customer experience Archives - Page 3 of 4

5 World Class Customer Support Teams

Posted on April 19, 2018March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

When it comes to the customer support of a business, it is surprising that not a lot of businesses have it covered. It is possible that after painstakingly building a business over the years, just a few bad customer experiences can lead to the downfall of the product. If you’re in such a scenario, you don’t have to start worrying, just take a page out the books of the industry giants. They’ve been providing their services for years and if there is one thing they know how to do well, it is to provide customer support.

Learn What Conversational Technology is, Sign Up for a FREE demo today!

By studying their customer support strategy, you can focus on incorporating these in your business as well. The following are some of the best companies and their world class customer support teams.

Customer Support Teams to Look Up To

Zappos – The Customer Comes First

Zappos is a retail and e-commerce site and it stands out due to its amazing customer support. The support team is considered to be the golden standard which has gone out of its way to cater to the needs of the customer. Their team has consistently delivered on their promise and each client is treated as a priority. See more about their culture here https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/Customers also have happy stories to recount with one of them telling how they got their shoes delivered overnight for a wedding, without having to pay any extra cost, or how one of the Zappos team members went to another store to get shoes for someone once they were sold out. By considering no request as impossible, Zappos has elevated its customer support to heights that are other companies aspire to reach. Read more about the customer service strategies behind Zappos https://sharpencx.com/blog/zappos-customer-service/

Publix – By the People, For the People

A market chain, much like Walmart, Publix is a company that provides exceptional customer services due to the fact that it is by the people, for the people. The company focuses on the needs and wants of their employees. This in turn allows it to focus better on the needs and wants of the customers as well.By investing in the wellbeing of their people, the company has managed to consistently deliver a positive shopping experience to the customers. Moreover, it is the largest employee owned store and has a great record of ensuring that their store can cater to the shopping requests of others around them. Learn from their customer service http://www.happyfox.com/blog/how-to-create-killer-customer-service-models-learn-from-publix/

Amazon – the Customer is at the Centre

Amazon.com is the world’s largest, online platform for sales and ensures that they can provide stellar customer services to their clientele. Apart from their 24/7 availability, Amazon.com also offers full refunds immediately, provides self-service and runs checks on the retailers they feature to ensure they are up to par with their standards.

Even when they are developing new product offerings, Amazon.com makes sure to keep the customer in the middle of it all. All services are tested and tweaked according to the customer in order to enhance the experience before they are launched and they have a proven track record, even winning multiple awards for their customer support.

Apple – Reinventing the Customer Experience

With Apple, innovation is the name of the game. Apple’s customer support is prompt and exceedingly helpful with many of their outlets functioning as customer support centres too. The staff of their customer support is well-versed regarding Apple products and from simple recommendations to helping with troubleshooting equipment, they can easily address a wide range of technical problems.

Moreover, Apple’s staff consists of people who are passionate about the company and the products it creates. Going to the Apple Genius bar is an experience in which many people find out more about the company, the products and walk away with a smile on their face. Apple has also continuously strived to train its staff regarding the products and how to address queries. By investing in its workforce, Apple effectively helps to ensure that there are no unnecessary problems faced by anyone.

Nordstorm – Maintaining a Healthy and Strong Relationship

Another retail company that focuses on the wellbeing of their clientele, Nordstorm has worked its way up and during that process; they have done their best to build a working relationship which is healthy, reliable and stable. By adding a personal touch to their services, Nordstorm ensures that they are able to effectively appeal to their clientele.

Their shopping experience revolves around removing the painful checkout lines, helping clients with their purchases as well as offering to find the clothing items that a client needs, even when they are out-of-stock in certain cases. Moreover, the team isn’t shy about interacting personally with the clients as well, even commending their fashion choices and recommending more clothing which goes hand in hand with their tastes.

At the end of the day, building a successful customer support team can rely on a lot of factors but these businesses have narrowed them down to 5. By using their example, you can push your business to newer, better heights. Learn more how they went the extra mile with customer service https://www.shopify.com/retail/119531651-how-nordstrom-made-its-brand-synonymous-with-customer-service-and-how-you-can-too

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.

The Art and Science of Customer Engagement

Posted on February 1, 2018March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

It’s a no-brainer that we no longer interact with customers the same way we did face-to-face in brick and mortar. With customers increasingly using social media, apps and websites to shop and browse, they are being empowered with more information and more choice. With so much choice available to the customer, it really boils down to the quality of their customer experience with the company that ultimately wins a customer and gains their loyalty. For any company that wants to increase their conversion rates and retain their customers (which company doesn’t, really), you need to excel at customer engagement.

Learn how to manage your Customer Engagement. Sign Up for FREE Conversation Technology demo today!

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is, in its simplest form, the interaction between a company and their customers. But it should not be mixed up with Customer Service. Customer Service is an interaction with a customer as a result of the customer reaching out to the company. Customer engagement on the other hand, is an interaction between the company and customer where both parties are actively reaching out to each other. On social media, this takes form of companies posting engaging content such as quotes and discounts to delight their followers, as well as responding and reacting to customers who reach out to them.

I’ll break this down with an example:

A customer has a problem with a company’s product. He takes a picture and posts this on the company’s Facebook.

