In today’s fast-paced world, customers are short on time and patience. They can be demanding, requiring immediate answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Failing to respond in the right way, in the right timeframe, and through the right channels can harm your company’s reputation. Figuring out where to focus your time and resources to boost your customer service program’s effectiveness doesn’t have to be a brainteaser.
It all starts with the most important ingredient: your customers.
Before you start weighing the pros and cons of different customer support channel options, it’s useful to create an informed customer persona to help gauge where to focus your efforts for maximum impact and efficiency.
At the very least, consider these important questions:
- Who are my customers? Where do they live? What are their approximate ages, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds? What are their general interests, hobbies, and even personalities? The more accurate a profile you can create, the easier it’ll be to engage with them effectively.
- Where are they most tuned in? Are they web-savvy, social media users? Are they glued to their screens firing off texts constantly? Are they impatient and constantly busy? Or do they shun the latest technology and instead gravitate toward more traditional forms of customer support contact? Not everyone prefers the same channels of communication with a company.
- Why are they most likely to reach out? Do they need help with information that might affect their buying decisions? Are they experiencing a problem they want quick help with? Are they simply aiming to vent and voice frustration over your products or services? If you have historic support data to draw from, you can better anticipate customer needs and even preemptively work to provide help before problems arise.
The backgrounds, needs, interests, and even habits of your customers will play a major role in shaping your approach to smart customer service. With these questions (and hopefully some answers) in mind, let’s take a closer look at the most popular and common channels you might consider using at your company.
Core Customer Support Channels
- Phone: A recent M2Talk survey is just the latest to reinforce widespread data showing that the phone is still the most popular point of contact in the customer service world. Why is it so popular? Customers feel that it’s the fastest, most direct way to solve a problem they have with a product or service. As such, automated phone systems rarely pass muster. Customers want to reach a live person, and fast.
- Live chat: Customers may have simple questions while they’re in the process of buying your product or service. For less critical situations, a live chat option through your website can be an invaluable and unobtrusive way to help customers navigate simple questions through quick exchanges. This can also help on the front end too, since studies show customers are 70 percent more likely to purchase goods or services after a helpful live chat interaction during the browsing process.
- Email: The second most commonly used channel in addition to the phone, email has its challenges. Many customers can be impatient and expect a quick response. If it takes more than a day to respond, or even less with some customers, you can risk losing business. Some customers also tend to channel hop, starting with email but losing patience and trying another approach they feel is quicker. Still, it’s an option worth considering as a convenience for customers who aren’t in a rush and don’t like calling in for support.
- Self-service: Not all customers want to deal with a company representative, and some may not need that level of assistance with their problems. That’s where self-service can be helpful by providing a searchable index or guided information database to answer product questions or help customers initiate returns. It’s not always ideal in many situations, but it’s a channel that can be useful for a lot of your customer base, depending on their common needs. It’s also a cost-effective way of offering answers to frequently asked questions while reducing the incoming support ticket volume for your team.
- Social: Social media is a rapidly growing and key component of any well-oiled customer service program, but it’s used in a different way than you might expect. Data shows that only a very small number of customers use popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ for traditional customer service needs. More frequently, they use this avenue as a platform to vent frustrations or voice approval over a company and its products, which can have a powerful word-of-mouth impact. Smart and watchful social teams can locate these very public complaints and comments, then react quickly to offer help or spin them into a positive outcome.
JetBlue’s social media team is a great example, with its impressive average response time of about 10 minutes from complaint to response. That’s fast, but JetBlue also prioritizes responding to tweets where staff can offer direct assistance or added value to the customer, creating organic, human interactions that unfold between unhappy customers and the team. As a result, it increases the chances that customers will feel like they’re being heard and being helped.
A Multi-Tiered Approach
As the number of customer service channels continues to grow, it can be tricky to figure out where to best focus your team’s time and energy. Much of this will depend on your specific company and customer base, as well as your company’s size and resources.
Because customer service is rarely one-size-fits-all, you should take a multi-tiered approach that incorporates the most popular direct contact avenues like phone and email with a strong social media focus, then layer on other options as they best fit within your company’s plan.
Instead of throwing everything you have into all of the channels, funnel your resources into the ones that make the most sense for your operation, and pour enough energy, personnel, and resources into your channels of choice to make them as effective as possible.
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