Faulty and poor customer service cost companies billions of dollars every year.
Therefore, if your business delivers poor customer service, in spite of using an easy to use CRM for boosting relationship with your customers, it is natural that not only you will lose money but your customers will stop shopping with your brand and move to competition within a few days of receiving pitiable customer service.
In fact, in a survey done by Bain & Company in 2005 on 362 firms they found that only 30 percent of businesses organizations uses the functions of their company to deliver “best-in-class” customer service, although it was even found that more than 80 percent of brands that assume they deliver great service only 8 percent of their customers believe that they have received great service from these companies.
Nevertheless, over the last 12 years there are also several businesses in the modern times that have stood out from the rest of the group, and were able to deliver high quality support services that just ticked all the boxes needed for delivering world-class service to their customers which we have highlighted in this article, since providing such excellent service is not just a buzzword, rather it is the lifeline for ushering business growth .
Respond to all customer service questions
According to a survey done by a CRM vendor of repute, it was found that while the average response time for best in class businesses was 3 hours, most company’s average response is pitiably 12 hours 10 minutes.
This means while the right departments at the best in class businesses that have the correct support procedure in place receive the requests in the right time and thereby handle it accordingly, most companies do not respond to their customer support emails.
Hence if you are also looking forward to providing world-class support to your customers primarily respond to all your customer support emails, and create rules in your customer service software (like an easy to use CRM) that will allow you to automatically forward the requests to the correct departments in your organization for faster resolution of their problems.
Create automated responses to accept a support request
Companies that provide world-class services to their customers let their customers know that their support request has been received and are begin handled.
While most than 90 percent of companies do not use auto-responders for acknowledging that an email has been received, according to a survey more than 10 percent of customers state that “waiting too long for a response” is one of the biggest problems that customers face when it comes to finding appropriate customer service.
Hence, do not make your customer wait, instead set up an auto-responder in your easy to use CRM solution integrated with your email client, and use an email template in the acknowledgment mail that will include a unique ID and support work hours to track the request, along with supporting links to a self-service online FAQs or knowledge base.
Follow up to see if the customers are happy
Even though most companies forget to do this, follow up on your customers to see if they are happy with your service, since this is an easy opportunity to get your brand ahead of the competition in the marketplace.
For this much like creating an automatic acknowledgment email, you can use market automation in your easy to use CRM software to set the follow-up to be sent after 3-5 days after your service response to see if your level of service was satisfactory.
Answer all questions in the first response
It has been found in surveys that only 20 percent of businesses are able to answer the support service emails in full upon their first reply.
A good customer service is all about answering your customer’s questions in full.
Therefore if you want to provide world-class support to your customers answer as many questions as possible and for the ones you cannot answer include a footnote in your reply that you will surely follow-up on them at your earliest with regards to any unsettled and unresolved issues.
Make it easy for the customer to contact support
For your customers always remember finding a businesses’ contact details is the first step to getting their problem solved.
Therefore, if you want to provide best-in-class customer service to the consumers of your brand make your email address, social media links, and phone number(s) clearly visible on the homepage of your business website, making it easy for your customers to contact your company for resolving their issues.
Moreover including these details on your website also adds an element of trust as best companies never feel afraid to hear from their customers.
According to a survey done by KoMarketing Associates, it has been found that more than 79 percent of B2B buyers will abort purchasing from any brand if the contact information is not visible in their websites.
Use an all-in-one CRM to empower your team
Companies that end up delivering great customer service usually do so since they have the right business growth technology and tool (like an easy to use CRM) and the right process to accomplish their job.
All-in-one CRM software platforms that are capable of helping marketing, sales, and support teams allows businesses to set up automated internal processes that aid them in acknowledging, tracking, managing and create reports on all customer support requests and tickets, which in turn helps your support teams to respond and answer to more customer requests easily.
Therefore if you do not have a customer support tool in your organization, it is high time that you must get started and invest in easy to use CRM, so that your support strategies can help your company become best-in-class by having the right business growth technology and tool, to begin with.