As your business scales up, the quality of your customer service can have a decisive impact on whether or not your company continues to succeed. Ninety percent of customer service decision-makers see delivering good service as crucial to their company’s success, and 63 percent see service quality as increasing in importance, according to Forrester research. Customers agree, with 97 percent saying service quality is a decisive factor in their decision to do business with a company or abandon it, Microsoft reports.
Delivering great service is critical, but maintaining high service standards can become more challenging as your company scales up and your ticket volume increases. Here are four steps you can take to optimize your customer service and maintain high quality as your company grows.
Track Your Key Performance Indicators
In order to take effective data-driven actions on how to manage and improve your customer service, the best practice is to track your key performance indicators (KPIs). Tracking your KPIs provides you with baseline numbers you can use to measure your customer service performance, identify where you need to improve and take corrective actions. The easiest way to track your KPIs is to use call center software with analytics capability built in, such as the software from 8×8.
Some important KPIs you should track include your overall satisfaction rating, which of your customers require the most help, which of your top agents receive the best satisfaction ratings and your customers’ average wait time. Scoreboard provides a list of other KPIs you might consider tracking to measure your customer service performance.
Offer Self-Service Options to Reduce Your Ticket Load
As you scale up, the increasing number of customers requiring service increases the load on your support team. To keep this from reducing the quality of your service, one strategy you can implement is to offer customers self-service options. Customers increasingly prefer self-service options, Forrester research shows, with use of online forums and communities growing from 28 percent of consumers in 2012 to 56 percent in 2015, while virtual agent use rose from 28 to 58 percent over this same period, and speech self-service used by 55 percent of customers in 2015.
Traditional self-service tools include website search features and knowledge databases to answer FAQs. More recent tools include voice-controlled interfaces and artificial intelligence-controlled live chat.
Use Live Chat to Boost Your Satisfaction Ratings
In addition to reducing your service load, live chat can boost your customer satisfaction ratings. Live chat gets higher satisfaction ratings than other service channels, and customers increasingly prefer live chat to phone calls. Half of consumers would prefer to resolve all service issues through chat or texting or messaging, an Aspect survey says.
Today’s live chat options include chatbots that can handle frequently asked questions automatically as well as chat tools that employ live agents, often in conjunction with automated tools.
Reduce Customer Wait Time with Interactive Voice Response
Another way to boost customer satisfaction is by deploying interactive voice response (IVR) systems to reduce customer wait time. IVR tools allow your customers to access automated phone menu options using their voice or text input. This keeps customers engaged while they’re waiting to talk to a live representative, and in some cases, it can allow them to resolve their own issue through self-service. For instance, by prompting a customer to enter their account number, an IVR system can locate information about their accounts, such as balance information or the status of a recent order.
In addition to providing automated menu options, some IVR tools have analytics features that allow them to predict what a customer’s probable needs might be, enabling the customer to be more swiftly directed to the right department. Some IVR systems even handle customer service issues pre-emptively by calling or texting customers with automated notifications or reminders.
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