A decade ago, 24 hours was considered the average customer response time. But today? That is just slow. Tech-savvy consumers not only want brands to do their best, but they also want them to respond to their concerns fast. They expect nothing less than exceptional customer service and service. Customer support tools can help improve response and resolution times without your teams having to work longer hours.
Let’s see how.
Imagine this. A customer wants to buy something from a business. They submit a query, waiting for a support representative to answer.
There are two important things to consider here. Response time and resolution time.
A recent survey found that 75% of customers feel that fast response times are all they needed to know how customer-friendly a brand is.
Today we have multiple customer touchpoints like email, social media, mobile phones, and website live chat, that make it easy for customers to reach out to you. For businesses, this means more opportunities to convert sales leads and in supporting their customers. But if these omnichannel platforms are not managed efficiently, customer resolution and response times could go up and even lead to negative feedback.
Thankfully, there are a host of specialized tools to help you out. Whether you’re a sales agent or a customer service rep, here are some customer service tools that can help you become a customer-centric business.
There are various communication channels and apps for customers to reach out to a business directly. Let us start with email.
Email remains essential for any modern business. With large customer service teams, you might want to keep all those customer emails organized, with all your queries and complaints in one place. You need to make use of a shared inbox so that all team members can combine forces in answering and resolving customer issues.
A shared team inbox makes it possible to align your sales, marketing, and customer service people to offer the best possible customer experiences.
Get the most out of a shared inbox with timetoreply, which provides you with two different levels of reporting for shared inboxes. You can either track overall statistics for the shared inbox as a whole or for each person you’ve assigned to it.
Use the shared inbox reporting to see who is doing the lion’s share of the work, when the busiest times for email occur, and who has more capacity to help out.
A few years ago, it was not unheard of for customers to explain an issue to a customer service rep, only to be transferred to another representative and to explain the whole thing all over again. Not just that, you had to wait a few hours or even the next day to get a response. Did we mention you had to explain the whole thing again the next time? It was frustrating and time-consuming.
Thankfully, such scenarios are history with a good help desk tool. With a help desk ticketing system, customers don’t have to waste so much time. Once a complaint or issue is filed, a support ticket is assigned to you. Businesses can work on customer service resolution straightaway.
Not only this, help desk support tickets make it possible for customers to track your problem. Only a few people are needed to resolve customer issues. And the best part – there’s no confusion.
Jira Service Management is a help desk software that assists both – customers and businesses.
Old habits die hard. Sometimes, customers feel reassured about making a purchase online if they talk to a real human beforehand.
Call centers help you solve this problem. But make no mistake, you don’t need a whole department with people who answer phone calls the whole day. You don’t even need to outsource those calls to somebody else.
How is this even possible? Because of Software as a Service (SaaS). Thanks to cloud computing solutions, call center operations can be run entirely via customer relationship management software (CRM).
All you have to do is:
Using this information, you can choose a CRM vendor who can take care of your call center needs. EngageBay offers a free CRM solution that makes for a good customer service tool.
Having a live chat service on your brand website pays off. About 60% of your customers return for a repeat sale if they have a live chat option that helps take care of queries instantly.
According to one study, customer satisfaction levels went up by 73% with live chat, followed by email (61%) and calls (44%).
Live chat solutions are popular because they deliver responses instantly. Plus they can be easily integrated with email and ticketing systems to ensure that your interactions are tracked, monitored, and resolved across a variety of channels.
Gorgios is a great option to deliver good customer service via live chat.
What is the difference between instant messaging (IM) over live chat? For live chat to be effective, your customers have to visit your website. This limitation does not extend to IM.
For IMs, combining your social media pages, website CTAs, mobile apps, and other channels to one touchpoint, i.e. your phone number – may offer unprecedented convenience for businesses and customers.
For small teams, IMs can serve as a good middle ground between email and live chat options. You can also use AI-powered chatbots to automate the most common queries. This can be anything like fetching prices for your products or services, offering a menu, or basic info about your business. Not only do you cut down on human interaction, but you also get rid of long email chains.
WhatsApp for Business and Facebook Messenger are good options for Instant Messaging.
Gone are the days where you can leave your customers hanging for 24 hours for a response. The sooner you address their concerns, the better your chances of getting repeat sales. It’s time to get the best return on your investment by choosing the right customer service tools to cut down on customer response and resolution times.