According to studies outlining the benefits of good customer service, up to 70 per cent of customers will spend more money with a company that delivers excellence, and 97 per cent will tell others about these great experiences. Tim Morris, the MD of Cymphony gives his advice on creating the very best customer service experience.
Research your customers to truly understand the people who make up your audience and target specific media depending on your customers’ preferences. Bear in mind that depending on the demographic you are looking to target, the balance to strike between online and offline channels will differ considerably.
The benefits of mapping your customer journey will highlight where people require the most help or get frustrated with your services. For example, you might notice that when a consumer gets to the ‘review basket’ stage, there is a drop-off before the ‘complete purchase’ stage. This could be because there is an issue with editing the basket, or customers cannot clearly see the next step. A solution could be to install a webchat option on the ‘review basket’ page. This way, if customers encounter difficulties editing their basket, they can quickly contact an agent for assistance.
You should provide your customers access to communicate directly with an agent on the channel they are currently interacting with. Live web chat, for example, is a popular contact channel for companies and customers to use. Webchat enables you to keep consumers on your site, allowing them to ask questions, gain insights and even make purchases. Another way to support your customer is to offer a 24/7 call answering service.
Imagine you are a retail business and you have just sold an item of clothing online. However, when the product arrives, the item is not the size the customer wants. When the customer goes to return the product, they cannot figure out how to send the package back, and there is no obvious way for them to contact a support line. This is understandably frustrating and inconvenient for the consumer and could lead to complaints on social media, which damage the brand. This scenario could have been avoided by ensuring a fluid omnichannel experience was in place throughout the whole sale process and beyond.
For an effective omnichannel strategy to work, you must understand that your customers are very rarely just online or offline. Integrating your online channels is all well and good, but if your customers are not satisfied with how your business treats them face-to-face, the omnichannel customer experience will not be complete.