Conversational Experience Archives - Page 2 of 2

Customer Service Software: The New Foundation of Marketing Strategies

Posted on April 30, 2018March 21, 2019 by David Dinh

More than 75% of customer-company interactions now occur online. Customers are continuously reaching out to companies over social media. Marketing teams that originally focused just on marketing over social media are now responsible for the customer service interactions. Customers constantly interact with these companies and expect quick meaningful responses.

Here are some great examples of customers contacting companies via social media. Shane from Canada contacted Samsung and explained to company representatives how he is a loyal customer. He told them all the products he owned and then kindly asked if they would send him a new phone for free. In return he offered this picture…

Samsung took this opportunity to show off its excellent customer service and market it to thousands of people. They sent him a new phone, and even customized it by putting his drawing on the back! Social media is a great way to get in contact with your customers, but remember, it’s okay to have some fun once in awhile. Samsung and other companies around the world often showcase their excellent customer service over social media because their marketing channels are so well established.

For a better customer service, use conversational technology to easily manage customer conversations. Request a demo now!

Woveon, an intelligent customer service startup, is paving the way in this online industry. Woveon is an easy-to-use online application providing businesses a centralized location to manage their customer channels, such as social media and phone calls. Using machine learning, social listening, a wide breadth of data, and a clean user interface, Woveon helps prioritize inquiries, identify valuable customers, and suggest personalized content. It levels the playing field for small businesses to compete with larger social media teams and helps enterprises visualize customer journeys. It simplifies online customer relations and makes businesses more efficient in managing the touch points they have with customers.

Learn How Woveon Can Improve Your Marketing Strategy

I recently read on Forrester, “I believe consumer behavior will continue to push eBusinesses to re-evaluate their approach to social media and move to more strategic interactions between marketing, branding, and customer service. Consumer adoption of both direct social support and peer-to-peer support has exploded in the last few years. Further, the majority of consumers expect a reply to their Facebook and Twitter posts.”

Companies should be working their best to get their customers to interact with their brand online. This can include Facebook, Twitter, email, YouTube and Google Ads. Millions of consumers are already online, and it is easy to reach larger audiences. But once you have reached these larger audiences, how do you manage the questions?

Single Platform Integration

Most companies have multiple channels of communication with their customers. Woveon has created a platform that combines all of your customer channels onto a single page. The simplicity allows your marketing and customer service teams to never miss a conversation.

Conversation History

Conversation history is another important feature when dealing with customer service and marketing. It helps to look at past interactions so that if a similar problem arises, you can quickly solve the problem with the steps in front of you. This feature also allows you to know the customer you are dealing with better.

Conversation Prioritization

Woveon’s advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities can prioritize customers. The program looks into the customer’s social media or purchase history and identify more valuable customers. This can include people with large followings on social media. Your customer service team can quickly respond and market how well your brand takes care of its customers.

Customer Service, The Foundation of Online Marketing

Every company’s priority is its customers. So why not focus on your valuable customers and solve the problems that arise? Woveon has the ability to simplify and better market your customer service. With so many different social media platforms, it can be hard for companies; however, integrating all channels onto a single page makes it extremely easy to keep track of all customers conversations. Conversation history allows representatives to look back on past interactions to learn more about your customer before interacting with them. It takes a software platform like Woveon to provide superior customer service.

9 Superb Ways to Delight Customers Without Putting in Too Much Time

Posted on April 20, 2018March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

As the saying goes, it is 5 times more expensive to sign up new customers than to keep existing customers. This simple economic idea should encourage businesses to focus most of their energy on keeping their existing customers extremely happy. But what are some simple and cost-effective ways to improve customer loyalty and satisfaction? There is no single step to instant gratification, but follow these simple steps and you will be well on your way.

Learn the importance of customer conversation management. Get a FREE Conversational Technology demo today!

Want some structure to providing excellent customer service? Start with this free Customer Service Charter template. Not only will this help you clarify customer service standards to your employees, but also communicate them to your customers! Incoporate the following steps in your customer service strategy!

Customer Satisfaction in 9 Simple Steps

1. Send Personalized Messages

Sending welcome messages, greeting cards, postcards and more are a great way to get in contact with your customers. When you personalize a card, it makes the customer feel appreciated and valued by your company.

