Good customer service ought to be at the heart of every business strategy. Quick and helpful customer service helps you to retain customers and develop a trustworthy reputation. A great deal of customer service today is conducted remotely. Agents working in an office will chat to customers, log their complaints and try and help them with any issues they might be facing. Here are some ways you can improve your remote customer service provision.
Offer Multiple Ways of Making Contact
Every customer is different. The ideal communication platform does not exist: each person has a subjective set of needs when it comes to getting their message to somebody. Offer multiple ways in which your remote customer service team can be contacted. Some people prefer the written clarity of an email. Others prefer the instantaneous service offered in a phone call or over a chat service. The key to offering multiple communication avenues successfully is a well-maintained central database. If data being created by interactions on separate communication platforms goes to different databases, information silos are formed, which can seriously hamper the effectiveness of an operation.
Use Analytics to Improve Call Center Performance
A great deal of remote customer service is conducted from a call center. One of the most persistent issues with call centers that have affected service is the lack of diagnostic tools for identifying issues. Modern data analytics offers something of a solution to this issue. Call center agent performance and overall customer service achievements can all be boiled down into measurable metrics. These can then be assessed in order to improve and streamline the customer experience. Click here for more information about using call center analytics to improve the customer journey.
Act Promptly
This tip should be obvious: the quicker your response, the better a customer will regard the service they have received. According to data collated by Statista, customers are gradually expecting response times to decrease as time goes by. This may be because changes in technology and networking have normalized instantaneous service. Promptness in remote customer service is paramount. Make sure to have adequate staff for the task in hand. Don’t be tempted to use automated chat systems or put customers through long strings of phone multiple-choice menus. Make sure that the time between a customer flagging a problem and talking to a real human agent is as small as possible.
Support Video Chat
Video conferencing platforms have seen a huge growth in use over the pandemic. This has meant that massive swathes of the population are familiar with meeting face-to-face over the internet. If you want to offer your customers a face-to-face meeting, they may be receptive to a video chat.
Of course, this does come with some downsides. Customer support agents may feel somewhat unhappy with having to bare their faces on screen, and visual professionalism will have to be maintained at a very high standard. A face-to-face chat, however, is a great way of establishing customer confidence.