of customer data, thereby streamlining the interactions and delivery of your customer support service.
This way, customers can submit a ticket on your website and won’t have to repeat the information when they speak to your agents (and sales reps).
For example, HubSpot CRM helps your team manage customer communications through a universal inbox, including shared team messaging, live chat, and ticketing tools.
Image source: Hubspot.com.
With this, your sales reps can instantly get the context they need to address customer concerns and resolve issues effectively.
Data from your CRM solution also allows you to better understand your prospects and customers, including their preferences and past purchases. This helps you implement highly personalized customer experiences and support services.
5. Offer multi-channel options
Offer multiple channels where your customers can reach your support team as they please, including social media, your website, live chat, and more. It helps you deliver a convenient and great customer experience.
Make sure you have the technology in place to handle multiple customer support service channels seamlessly, or you end up inundated with support requests but fail to process them quickly. It could ruin the entire customer experience.
For example, use software that allows your agents to easily switch between communication channels without going through each channel separately.
Let’s say your customer starts with a live chat, but the issue becomes too complex to deal with through that one channel.
In this situation, you would want a solution that allows your customer support reps to easily switch to a phone call or other channels to speed up resolution.
Try these customer support strategies
The quality of your customer support services can make or break the success and growth of your business.
Although customer service strategies may vary depending on your business approach and needs, use the tips in this guide to jumpstart your efforts and improve your support services.
The higher the quality of your customer support service, the better your customers’ experience with your brand, promoting customer loyalty and advocacy.
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