Bonjoro, a Sydney startup, specializes in personalized welcome messages. You send short welcome videos to people who have recently signed up for your company and show them what their addition means to you. Thousands of BJ’s, as they like to call them, have been sent around the world, and each time you receive one, you instantly feel valued and happy.

2. Provide Superior Customer Service

Be certain that your passion for customer service runs rampant throughout your company. Employees should see how good service relates to your profits and to their futures with the company. Be genuinely committed to providing more customer service excellence than anyone else in your industry. This commitment must be so powerful that every one of your customers can sense it.

Set your goals for customer service and how you’re going to achieve them with this Customer Service Goals Guide.

Woveon, a software customer service startup, provides a one-of-a-kind customer service software platform that implements AI and Ml programs, customer conversation history, and a single platform to manage all customer channels. Simplifying the customer service a company handles is crucial to providing quick and meaningful feedback.

3. Start with a Lagniappe–a “Little Gift”

Come on, who doesn’t love receiving gifts?

“It’s amazing what a little gift can do to bring a smile. It doesn’t have to be much. This can even be a small coupon or freebie with a value of $10 or less, which they can use on any of your products or services. It is an easy, cost-effective way of inviting the customer to get to know you better. Whatever it is, just make sure it’s desirable, entertaining, and tasteful.”

4. Keep Your Promises

“I will deliver on time.” A due date that has been agreed upon is a promise that must be kept. “Close” doesn’t count. Monday means Monday. The first week in July means the first week in July, even though it contains a national holiday. Your clients are waiting to hear you say, “I deliver on time.” The supplier who consistently does so is a rarity and will be remembered.

“It’ll be just what you ordered.” It will not be “similar to,” and it will not be “better than” what was ordered. It will be exactly what was ordered. Even if you believe a substitute would be in the client’s best interests, that’s a topic for discussion, not something you decide on your own. Your customer may not know (or be at liberty to explain) all the ramifications of the purchase.

5. Interact With Your Customers

Interacting with your customers via multiple channels is a great way to keep them interested in your products, listen to their feedback, and shows that you are valued.

“We follow many of our clients as they come in the door, and then every once in awhile, we retweet their tweets. They get a notification that we’ve done this, and it shows we are paying attention to them and that we’re on the same page. It establishes a bond that goes beyond client service. It shows that we respect what they are saying.” –Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com

6. Provide More Than A Product

As I said in 5 Innovative Ways Companies Have Used VR for Marketing, many companies are now focusing on customer experience. These experiences can include, virtual reality sleigh ride tours like what Coca-Cola did, driver experience days at BMW, and even Lockheed Martin’s field trip to Mars campaign to educate today’s youth on the future of space travel.

These top companies are giving their customers and even future customers opportunities to enjoy more than just their products. They prove their brand’s loyalty and excellence through the experiences they provide. And who isn’t smiling when they are racing through the adrenaline-filled course at BMW’s Track Day with over 500 ponies pushing you over 150 mph!

7. Get Into Their Culture

Don’t just make assumptions about who your customers are and how they respond. Get to know the neighborhood/city/state/region where you are based and express an interest in their culture. Play local music, sponsor local artists, and decorate with local products. Find the common ground that helps you relate as people. The less you make it about commerce, the more people will connect and remain as customers.

8. Reward Loyalty

On average, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. Focus on your loyal customers by providing reward programs. These could include an anniversary gifts such as giving them coupons for your product a year after their first purchase. Another option a lot of airlines provide is gaining miles. The United Airlines MileagePlus account offers a wide variety of rewards such as flights, upgraded seats, United Club passes, and points you can redeem for gear. With rewards programs, customers are more loyal and happy to continue business with your company.

9. Listen to Your Customers

If your customers take the time to give you feedback about your product or an experience they had with your company, take it as a great learning opportunity. Sometimes you have to listen to the signals, not just the direct comments. 7 Core Customer Service Skills Your Support Team Needs to Have mentions the subtle clues that you should listen to in order to improve customer experience.

“Believe it or not, a customer service rep can learn more from what a customer doesn’t say than what they do say. Being attentive to the customers can help provide the company valuable feedback.”

“For example, if a customer says, ‘I always get confused during the Bluetooth pairing process,’ or ‘I can never seem to find the_____,’ this is a clear indication that your company has room for improvement, and these more subtle feedback methods can really improve your product overall.”

