Top Ideas to Improve Customer Service | Best 7 Tips

Customer service plays an important role in driving company profits. If you have high-quality products but lack consumer service skills, then it will be difficult for your business to grow. Often consumers value direct interaction over other factors, therefore improving customer service is one of the best strategies for companies. As it will help in gaining trust and build healthy relationships with customers. To help you stay ahead of the curve, in this blog we have compiled a list of top ideas to improve consumer service games. 

About Customer Service 

Providing excellent customer service is the most challenging affair. Still, then every business tries its best to achieve this. Because it is a fact that consumers will not come again once they receive a bad experience from a business or company. 

Today consumers expect effective responses to their concerns spontaneously. Here are some statistics that display the real picture of consumer service's importance in this business world. 

• As per an Accenture survey, 91% of consumers are likely to shop with those brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations. 

• Aberdeen Group survey says that companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain approximately 89% of their customers in comparison to 33% for those with weak strategies. 

• According to a Forrester report 73% of consumers go for those companies, that provide good online consumer service to them and save their valuable time. 

• As per Harvard Business Review, 33% of customers who receive proactive support are likely to continue business with the same company for a longer period. 

• According to a Microsoft study, 58% of consumers say that knowledgeable customer service agents significantly impact their loyalty to a brand. 

• Medallia review says companies that actively solicit and act on customer feedback experience a 10 to 15% increase in consumer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Customer Service Improvement Plan 

Before planning your strategies, first establish your focus on improvement. You need to create a customer satisfaction action plan first.     

A good plan includes a goal with potential key performance indicators, those you can measure for improvement. Now, look at the best ideas you have planned to include in your plan. 

Let's explore the top 7 proven strategies to improve consumer service:

1. Advent of Technology 

It is a fact that customer service teams don't get enough time and tech support to fulfil their tasks. Because technology makes things easier through streamlining processes for providing best customer support. There are 5 technology tools, that can play important roles in improving customer service plans:

Phone 

It is a part of an omnichannel strategy. This communication tool is commonly used by consumers to reachout to a business. There are three basic systems that come with both cloud and on-premises versions. 

Key System Unit: Key System Unit or KSU is an easy-to-use system with basic features for small businesses. It is a wireless, flexible version that helps smaller teams with about 10 phone operators. The companies that use Key System Units need to give specific requests from their providers. 

Private Branch Exchange: This PBX system is capable of automatically routing incoming calls. They feature an uninterruptible power supply that helps to ensure business continuity. 

Voice Over Internet Protocol: Voice Over Internet Protocol or VoIP is a system that is more advanced, and expensive but a number of operators can use it. VoIP system's functions can be accessed by computer over an organization's business internet network making it ideal for Global communication. Like PBX, you can find different hosted versions of VoIP systems to be more cost-effective as per your business. 

Interactive Voice Response Systems

IVR systems enable incoming callers to access data through voice response software. It also gives options to self-route to the relevant department to meet caller needs. 

IVR works to share customer service workloads up to a great extent along with meeting customer needs. It reduces unnecessary call transfers so the callers can route themselves to the best destination. 

Online Chat Systems 

Online chat systems can help enhance customer experience by adding speed and efficiency to basic problem-solving situations during FAQ answerings. However, consumers can have the option to interact with human agents for complex issues. When a chatbot meets its limitations, customers can direct human conversations. 

Communication Channels Tools 

The customer service experience can be improved with tools like:
Help Desk Software-- that centralises customer communication in omnichannel strategies. 
Social Listening Software--that allows teams to manage social channels centrally. 

Conversation Intelligence 

Conversation intelligence eliminates the work of manually scoring calls, allowing managers to spend more time coaching agents hands-on. The scores provide insight that helps in quickly adjusting their call tactics and delivering better quality assurance. 

Managers can easily review call transcriptions and tag their agents in comments. So that agents get instant constructive criticism and direction to improve customer service. The gathered data through conversation intelligence is easily integrated into customer relationship management. It updates consumer details with conversation insights from phone calls. 

2. Effective Agent Training 

Giving proper training to customer service representatives right away from the outset helps to set them up for success in customer support. 

Onboarding: The right onboarding experience helps consumer service representatives to achieve success from the first day. The strong onboarding process helps in increasing new hire retention along with higher productivity improvement. 

Ongoing Training: Call center agents can easily fall off the talk track during customer need dealings. Ongoing and targeted training helps customer service representatives to stay focused and engaged to become more effective in their role. So that they perfectly know when to change tactics. 

Managing Emotions: It is very difficult to deal with unsatisfied customers. Therefore it is necessary to train soft skills like active listening and empathy to agents with the tools to cope with difficult customers. It will help to keep close monitoring on the consumer service team's cohesion and mental attitude. 

Update Best Practices: Uptodate your team with the latest ideas and trends. Get involved in industry trade groups like the Association of Customer Contact Professional (ACCP) and reading industry publications such as Customer Service Manager and Contact Center World. 

3. Open for Communication 

Always encourage open communication as it is a positive work culture. It not only makes employees efficient, and engaged but also empowered. In an open environment agents can share their ideas, are free to express their concerns, and are ready to help when needed. 

