We live in a day and age of instant gratification, where customer relationships are more complex than ever. If you’re not exceeding your customers’ expectations of customer service, chances are, your competitors are chomping at the bit to do so.
If you’re reading this, you likely know that gaining a new customer is far more expensive than retaining a current consumer. As Lisa James, Head of Solution Marketing Service Audience for SAP Hybris, noted in an incredibly popular post, “To keep customers happy after the sale can be more challenging, providing customer care that positively reflects the promises made during sales and by the larger brand.”
So how do you retain the customers that you’ve worked so hard to attain? James has five suggestions on how you can make your customer service process more simplified, thereby making for incredibly happy consumers.
5 ways to simplify the customer service process
Omnichannel
You need to meet your customers where they currently interact, which means venturing outside of the traditional platforms of phone and email.
Companies who incorporate chatbot, SMS texting, and video chat as part of their customer service platform recognize that each consumer has a different ideal of their preferred way to communicate.
“Organizations should be sure to pull in a complete customer profile, including the social profiles of their consumers, so that they can offer a more personalized approach to customer care,” said James. “Don’t overlook the social communities on your brand’s website, either, as that’s a forum where very honest feedback tends to be given.”
Personalized engagement
When you empower your call center representatives and field technicians with a complete customer profile, you give them the information they need, in real-time, to provide the consumer with a personalized solution.
“If you take Company A, who cannot see anything about customer purchases, service history, or how they’ve interacted with your brand, and Company B, who utilizes a realtime, 360 profile of customers in a cloud setting, Company B will always provide the better customer service because they know the customer better. It’s that simple,” James pointed out.
Quick resolutions
“You can provide stellar customer service from a top agent, but if the consumer need isn’t immediately addressed,” warned James, “then be prepared to lose a customer. Being ‘nice’ is not enough. You need to meet the need..and quickly.”
To increase first-contact resolution rates, the ability to share company knowledge in real-time amongst divisions is critical. Moving out of silos and into cloud-based platforms supplies call center representatives and field technicians with the ability to make personalized and relevant solutions.
Nobody wants to sit on hold, or be transferred from department to department, having to re-explain their issue. If your company isn’t able to treat each customer as an individual, and address their concerns on that personal level, a different company will be happy to do so.
Mobility
“A lot of people talk about mobility,” said James, “but not many organizations do it well.” For field techs and service managers in particular, access to offline capabilities is crucial, since their jobs are generally not done in front of a desk with access to wifi.
By incorporating mobile solutions that provide on-the-go functionality, your employees are able to quickly and concisely provide top-notch customer service and customer care, while managers are able to get a complete look at agent performance and service KPIs to help lead their team forward.
End-to-end experience
When your customer has a concern or complaint, they want it resolved quickly and professionally. Chances are, they’ve already experienced some form of inconvenience with relation to your product, service or brand. The last thing you want to do is compound that frustration by not having a unified approach to customer service.
Creating an end-to-end customer experience means taking information out of silos and integrating it throughout the entire organization, so that no matter who your customer speaks to, they feel as though they are talking to someone who knows and understands them.
Cloud: an outstanding customer service solution
SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (Service Cloud) provides end to end, continuous, and seamless support for even the most complex of situations, with affordable and flexible solutions. In a recent Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study, a composite B2B organization utilizing SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer realized a dramatic 40% increase in service and field representative efficiency, complemented by a nearly 20% boost in income from related upsells, with a more than 40% reduction in call center operational costs.