Satisfied?

The goal of marketing is to build a mutually beneficial relationship between brands and customers. This opens the door for special offers that extend far beyond a coupon. Keeping your customers happy is more than continuing to receive their money; it also helps you improve your company to make them even happier, and in turn, they’re happy to spend more money. It’s a win-win.

Want Your Customer Service To Be Sustainable? Be Dynamic

Posted on February 9, 2018June 23, 2021 by David Dinh

Guest blog by Jemma Martin

Customer service is subjective. It’s no longer about responding in the ‘right’ way. There is no such thing.

It’s about having the ability to be agile enough to facilitate the right answer in the right moment. Because every customer will want something different, depending on the product, the medium, the day, their mood… it’s all up for negotiation. And without this kind of flexibility, you’re losing out.

The right way is dynamic. The right way is the fastest, easiest way possible; no matter where your customer is.

Here’s an example. Last week on social media I saw an advertisement for fashion prescription glasses. I have been wanting to freshen up my physical appearance and I was due for some new glasses on my health plan, so I clicked on the link. I recognised some trendy brands and the website suggested I try them on in store. I left the page and forgot all about it.

The next day I was meeting a friend in town. She was running late so I walked through the mall and saw a sign with glasses of the brand I saw online. I walked into the optometrist, tried on a bunch of options and was given great customer service by the staff. I was still in store when my friend met me, and she ended up trying on some glasses too.

The staff then contacted my healthcare provider and gave me a follow-up call the next day. I wrote to the company via their social media page, and they responded to me within a few hours. The next day I went back in store to finalise my purchase of two new pairs of prescription glasses. After the weekend, I received an SMS advising me that my new frames were ready for collection and to follow the URL link in the message to book in a time to have them fitted. The web link directed me to my local store’s online booking system. I had a question about this appointment, so I called the store and they booked in my timeslot for the next day.

It was all very smooth, easy and convenient. And I told A LOT of family and friends about this shopping experience. I now think that I’ll buy some prescription sunglasses from the same company because it was so easy to deal with them.

So, who is responsible for my loyalty? The initial marketer? The in-store salesperson? The follow-up caller? The social media assistant? Or the individual who decided that the process should be seamless?

Or was it all artificial intelligence? Some data and algorithms that resulted in a positive customer service experience?

Honestly, I don’t care. I can tell you that before this experience, I’ve spent many hours shopping for new glasses and had gotten part way through the buying process and not completed the purchase due to frustration.

Why is that? What made this company different? It’s simple; they anticipated that my needs are dynamic, and created customer centric solutions before I, the every-day consumer, realised I needed them.

Over the course of a week, I used multiple mediums to communicate with this retailer; including face to face, text messaging, their website (through the SMS link), social media and phone calls.

I communicated with them when I was in my kitchen, my home office, in their city store, in a store at another location, through my mobile device and through my laptop. Sometimes I was alone, sometimes I was with my husband or a friend. It just worked.

This retailer recognised that I was living my life and that it looks different every day. They made everything easy. Their customer service process was dynamic, just like me.

This is now a non-negotiable for companies. Do you want to be sustainable? Yes. Well, how much? At the cost of upskilling your staff? At the cost of creating new processes and implementing in new systems? Can you anticipate your customers’ needs before they do?

The right way to provide customer service, is to do so dynamically. Because your customers themselves are now agents of change.

Expecting customers to follow old breadcrumbs all the way to the checkout isn’t smart business. It’s those very breadcrumbs that will keep you from attracting the customers you need to keep that checkout open.

Are you agile enough, to facilitate the right answers for your customers today?

Jemma is Sales Team Manager at the RAA Group and is studying her MBA at Torrens University. She loves to inspire people to think differently, create innovative solutions and take action. With a strong history in frontline sales, in both face to face and contact centre environments, Jemma believes that questioning the status quo is integral to sustainable success.

Hack: Lazy Customer Service Tips To Get The Most Loyal Customers

Posted on September 28, 2017March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

One of the keys to maintaining a thriving business is a steady customer base. The Pareto principle states that 80% of business comes from only 20% of customers. This exemplifies the importance of your customer loyalty. Add to this the fact that the cost of attracting new customers is almost 6x’s more expensive and you have a powerful incentive to keep that core group of customers happy.

