~by Dixie Somers~
It is easy to become distracted by all the new technology that comes along for use in your business. The best way to sustain business and boost revenue is through customer retention. Loyal customers provide ten times more value than an initial purchase. That requires delivering consistently excellent customer service on a daily basis. There are several ways that modern technology can help you accomplish that.
1. Call Monitoring
Customer support solutions can offer call monitoring. This means that every interaction between agents and customers can be saved as a digital file for later analysis. Call records can be used to analyze performance, recommend improvements, and develop new strategies.
Effective call center solutions also allow live monitoring so that your supervisors can coach the agent toward better resolution of customer problems. They can even break in and take over the call if they feel it is necessary. Call monitoring allows you to capture and analyze real customer interactions to constantly improve on call center performance.
2. Customer Feedback
Technology also provides a means for collecting feedback from customers. Directing customers to website submission forms, emails, or surveys can help you collect information on how customers are responding to your contact center team. Electronic data collection is faster, cheaper, and more convenient for both you and your customers.
Automated solutions allow you to respond to questions or address complaints. Many organizations use “trouble ticket” solutions that will sequentially number each communication and track them to resolution. This data collection gives you insights into exactly what customers want, need, and expect so that you can provide better customer experience management.
3. Consolidate Channels
There are various ways to reach out to customers in the digital world. Many customers favor one form of contact, such as texting or the company website, over others. Connecting with customers over all these channels is essential to seeing that all your customers are satisfied.
The ability to integrate all of these for analysis is important to developing a more comprehensive view of customers and their needs. This helps to maintain quality of service or alignment with your company brand. By tracking the volume on these different channels, you also learn where to focus your time and efforts for the best returns.
4. Availability
Having to wait is one of the most frustrating experiences for callers, and only makes them more anxious — if they don’t give up altogether. Either way, the customer has had a bad experience that doesn’t reflect well on your company — it tends to discourage them from dealing with you again. Voice-activated software can route traffic through menu options. This lets callers discover solutions to routine problems on their own. During peak volume times, cloud-based telephony can route calls to other support teams or remote workers. Customer service can be made available anytime, anywhere.
5. Social Media
You can leverage your company’s social media pages as a customer service solution. While you’re posting videos, infographics, and similar devices to attract attention, you can add elements such as click-to-call or click-to-chat buttons. This lets interested users ask questions about your products and services spontaneously and in real-time.
Most major social sites also include analytic tools that let you collect information on your social followers. You can view demographics based on their user profiles that let you break down your audience by age, region, gender, and much more to target specific groups and their expectations. This helps you create more personalized interactions that customers prefer.
Customer service technologies not only allow you to track agent performance and customer interactions, but to leverage data analysis to improve your own processes. Each of these tools will create a better experience for your customers if you implement them in your business.
Meet the Author: Dixie Somers
Dixie Somers is a freelance writer who loves writing for business, finance, and those with an entrepreneurial spirit. She lives in Arizona with her husband and three beautiful daughters.
