All businesses today have their own goals, visions and missions. But it is known that every business exists for one purpose – to serve their customers and grow their business. Growing revenues are of prime importance for every organization because that keeps them alive by maintaining their employees and keeping the business running.
The best way for organizations to grow revenue is by steadily acquiring new customers, the primary focus of their business development, sales, and marketing teams. But another equally important factor for growing your business is retaining and keeping existing customers happy.
A customer who buys from you repeatedly is much more valuable than a customer who buys from you once. Moreover, a repeat customer can often turn into a promoter, which helps grow your customer base even further. According to an HBR article, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.
So, how does one go about this? One of the critical elements in retaining customers and turning them into potential promoters is good customer service. No matter how good your product is, if your customer support is shoddy, your customer’s experience and satisfaction are bound to suffer, which affects your chances of retaining them.
In other words, good customer support equals good customer experience, which equals good retention and growth.
So, you should consider getting one if you don’t have a dedicated customer support team. For those organizations that do have a dedicated support team, here are a few essential skills that you need to ensure your agents possess to ensure a good customer service support experience:
• Product Knowledge: Your agents must be up-to-date and thoroughly aware of all your products and services. Nothing can be more frustrating for a customer than calling customer support only to be transferred multiple times or put on hold while the agents hunt for answers.
• Patience: A frustrated customer needs time to vent. No matter how angry or unreasonable a customer sounds, your agents must give them a chance to explain their situation in detail. Negatively reacting to an angry customer ends up causing further harm.
• Swiftness: Time is of the essence when responding to your customers. Your team needs to be quick in responding to customers. With the increased interconnectivity that the internet provides, many customers have come to expect near real-time responses to their queries. This is why it is essential to maintain a quick turnaround time. Using swifter modes of communication, such as live chat and call center support, can further help you improve your customer service experience. Remember, delays in responding to a customer can lead to decreased customer satisfaction and cost your future business loss.
• Clarity: You must ensure your agents can communicate clearly and concisely to clients. Most people do not have the patience to read a long message or listen to long explanations. Your agents must balance brevity with thoroughness and approachability.
• Empathy: An agent who can empathize with a customer will be likelier to satisfy the customer than one who cannot. Customers need reassurance, especially when frustrated, and want to feel that they’re conversing with someone, not a feeling-less robot. Additionally, more minor gestures that show consideration and respect for customers can help improve good customer service. One example of such a gesture is Amazon’s policy of refunding the price change on recently purchased items.
• Adaptability: Each customer interaction is different. Your agents must adapt to different customer problems, demands, technical issues, and more. This ensures they are ready for every eventuality and continue to satisfy your customers.
• Initiative: Good service keeps customers satisfied but doesn’t necessarily convert them into promoters. Going the extra mile can make that difference. While not mission-critical, being willing to take initiative and go out of the way to help customers is a vital skill for an agent. Agents who do this delight customers, converting a merely ‘satisfied’ customer into a possible promoter.
Please note that merely instilling these skills is not enough. You need to monitor your NPS and customer satisfaction results constantly. You need to monitor all communications to see if there is scope for improvement elsewhere. Only by taking a proactive approach towards customer delight can you continue to grow, especially in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
However, handling this internally can be challenging, so Bill Gosling Outsourcing (BGO) is here to help. With a broad product suite offering you everything – from cutting-edge Speech Analytics services (SmartSpeech) to BPO services and consulting, BGO can help you to understand customer grievances better and provide top-notch customer support, pacing the path for customer delight.