If your business’s goal is to live long and prosper, then any efforts toward building customer loyalty will certainly pay off. Following are 7 tips to increase and maintain greater customer loyalty.

Importance Of Customer Service in Customer Retention

1. Stand For Something

Customers are more likely to ignore you if your company doesn’t stand for anything. Research from the Corporate Executive Board that included 7,000 consumers from across the U.S. found that of those consumers who said they had a strong relationship with a brand, 64 percent cited shared values as the primary reason. If you want loyal customers, you need create real connections with them. What do you stand for?

2. Communicate with Customers

Whether it’s an email newsletter, a monthly flier, a reminder card for a tuneup, or a holiday greeting card, set up a system for reaching out to the customers you already have. Dedicate time to creating and maintaining a database of contact information, including phone, email, and snail mail addresses. If there’s a social media element to your business, invite people to your page or website and keep that online element fresh.

3. Commit to Quality Service

Go above and beyond your customer’s’ expectations. Your product knowledge will engender confidence and trust and enable you to anticipate their questions, focus on their needs and guide you both to an appropriate solution to their situation. It’s almost impossible to ask too many questions of your customers. Once you know what they want, you will be able to deliver the right product at the right time. In simplest terms: Listen to your customers and go that extra mile. Listening to customers also often enables you to make suggestions about your services and products the customer hasn’t thought about and they will appreciate your knowledge and your expertise to help them resolve their needs.

4. Courtesy and Respect

You know how you like to be treated when you’re the customer. We all like to be accorded courtesy and treated as a sensible adult. You NEVER argue with a customer. Even if you know your customer is wrong, resolve the sales question or service issue quickly and in their favor and you’ve made a friend. Research shows that helping a customer resolve his or her issue results in continued business and likely makes a customer for life. Repeat business, not to mention word-of-mouth referrals, is the lifeblood of bottom lines

5. Be helpful even if your business can’t help them

If you can’t get your customer what they want, offer to help them find it elsewhere. It lets them know that you are willing to help without expecting anything in return. That unselfish gesture will make you stand tall in your customer’s’ eyes and will have them return next time.

6. Train Your Employees Thoroughly

Your employees are the face of your company, and training can empower them to make your company prosper. Training sessions should be a positive experience; boring training sessions are a waste of time and money and foster a negative attitude toward the company.

Encourage your employees to engage in training and explain how it will help them on the job and why it’s good for business. An excellent way to teach is on-the-job training, which facilitates on-the-spot demonstration of best practices.

7. Follow Up With Your Customers

No matter what the product or service you have sold a customer, you can be assured that they will appreciate it if you follow up in a couple of days to see how it’s working out. And it may lead to further business and more customers when your attention to detail and customer service is passed on by a happy customer.

The Art of Customer Retention

Customer service is a never ending task that will continue to build your brand loyalty. Customer Service is a long term commitment to customer satisfaction. It’s time to re-think how you engage and interact with your customers. There are many tactics, but no shortcuts. The tactics above should hopefully give you some fresh ideas for approaching retention, but they’re not a cure-all. Your product and service will do most of the heavy lifting in keeping customers loyal, and there are no shortcuts for that.

While pleasing customers with superior customer service is important, don’t forget to align your customer service goals to your business goals! There’s no point if you’ve got good brand image, if you don’t use it to your advantage! Realign with the Customer Service Goals template.

5 Proofs That Good Customer Service is the Reason Your Business Flourishes

Posted on August 31, 2017March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

“These days, offering a great product or service, even if it’s at the best price, may not be enough to win and retain customers. The modern customer has come to expect excellence in customer service and it seriously impacts their purchasing decisions. For instance, research shows 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience. And companies are on the hook for providing that good experience, given that it’s six to seven times more expensive for companies to win new customers than keeping existing ones. Good customer service pays.”

Request a FREE Conversational Software demo and learn effective customer service.

Woveon, a software customer service startup, realizes the value that your customer service provides and how important it is to keep a flourishing business. Woveon is an easy-to-use online application providing businesses a centralized location to manage their customer channels, such as social media, emails and phone calls. Using machine learning, social listening, a wide breadth of data, and a clean user interface, Woveon helps prioritize inquiries, identify valuable customers, and suggest personalized content. It simplifies online customer relations and makes businesses more efficient in managing the touchpoints they have with customers. We strive to ensure businesses can scale and respond back to all their customer enquiries.

