Customer service is one of the biggest driving forces in every business. Providing a great customer service is key to retention, customer satisfaction and increasing sales. Large financial giant American Express found that 74% consumers say they have spent more with a company because of a history of positive customer service experiences.
It goes without saying that poor customer service can be highly detrimental to your overall brand and business. Research shows that 62% of global consumers have stopped doing business with a brand or organisation due to a poor customer service experience. (2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report)
Businesses that take customer service experience seriously will stand out from the competition. To back this point up, it’s predicted that 89% of businesses are expected to compete mainly on this alone very soon.
We have detailed some helpful points that your business can adopt whether it be an existing strategy or simply to assist the development your first customer service plan.
Creating an omnichannel approach
Companies must interact with their customers across multiple channels whether it’s digital marketing, offline marketing, social media etc. Research from the Aberdeen Group Inc. shows that companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers (source: Internetretailer), as compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel strategies. Despite this, customers expect the communication to be consistent throughout all challenges which can create a challenge. When developing your campaigns and strategies, ensure your message is clear and concise throughout. Use the different channels of communications to complement and support each other. For example, if you’re sending a customer an important email, a simple follow up text message asking “have you read our email?” can help increase email open rates by 20%–30%. You can integrate text messaging into your CRM system, which means that your customer service teams can keep track of the messages and store useful information for that particular customer.
Mobile experience is the priority
It’s no longer a question as to whether mobile experience is important or not as recent studies convey that mobile search has taken over desktop. Despite this, some companies still haven’t fully adapted and continue to provide a poor mobile experience. Bad mobile experience can significantly impact your sales and potentially lose business. According to WOW Local Marketing, 52% of customers are less likely to engage with the company because of bad mobile experience. Reviewing your current mobile strategy is therefore vital in order to succeed. Some of the common frustrations from customers is slow site speed, difficulty navigating through websites, unhelpful searches and a site search function unavailable. To enhance your overall mobile experience, ensure that SMS is developed and integrated within your strategy. Whether it’s integrating text into your CRM or website, you can utilise SMS throughout the user experience. The average click-through rate on URLs via SMS is 36%. Reduce abandoned baskets, increase security with SMS two-factor authentication or sending personalised offers. When sending out your SMS campaigns, it’s crucial to ensure the URL links included are mobile friendly.
Prepare for self-service…
Self-service isn’t just about customer convenience, your business can benefit from it by increasing productivity. In fact, 50% of customers think it’s important to solve product or service issues themselves. By using a shortcode and keyword, you can get customers to send a text to your organisation. For example, customers could set up their billing, request a change to their order, find out business opening hours and much more. You can also help or remind customers where to find your self-service pages by including a URL in any text messages. By doing you are helping reduce wasted time and complaints as your customers are able to find answers from a range of self-service options.
Take your customers seriously…
In order to deliver an excellent customer experience, you have to know your customers better than ever before. This means creating complete customer profiles that help you understand and measure your customers’ behaviours at every touch point across multiple channels. The best way to achieve this is by effectively communicating with your customers. Text messaging provides the perfect solution, with 1 in 5 consumers preferring a text message over a phone call. Using SMS surveys, can provide you with valuable knowledge about your customers and your overall business performance. Your customers will feel valued and are more likely to provide you with honest feedback, which will help you make improvements to specific business areas. Contact centres can use SMS surveys after a phone call, or how about sending an automated text to the mobile number provider? If a customer responds back below a certain threshold, a manager can get an instant notification to follow up on and resolve the customer matter. The average response rate for text messages is 45% compared to email at 6%, meaning that you will get more information at a quicker speed. Once you learn more about your customers, you can use the information from SMS surveys to personalise every interaction across all platforms. Creating a smooth and pleasant experience that is continuously improving will drive your business forward.
For more information in text messaging for your business or would like to know more about our services talk to our friendly customer care team on 0845 122 1302 or email [email protected]