A strong customer base is critical to your company's success. Providing an outstanding customer service is one of the most important factors in achieving business success in today's highly competitive market. According to recent research by HubSpot, 93% of customers are more likely to repurchase a product or service from a company that provides superior customer service. Intense competition raises customers' expectations and raises challenges in customer service.
You’re likely well aware of the phrase "the customer is always right" and it has perhaps even served as a guiding principle for when you are delivering top customer service. But just how do you deliver great service that leaves the customer more than satisfied? Providing excellent customer service is often more difficult than one might think. There are numerous customer service challenges that can stymie success. Poor response times and outdated technology may prevent your customer service from providing superior service, leaving your customers disappointed and dissatisfied.
In this blog post, we explain the barriers to providing effective customer service and give tips on how to overcome them.
1. Lack of training
Lack of training can be identified as one of the biggest challenges in customer service. One of the biggest customer service problems is that companies are not investing in proper employee training. Consider the following scenario: your product or service is critical to your customer, and they are eager for all issues to be resolved. Instead of a knowledgeable and competitive representative, customers get confused and frustrated. You wouldn’t like to experience this, right? So, it is vital that your customer service representatives are familiar with products, processes and systems that your company uses. If your customer service team will be familiar with all those elements - the quality and customer satisfaction will increase enormously!
Customer service reps need to have certain skills, such as active listening, empathy, and the ability to understand and solve problems quickly. Companies that fail to invest in those skills will only encounter problems further down the line when it comes to retaining customers. So, invest in training; otherwise, it will only result in a higher customer acquisition cost and much more!
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2. Outdated technology
Customers now expect quick and efficient customer service, and using outdated technology can result in lateness and frustration.
Nowadays, it's not enough to simply have a phone number and an email for customers to reach out to. Depending on your customer profile, many customers will expect to reach you on channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp, so consider investing in an omnichannel customer service strategy.
Updating technological resources will have a huge impact on your team and business. Your company, for example, also could invest in chatbots, a more comprehensive CRM system, customer feedback tools, and much more. While this may all seem expensive, it will make it easier in the long run to stay competitive in the market and provide excellent customer service. Not to mention, using up to date tech will also help to streamline processes, improve response times, and be more efficient!
3. Lack of customer feedback and analysis
Continuous customer feedback is critical for ongoing improvement. Without it, you will lack direction for how to develop your products. If you haven't started collecting feedback yet, the best advice is to set clear goals and select relevant KPIs for customer service success. The following are the most important KPIs for customer feedback:
- Customer Satisfaction Index (CSAT)
- Net Promoter Index (NPI)
- Customer Effort Index (CES)
Setting specific metrics and making data-driven decisions will improve the customer experience and enable your team to take immediate action on rectifying any problems.
4. Inattention
To overcome one of the main customer service challenges, you have to take a nuanced approach for every customer. All customers, regardless of how often they buy from your company or the amount they purchase, deserve your best service. Customers today expect a personalized service, instead of a"robotic style" made up of scripted prepared responses. You will probably be wondering how it is possible to achieve this without massively expanding on your resources. You don’t need to break the bank for giving the best attention! Simply, in customer service you should remember this tips: listen actively, be friendly and respond in a timely, friendly manner. Also, keep this tip in mind: create more personalized relationships by simply remembering the customer's name, their preferences and adjust solutions to their preferences!
Achieving customer service success is not enough about solely finding a solution and ending up the case. Customers are eager to share compliments, criticisms, and ideas. They need to be aware that their thoughts and ideas are being taken seriously. Gaining customers' trust and strengthening existing relationships is a surefire way to boost business success and income.
5. Late response
No doubt, everyone values their time. Therefore, timely responses are very important for customer service success. For instance, approximately 70% of people believe that a quick response positively influences the customer experience - making a quick response one of the primary customer service challenges.
It’s more than understandable, that sometimes delays can happen for several reasons. However, if this is something that is happening regularly then you should address this and attempt to fix it as fast as possible. Does your team have enough knowledge about the product and processes? Could you benefit from a couple of new additions to the team? You should give the best possible training and improvements for your team, so they can effectively reply to your customers and resolve outstanding issues as soon as possible!
6. Miscommunication between departments
When different departments communicate poorly with each other, it can quickly develop into a major customer service challenge. Customers may become frustrated when their requests are delayed because various departments aren't on the same page regarding their case. Delays prevent problems from being addressed and resolved in a timely and pleasant manner for customers, which can lead to customer retention problems and a potential loss of business. To overcome any existing breakdown in communication, companies should prioritize open lines of communication and teamwork.
Put together, good collaboration between departments will boost your overall customer satisfaction.
7. Low First Call Resolution Rate (FSR)
It should come as no surprise that a quick response time is essential to customer success. However, you need to remember that a quick response also needs to be a quality one A low of first-call resolution rate indicates that many problems were not resolved on the first contact. Customers require a fast and effective response that effectively clears up all remaining issues.
What can result in low FSR scores? Some cases are of course too complex to be solved in one call. However, poor employee training, a lack of product knowledge, or even low employee motivation can all have an impact. Failure to resolve issues on the first try may necessitate the use of more resources for follow-up phone calls and emails. Clearly, FSR results can be improved by empowering employees with decision-making authority, providing training, and utilizing superior technology. Reward your employees and continue to boost their motivation!
By focusing on those simple elements, you will achieve excellent FSR results and demonstrate your commitment to providing excellent service!
Empower your customer service with Plecto!
It's clear that supporting technologies can make a big difference in achieving customer service success.
With customer service dashboards from Plecto, you'll be able to reach goals you never thought were possible and build stronger relationships with your customers. Usually, outdated tools and unmotivated employees are at the root of many customer service problems.
We integrate with the most popular customer relationship management (CRM) systems, so you can easily keep track of and managing the most important customer service processes for your business.
Plecto enables customer service teams to check up on everything that is happening, and then you can use tools like leaderboards, competitions, and gamification to quickly boost employee motivation and performance.
With Plecto's 14-day free trial, you can give your team the best tools and see all of your data in an actionable dashboard, which will help you manage your customer relationships better. Discover your unique potential and exponentially improve your customer service!
