Personalized service means that customers want the customer service representative on the line to recognize their name, what purchases they have made previously, and what their last inquiry was.
Next, customers want hassle-free service. The concept of hassle-free customer service interactions encompasses giving customers access to support via many channels. These channels include social media, phone support, messaging apps, email, live chat, and most importantly, self-service portals.
According to Harvard Business Review, 81% of all customers attempt to solve problems independently before reaching out to customer support. However, less than 10% of companies provide a customer portal, forcing customers to create support tickets.
Even though many customer groups have their preferred communication channels, 49% use three to five different channels to contact customer service. Moreover, 25% of chats and 20% of phone calls are escalated to emails, while 5% of emails are escalated to phone calls. Therefore, it’s best to cover all bases and cater to everyone.
Apart from easily accessible assistance, customers also expect quick responses to their queries. Of course, these expectations vary from channel to channel and from industry to industry. For example, 46% of customers expect companies to respond in 4 hours or less, and 12% expect a response within 15 minutes or less. However, according to SuperOffice, the fastest customer service response time is 1 minute. The average is 10 minutes to 12 hours, and the slowest is 8 days, showcasing the considerable differences between expectations and reality. To meet these expectations across all channels, it’s essential to have staff that’s available, informed, and armed with the right tools.
It’s also important to remember that customer support is a marathon, not a sprint. It will always be a challenge to meet your customer’s expectations. It’s simply not possible to make everyone happy. Despite this, you can find opportunities for improvement by setting customer service KPIs and measuring customer support metrics.
With this in mind, the best tool to add to your arsenal is help desk software.
Having a help desk software will ensure that: