Posted by Customer expectations are at an all-time high. Even if you provide a positive experience 9 out of 10 times, that one time you don’t could lead to churn. Every 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience. 92% of them would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions.
Irrespective of the geographical boundaries, customers’ expectations are pretty much the same. They expect you to value them, be transparent, address their requests on a priority, and offer a seamless experience.
So, how do you do that? How do you increase customer satisfaction with every passing day? In this article, we will look into some of the strategies. Let’s get started!
1- Measure Customer Satisfaction Regularly
You cannot improve what you don’t know. Therefore, the first step to improving customer satisfaction is measuring it.
· Collect feedback through surveys: You can host different surveys, such as in-app surveys, post-call surveys, and email surveys, to collect customer feedback.
· Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score: It helps understand the customers’ recent interaction with your brand. The measurement ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates “highly unsatisfied ” and 5 denotes “highly satisfied.”
· Net Promoter Score (NPS): It helps determine if the customer will recommend you to their friends or families. The scale ranges from 1 to 10, where 1 indicates “not at all likely” and 10 denotes “extremely likely.”
· Customer Effort Score: It helps measure the ease of doing business with your company. The measurement ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates “strongly disagree,” and 5 denotes “strongly agree.”
· Social Media: What people are talking about your products or services on social media says a lot about their experience with you. Use social media listening tools to stay atop brand mentions and comments across platforms.
2- Use Customer Survey Data to Improve Your Services
Now that you have collected customer feedback, it’s time to analyze and respond to it. Share the insights with all the departments, including the management team. Encourage all your employees to put some time aside each week to extract the customers’ needs from the survey data and brainstorm the next course of action.
Begin with identifying the main 3-5 recurring complaints your customers have and prioritize them according to the frequency of mention. Then, notify the appropriate departments so they can fix the problems as soon as possible.
3- Offer 24/7, Multichannel Support
It is no longer enough to be readily available in one or two channels. Customers today want fast replies to their questions on the channel of their choice. Also, the experience across channels should be consistent.
Businesses that provide consistent customer service quality across multiple channels will retain 89% of their customers compared to 33% for those who don’t.
According to Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2020, the support channels that a customer expects include:
· Phone: 66% of customers expect you to provide phone support.
· Emails: 49% of customers want you to offer customer service via emails.
· Online form: 28% of people will fill an online form to reach your support team.
· Messaging: 28% of customers want you to provide customer service via messaging.
· Chat: 24% of customers will reach your team via live chat.
· Social media: 9% of people believe social media is an effective customer service channel.
You can use ProProfs Help Desk to capture and provide customer service via email and live chat. It lets you track all incoming requests in one inbox and automate tedious tasks (assigning tickets to agents, sharing alerts & notifications to customers, and sending canned responses for faster replies).
For phone support, you can use iTeleCenter, a VoIP service that routes calls over the internet. It doesn’t require any hardware or special equipment, just a smartphone/desktop and an internet connection. Plus, you can choose a virtual number of your choice.
For social media, you can use social media listening tools like Sprout Social that makes it easier to track and analyze conversations around relevant topics. This, in turn, helps understand customer sentiment and your brand health. You can set up keywords you want to track, and it will alert you for every conversation around it.
4- Provide Self-Help Options
Even when you offer support on different channels, it is crucial to provide self-help options. According to Gartner, 40% or more of today’s support queries can be resolved in self-service channels.
If that’s not enough to persuade you, 77% of consumers say that they view organizations more positively if they provide self-service options for support. And by adding self-service, you could see between $1-3 million in annual savings.
Here are some self-service options you should provide:
· Knowledge base
· FAQs
· Interactive voice response (IVR)
· Chatbots
· Online forums
·Note: ProProfs lets you build a knowledge base and customer forums.
5- Use Non-Generic Auto-Replies
Use auto-replies to give customers a clear confirmation that their request has been received. However, avoid using plain, robotic replies. That’ll make them feel they’re just another customer for you.
Make your auto-replies enjoyable by using humor, GIFs, emojis, or adding some personality. For instance, instead of the subject line, “we received your request,” you can write something like, “Hey there, watch some funny videos while we work on your request” or “We promise we won’t take much time to solve your issue.”
Also, make sure to resolve the issue before the deadline you promise in your auto-reply. The idea here is to use software to deliver a human-like experience while resolving customers’ queries quickly.
6- Improve First Contact Resolution
First contact resolution (FCR) is the percentage of service requests resolved during the first interaction with the customer. The benchmark for FCR is 65-75%. However, the higher the FCR, the more satisfied your customers will be as they won’t have to reach you again and again for the same issue.
Here are some ways to improve first contact resolution:
· Filter common issues that may require more than one interaction to reach resolutions. Create strategies to reduce the number of back-and-forth communications for these issues.
· Train your agents regularly and give them in-depth product knowledge that they need to become successful report representatives.
· Review your support team’s performance and improve them using call recordings or other real customer interactions.
· Don’t just give tips to customers to solve the issue. Instead, show how to do that. This will prepare the customer to resolve the problem in the future, eliminating the need for a second call.
7- Empower Your Team to Go the Extra Mile to Delight Customers
Giving the flexibility to your agents to decide independently to make customers happy and satisfied can go a long way. It enables you to deliver a superior experience without making the customer wait.
Train your support representatives to identify and act on opportunities to ensure customer satisfaction. You can set guidelines and even incentivize your employees to resolve customer queries on their own.
For instance, Ritz Carlton, an American multinational hotel company, gave its employees the authority to spend up to $2,000 per day to delight their guests with their service.
Conclusion
Customer satisfaction is the key to growing your business. It helps increase customer lifetime value, reduces churn, and improves positive word of mouth. Make sure to measure customer satisfaction rates regularly and use the insights to improve your services.