Need to boost your Customer Service Strategy? 

This guide will help you.

Customer experience is a key aspect widely used by Customers for determining which brand to choose. They judge businesses based on how satisfying every interaction with them is more than the price or product.

So, customer experience plays a major role in purchase decisions made around the world.

Here at Ibmi Media, we transparently take care of the support operations of hundreds of web hosts and digital marketers.

In this context, you shall learn the customer service strategy we follow as part of our Technical Support Service.

How to know that our Customer Service Strategy needs a Refresh ?

To check whether the customer service strategy needs a refresh, there are a few avenues to explore.

1. Customer Churn Rate

If the churn rate is suddenly rising and the customer base is dwindling, then we may need to rethink our service strategy.

2. Negative Customer Feedback

Review sites and social networks give people platforms to share their experiences. And, people are more likely to leave reviews after negative experiences than after positive ones.

Receiving negative feedback is not good for any business it can also affect Customer Acquisition too. If we are getting widely criticized for poor service, then it is definitely time to refresh the approach.

3. Customer Satisfaction Metrics

We can check  the level of customers’ satisfaction, by including the following:

i. Post-purchase surveys

ii. Brand-related conversations on social media

iii. Net Promoter Scores (NPS)

iv. One-to-one chats with the client

Actively surveying and monitoring customer satisfaction will help us to learn when the service strategy needs a refresh.

4. Employee Feedback

To find out if it is time for a refresh, ask the following key questions to get employee feedback:

i. How quickly are we able to solve customers’ problems?

ii. Do lots of people contact us with the same issues?

iii. How often do we receive complaints about some customer service channels being missing?

iv. What issues with the business’s current strategy do we encounter day-to-day?

v. Are we adequately equipped to serve every customer as well as possible?

The answers to those questions will give us a clear idea of whether to improve the customer service or not.

Methods for Refreshing Customer Service Strategy ?

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. 

The following are some of the tips to help refresh customer service strategy:

1. Focus on Being Customer-Centric

Being “customer-centric” means building a  strategy that revolves around the needs and desires of the customers.

While thinking about making changes, we must lead with a customer-first mindset.

2. Setting Clear Objectives & Metrics to Monitor

When we refresh our customer service, we must specifically define the improvements that we wish to make.

The following aspects can be kept in mind:

i. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

ii. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

iii. Churn Rate

iv. Retention Rate

v. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

vi. Developed Own KPI

vii. Customer Effort Score (CES)

For example, if we want to implement three ideas on the new strategy to achieve. They can be to increase repeat purchases, handle customer calls faster, and boost overall customer satisfaction.

Three actionable objectives could be:

a. Increase customer lifetime value (CLV) by 5% in the next six months.

b. Shorten average call handling times by two minutes within a year.

c. Improve NPS by 2% each month for the next year.

Rather than telling the customer support team to just provide better service, we can provide a clear set of goals to be achieved over a time period.

3. Analyze Customer Interactions

To find out exactly what is to be tweaked, we have to think about all the touchpoints between us and the customers.

We will get these touchpoints when we interact with our customers. After the interaction, we can evaluate them and think about improving them while keeping in mind the goals that were set earlier.

4. Upgrade the Customer Service Tools

The customer service team should have a proper customer tool which is updated at regular interval of time as the company evolves. Even if we only have a handful of customers to interact with each day, customer service tools can make all the difference in providing a speedy response.

5. Turn Negativity into Positivity.

Everyone gets an occasional bad review. Understanding this will help get positive results. Especially when a review is posted on a public forum, negative feedback is best addressed not with reciprocal negativity, but with magnanimity and an expressed desire to improve. 

This will show everyone else that we legitimately value each feedback and will always work to improve the service we provide.