Collaborative Team Dynamics and Feedback

Always encourage cross-team collaborations. The valuable customer feedback can help other teams like the sales and marketing team. Utilise AI conversion service as it can accurately analyse and quickly detect patterns.

4. Quality Over Quantity 

Always focus on quality over quantity. To check on consumer experience improvement, you can conduct surveys, statistics, and customer feedback. It will help to find whether customers are really satisfied or not, help in repeating sales, and monitor the frequent referrals and recommendations to lead your business growth. 

Count every interaction: Make every consumer service interaction count, because you will only get one chance to experience with your customers. According to research, 76% of consumers will stop doing business with you after having one bad experience. 

Build One Experience: Customers will love it when they receive a special treatment. Make it happen for them, especially for the best ones. It can happen with customer service representatives only. They can connect directly with customers and can help you in giving customer's history and what are their needs. 

Human Touch: Train your agents to be human because they are going to deal with humans only. They need to be patient and show them empathy in their time of need. According to McKinsey research,71% of customers want personalized interaction. Because personalization adds a human touch to consumer services. You can use data insights from call transcripts to build every customer picture so that agents can be personalized accordingly. 

5. Performance Monitoring 

It is a fact that achieving success is really challenging in customer service but it can be possible with realistic key performance indicators. 

Your call centre team is being asked to deliver a stellar consumer experience, not just help the business but also to manage cost. Therefore giving appropriate weight to the human touch with scores that fit for providing quality contact and meet customer satisfaction. 

Check out the metrics whether your customer service and support efforts is really let you achieve success or not:

Customer Attribution: Customer churn is the measurement of checking of lost customers' percentage from total customers over a specific period. If you are hitting a high rate of customer churn then it is an indicator that your consumer service needs refocusing. Or else there may be some big issue that lies with your product or service offering. 

Customer Retention and Conversion: Superior customer service helps customers to stay satisfied, but it also sends them down the path to sales and conversion. 
In this way you can measure customer service effectiveness as it can help to overcome the contact center perception as a cost center. A company that excels in consumer experience can increase revenue through the contact center. 

Net Promoter Scores: Net Promoter Scores or NPS is another source of measuring customer satisfaction. It appears as a question like how likely the consumer would be to recommend a product or service. 

NPS is calculated by subtracting the detractors percentage from the promoters percentage. A high NPS is a sign of better business growth for a company as it indicates the brand and customers' strong relationship. 

6. Manage Resources 

Call centers do so much of their own to provide greater consumer service. They look for the backing of well-run contact center that focused on:

Team Efficiency: When you are planning to boost team efficiency, the right technology plays a great role. With the right technology you can analyse and provide valuable data insights. 

You can also lift performance by encouraging your team to set their priority tasks first. You can use tools like automate routine work to make a significant impact on overall efficiency. 

Increasing Morale: Successful customer service call centers include good morale as their key component. Because employee turnover is very high in the consumer service environment. As it is a high-stress job with limited opportunities. 
Timely feedback and encouragement to agents can help to drive up morale and counter turnover. 

Clear Expectations: Consumer experience can be delivered in a better way when the agents are very aware of the expectations. Therefore set realistic expectations as part of the employee onboarding process. Be clear in communicating your expectations from the agents so they can set their points in their career path. 

7. Support the Service Team 

The team becomes best when it gets the right support at the right time. Here are two ways, where you can invest for customer service team member's success: 

Recognition: Arrange friendly competition among your customer service team. Reward your employees who go beyond to meet consumer needs. Provide gift cards of local cafes for employees who meet the major targets. 
Take the help of convergence intelligence software to help level the playing field for everyone in the call center. So that one can get accurate scoring for every phone call. 

Extend the Same Level of Customer Service: Sometimes it is difficult for managers to give attention to every agent as they deserve in a busy, stressful, and pressurized working environment. 

With the right software, you can track team performance, provide them timely feedback, streamline workflows, and increase efficiency. It will help to boost your effectiveness as a leader. And your team will feel invested in the right mission with a great customer satisfaction experience. This process is a good customer service improvement plan to achieve success. 

How Teldrip Conversion Intelligence Helps?

Teldrip conversation intelligence empowers companies to take their customer service to the next level. Teldrip Analyses Customer interactions across various channels to receive actionable insights. These insights help organizations to enhance agent performance, drive operational efficiency, and recognize training opportunities. The Conversation tagging, and sentiment analysis help Teldrip to deliver personalised and proactive support within the companies to enhance customer satisfaction and foster long-term loyalty. 

Final Thought

Customer service is a ongoing process. It requires dedication, a customer-centric mindset, and innovation in behavior to improve customer service. Teldrip focuses on embracing personalization, prioritizing speed, and efficiency, implementing omni-channel support, focusing on proactive support, cultivating a knowledgeable support team, instant action on consumer feedback, and protecting the power of conversational intelligence to make companies work on customer satisfaction improvement. All the above services help companies to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace and build lasting customer relationships. At Teldrip, we provide conversation intelligence software solutions by keeping an eye on the customer service expert Shep Hyken's words- " Every interaction is a chance to make a positive impact."