#Collaborative post
When conducting business online as opposed to in person, the foundations stay the same, but many of the specifics appear to be quite distinct.
The same is true for customer service provided online. It all comes down to looking after your customers and your capacity to adjust to an ever-changing environment will have an impact on how your customers perceive your brand and the level of service you provide.
Maintaining a positive customer experience has benefits that extend beyond your customers. The expense of acquiring a new client is five times higher than the cost of keeping the customers you already have. Changing your strategy and adhering to best practices in online customer service might mean the difference between experiencing major turnover problems and experiencing long-term success.
What is online customer service and how does it work?
Online customer service refers to the method that businesses employ to respond to client enquiries over the internet. It typically manifests itself through one or more channels, such as:
emails, phone calls, video calls, or self-service via social media chat and text.
Organizations with a long history of operations may have a wider, more process-based customer service strategy, whereas companies that are just starting may focus on only one or two channels.
Tips for improving customer service online
Understanding how to properly conduct online support is critical to delivering a fantastic customer experience, from selecting the most appropriate support channels to utilizing online resources for self-service, and from empowering teams to placing a high priority on customer satisfaction, among other things.
Following is a list of the most important online customer care best practices to put in place, whether you are just getting started with your support team or searching for some new ideas to keep your strategy fresh.
- Make it simple for them to get in touch
If you have ever tried to contact an online customer service staff and come up empty-handed, there is nothing more frustrating. Contacting you through the channel that makes the most sense for your customers should be as simple as possible.
There is a strong temptation to hide your contact form or phone number on a page that is a few clicks deep in an attempt to divert additional support volume away from your site. You may, on the other hand, be losing customers as a result of all of the queries that you reject.
Instead, provide a “Contact Us” or “Support” link at the top navigation bar of your website, which will make it easy for visitors to find immediately. Work to ensure that your contact page is indexed by search engines so that if a customer searches for it outside of your website, it is still easily accessible. Live chat is rapidly becoming the most popular way for customers to speak to businesses online – Visit click4assistance for chat integration.
- Empowerment for your staff
Your online customer support team is made up of employees that are the most knowledgeable about your consumers within your organization. While their major responsibility is to respond to requests and ensure that customers receive assistance as promptly as possible, they do much more than that.
If your staff believe that changing strategy and processes will benefit your consumers, give them the authority to do so.
While you can put protocols in place to ensure that no one makes changes on the spur of the moment, you should encourage your customer service personnel to consider how things could be improved and then recommend ways to make those improvements.
Sure, you may have a large leadership team with extensive knowledge of business planning and KPIs, but the team members on the field will have the most valuable ideas about how to modify your day-to-day job to make it more meaningful for your customers and employees.
- Add further context to the situation.
We have all experienced the frustration of having to say the same thing over and over. The fact that a customer needs to repeat the same issue that they have already searched for in a knowledge base or using a search engine can feel like an insult to injury for your support crew. When this is their second conversation with your support team, and they have to repeat themselves to an actual human person more than once, it is very annoying.
To avoid this irritating experience, provide your customer-facing staff with more internal context by incorporating it into their work. Instruct your sales team members to take notes during customer interactions, and use a customer relationship management system to track customer interactions with your marketing, customer success, and customer support teams.
You should maintain track of previous talks with individual customers at your help desk, and you should ask your support team to review previous conversations with consumers before starting a new one. Taking these extra measures may seem time-consuming at first, but in the long run, they are one of the most effective things you can do to guarantee that your customers are well-looked after.
- Be aware of your performance
Do you know how long your customers have to wait for the first response from you? Alternatively, how long does the average time to resolution take? Approximately how many times does a client have to communicate back and forth with your team before they are satisfied with the answers to their questions?
The longer you make clients wait for a response from you, the more time you give them to begin investigating the offerings of your competitors, which is counterproductive. That which is measured becomes manageable, we do not have to tell you that. There is a good possibility that you have some areas for improvement unless you are already keeping a close eye on your customer service KPIs and metrics.
- Remember manners
The simple act of beginning your support response with “Thank you so much for reaching out to us about this” can go a long way toward defusing a potentially volatile situation.
Further than that, if you make a mistake, do not be afraid to express your regret. Customer expectations for you include being honest, in addition to being an expert in your field. Accepting responsibility and honestly addressing a customer’s concern is far more beneficial to the customer’s experience than attempting to sweep it under the rug.
Customers are more likely to understand a problem if you have already invested time and effort into building a relationship with them. Establishing common ground is an important element of developing connections, and employing pleasant and polite language is one of the most effective methods to do so.
- Make sure you know what your customers want
When it comes to online customer service, one of the most crucial things to consider is what your customers want and require from your team of support agents.
When firms first begin to provide customer support, they are frequently only concerned with providing the most basic of services: responding to customers’ emails, answering their phone calls, and addressing their issues.
Then, rather than focusing solely on meeting the bare minimum of what your customers anticipate, it is time to explore what they care about and value.
Consider the following scenario: you are a customer seeking for a provider to host your website on their servers. It may be critical that they provide live chat services because you will want to ensure that you can obtain a quick response if your website goes down at any point.
Ideally, you do not want to be directed to a ticket system or a forum in that situation. If they have phone help, that is well and dandy, but the real test will be whether or not they have a live chat feature.
Many organizations have removed their phone number from their website while continuing to provide great customer care for which they are renowned because they are acutely aware of their consumers’ requirements and expectations.
If your clients do not care about phone support but appreciate being able to communicate with you through live chat, you might want to consider shifting some of your resources from your phone support team to live chat.
Beyond offering outstanding service through the channels that your customers prefer, go the extra mile to meet them where they are.
Provide them with the ability to discover any answers they may require from the page they are currently on if they have previously arrived at your website. Customers will be able to find contextual assistance without having to leave your website.
- Humanize the process
In your online interactions with customers, whether through email or chat, the temptation to use a just-the-facts approach can be strong, especially if you are just getting started.
When developing a customer service team and strategy, it may be sufficient to simply reply to clients without devoting any effort to the precise tone in which you communicate with those customers. After all, conveying a pleasant style via text is more challenging because there are no extra signifiers such as changes in vocal pitch or friendly body language to aid in communication.
Having said that, communicating empathy through your virtual tone is a vital online customer service best practice that cannot be overlooked. As you begin to create your plan in greater detail, one of the most effective methods to improve your online customer care is to define the tone that your support team will employ.
If you are not sure what kind of decisive tone your team should be taking, consider replicating the situation. Mirroring is when you use the same tone as your customer – and it lets them know you are on their side of the conversation.
When dealing with a formal customer, maintain a completely professional demeanor. It is fine if they are more casual, and you can relax your tone as well. If the customer appears to be amused, it is acceptable to crack a joke.