These 5 Aspects of Customer Service Prove the Importance of Good Customer Service

1. Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is one of the key features to successful business. When a customer is loyal, they will keep buying products, turning into more and more revenue. But how does a company identify and keep these customers happy? With Woveon, identifying important customers and helping with their every need is easy! Woveon has created AI (Artificial Intelligence) programs that identify businesses-valued customers in multiple ways. Say someone has shopped at an e-commerce website multiple times and has a great buying history but has now run into some trouble. If they contact the store via multiple channels such as social media or email, a representative from the business can pull up their information and understand they are a valued customer. They can focus on their problems more quickly, and this keeps up customer satisfaction.

2. Knowledgeable Staff

Nothing is more frustrating than calling customer service and feeling more apt than the “resourceful” representative. This is why it is so important to have knowledgeable staff who don’t just stick to a script and set of instructions. Your employees should be able to problem solve on their own. In order to do this, one should hire people who show interest in their business and understand its products. However, having knowledge on more than just the product is important. For smaller businesses, getting to know your customers and being able to talk with them more on a personal level can be very important. With Woveon’s technology, this is a walk in the park. Woveon’s recorded conversations not only help with consistency, but it can also help a customer service rep get to know the client more by reviewing past conversations. Although this may not apply to all businesses, small to mid-sized companies can really benefit from having personable customer service reps who are extremely knowledgeable about their product and clients. So before hiring any applicant, make sure he/she is enthusiastic about the product or service the company provides.

3. Online Marketing and Social Media

Most people don’t associate online marketing with customer service, but with so many online interactions going on between customers today marketing teams and customer service work hand in hand. Woveon has the ability to simplify and better market your customer service. With so many different social media platforms, it can be hard for companies; however, integrating all channels onto a single page makes it extremely easy to keep track of all customers conversations.

Try these 5 Creative Ways You Can Use Customer Service to Amp Up Your Online Marketing!

Companies should see social media as a huge opportunity when it comes to advertising and customer service. People contact companies over Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all the time. Just the other week, I was on a United Airlines flight, and I had tweeted at them. They responded asking me how my flight was going within minutes. This is a great example of how customer service over marketing channels is so important. It shows to their followers how much they are invested in their customers and that they truly care. This also shows that the companies are up to date when it comes to interacting with customers. They are open to change and customers want to see companies that embrace change like they do.a

4. Customer Apologies

Everyone makes mistakes, some you can control, others just happen. It is always better to apologize first and then move forward. When it comes to customer service, the representative is almost never to blame; however, the customer may think differently. A customer service rep should apologize not only for the inconvenience the customer is going through, but also so the customer can sense that the rep personally cares about the problem.

Click here for 5 email templates to get you out of angry customer situations.

If you are nice to your customers, they, in turn, would be more likely to reciprocate. Of course, there will be good and bad customers, but as long as you are willing to be upfront, apologize for any mistakes you could have made, and are ready to solve the problem, most customer interactions will go smoothly. Remember, solving the problem is only half of the interaction; being fast, knowledgeable, and polite completes the customer service process.

5. Happy Staff = Happy Customers

Forbes’ Rodd Wagner writes, “The formula is simple: Happy employees equal happy customers, asserted an article last fall in CEO Magazine. Similarly, an unhappy employee can ruin the brand experience for not just one, but numerous customers.” Happy employees = happy customers works. It’s a fantastic sentiment. It’s the right strategy. It is miles ahead of and far more on course than the assertions of the anti-happiness crowd. And if you need to boil down to a few words the connections between employee experience and customer experience, run with it.”

Staff retention is crucial to your company for improving customer service excellence. Research shows clearly that staff stay when they are happy and respect the company in which they work. Their happiness translates into excellent work when dealing with important customers.

Customer Service

Susane Friedmann, a writer on customer service says, “Customer service is an integral part of our job and should not be seen as an external extension of it. A company’s most vital asset is its customers. Without them, we would not and could not exist in business. When you satisfy your customers, they not only help you grow by continuing to do business with you but they will also recommend you to friends and associates.

The practice of customer service should be as present on the showroom floor as it is in any other sales functions and pertinent in the overall company environment.

Get started with a Customer Service Charter! Set the standards of customer service you expect your employees to deliver and your customers can expect to receive.