In today’s highly competitive world of business, the one thing most businesses strive for is to provide excellent online customer service. Although online customer service requires agents to be more proactive, it is a convenience for the customer.
In a 2020 ACA survey, 96% of customers reported that they would leave a business that does not meet the expectations they have of the customer service team. 96% is an astonishing percentage, and no business wants to lose customers, because of their inadequate online customer service.
Xfinity Internet, for instance, understood that they have a percentage of Spanish-speaking customers, who are not fluent English speakers. For that very reason, Xfinity Customer Service now has an Espanol helpline, for these customers. This is just one of the many reasons why Xfinity is the largest and most common ISP in American households.
With the rapid expansion of e-commerce businesses, online customer service has surpassed the need for face-to-face customer service. If you want to build a customer base, it’s crucial to improve your online customer service.
Let’s look at some practices you can implement to improve your online customer service.
Empower Your Customer Service Team
You might think that customer service is an easy job, something anyone can do. However, it is a rather skillful job. You need to empower your customer service teams with skills that will help them deal with customs more efficiently.
Your agents not only have to put the customers first, but they need to understand that customers are their topmost priority. When your staff understands the importance of customers, you will have a more loyal customer base. In other words, customers would keep returning to your business.
When customer service agents are not equipped with the right skills, it can cause unforeseeable problems for the business. Here are some skills you should empower your agents with through training:
- Knowledge of the products or services your business offers. This will allow your agents to answer in a more articulated way, with the right information.
- Empathy towards customers, and understanding how the problem is an inconvenience for them.
- Communication with customers’ need to be done in a clear, informative, and efficient manner.
- Patience when dealing with difficult customers, because these are the customs that are more than likely to leave your business if they come across an impatient agent.
Provide Omnichannel Support
There are many various communication channels you can establish for online customer service. But, there is no point in using all these channels, when you are unable to offer seamless and high-quality customer service.
That is why you can use the omnichannel support approach. In other words, the back end of your custom service department has to be efficient in dealing with customer orders and complaints, regardless of the communication channel.
You need to ensure that each customer service agent is more than capable of communicating with customers on multiple channels, ability to switch from one channel to the other, and offers consistent customer support.
Encourage Customer Feedback
Believe it or not, many businesses fear customer feedback. They feel it might all just be negative, and are also afraid to implement changes. However, you need to encourage customer feedback.
You should implement change based on the customer feedback. What is the number one aim for every business? To satisfy their customers. So, if your customer shares an unpleasant experience with your product or service, and suggests improvements, you should consider them.
Even if you receive negative feedback, you need to understand where the customer is coming from, and that requires the customer service skills we shared earlier. When you receive feedback, you can make the right changes which will inform your customers that they are being heard.
That said, each time you receive positive feedback, you should offer rewards to your customer service staff, because they need encouragement as well.
Use AI-Powered Tools
Most businesses are starting to incorporate AI-powered tools that help improve their online customer service. Chatbots, for instance, are a highly efficient AI tool you can incorporate. It will help manage customer service complaints and FAQs in a more timely manner.
This also allows your agents to invest time in more critical and time-sensitive complaints, such as internet downtime. You can use chatbots to offer 24/7 customer support, which is a huge benefit for both your business and its customers.
Chatbots are a key part of the future of the customer service industry. Customers will be able to get instant help, and that will increase their overall satisfaction. You should optimize chatbots to offer a seamless user experience for your customers.
To Sum Up
All in all, businesses need to offer excellent online customer service. There are many practices you can implement, but we have shared the four most efficient ones that will help improve your online customer service.
If you haven’t yet implemented them, it’s high time that you do!