Scenario 1: The company sees this issue and replies with a solution to the customer. End of interaction. This is customer service.

Scenario 2: The company replies to this customer publicly with a solution; and privately messages him asking for his email address in order to send him a small token of appreciation for letting them know. This time, the customer posts up his satisfaction with how the company has handled the issue. In response, the company reply favourably to his post and reshares it to encourage other customers to also contact them about issues, because they are actively listening to their customers. This, is customer engagement.

How to do Customer Engagement right?

So, customer engagement is a little more work than your traditional customer service. It might be a real pain, but with such widespread use of the internet, that is the level of customer experience you need to provide to attract, retain and engage customers to develop them into promoters. Whilst there are countless ways to engage with your customers, there are three crucial points you need to address in every customer engagement strategy.

1. Be Omnipresent

Being omnipresent means that you’re everywhere at the same time. Meaning, you should be on social media, email, phone, chatbot and whatever other communication channel your company uses, all at the same time, around the clock. Customers expect a company to have presence on at least 3 to 4 social channels, as well as fast response times across all these channels. 32% of people who contact a company for customer support on social media expects a reply within 30 minutes. 42% expect a response within 60 minutes. Crazy right! If you’re anything like me, you’re a bit of a sloth replying to your friends on social media. Just imagine if you had hundreds messaging you every day expecting instant replies.

Some ways companies are overcoming this hurdle is by outsourcing customer service, using social media management platforms, or just start slow by using social listening tools. Customers want to have their voice heard on a channel they use, and very importantly, want to know that you value their time.

2. Provide seamless omnichannel experiences

Omnichannel experiences mean blending the touchpoints a company has with its customers to provide a wholesome, integrated experience. Not only will this improve customer satisfaction, but the reduction of customer effort has been proven to be a huge contributor to customer loyalty.

Disney and Tomorrowland are amongst the top in providing an omnichannel experience to their customers. Customers start from mobile optimised websites, to online itinerary planning, to a mobile app that can be used to find locations at the venue. They have made it easier for customers to transition from platform to platform and from online to offline, making these entertainment giants some of the most successful in the world.

3. Be Personal

Nothing better than having human touch, really. In a Genesys Global Survey, 40% of 9000 consumers say better human service mattered to them the most in customer support, much more than other options such as integration of more channels and enriched content.

Being personal goes beyond using their name when interacting with them or showing a picture of your face on the chatbot screen; it also encompasses being responsive to their emotions and knowing their history with the company. The end goal is for the customer to develop feelings of personal connection to a company or brand. Once they are in this comfortable stage, it’s much more likely they will end up becoming evangelists of the company.

A fantastic example of online personalization is Hubspot’s smart content. Smart content intelligently personalizes content to the user’s need. Using information such as their job title, average page views or stage in the buying process, smart content changes the content the user sees on the website. A regular visitor would for example, see different call-to-actions or forms compared to a new user. The result? Personalized content did 42% better.

Whilst there is no one right way to do customer engagement, being omnipresent, omnichannel and personalized (even to some degree) has reaped many benefits for all companies that have implemented it. What are you doing in your business to engage with your customers? Share with us in the comments below!

Why is Customer Service Even Important?

Posted on January 26, 2018March 25, 2019 by David Dinh

In a world that is so well connected and competition only a click away, customer service is an ever increasingly important aspect to your business. Robert Adams, a serial entrepreneur describes the importance of customer service as, “Anyone who is serious about making considerable headway in business needs to understand why customer service is so important. It’s not just for all the obvious fiscal reasons. It goes far beyond that. It delves into the very existence of who we are and why we do the things that we do. The way we treat our customers is indicative of the way we look at things in life. Are we short-sighted, merely searching for the next pay day, or does our vision give us a deeper understanding of the long-term implications of our actions? Clearly, if you want to make strides today, you really do have to place the customer on a pedestal.

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

And while there are ample reasons why any person should start a business in the first place, everyone needs to pay homage to the customer so that they can stay in business. The less short-sighted the approach is from any enterprise, the more likely it will be to achieve long term success.”

Here’s a Customer Service template to help you get started with Customer Service Success! Start by identifying where your points of contact with your customers are, how you will manage them, and the standards of service customers can expect from your company and its employees.

5 Important Components of Customer Service

1. Customer Retention is Far Less Expensive Than Customer Acquisition

“On average, it costs approximately five times more to attract a new customer to your business than it costs to retain an existing customer. That logic on its own should highlight the importance of providing excellent customer service. Why risk losing a customer? It’s costly enough to locate new customers in the first place, and every business should do whatever it takes to ensure they stay happy and continue doing business with them.”

2. It will build brand awareness

“If you don’t already know this, then it is time to learn. Word of mouth is the most powerful ally you have on your side. What your customers say to others could make or break your business. When you provide the best in customer service, guess what happens? People will talk about you. They will remember your brand. If they hear someone else talking that they need a specific kind of company, they are much more likely to say, “Oh, go to this place. They are great!”

3. It’s A Great Marketing Angle

“From a purely business standpoint, good customer service is a great marketing angle. It’s something you can tout in your advertisements which is sure to bring you in more customers. People like to hear you have top notch customer service, pure and simple. Anything that can help you with effective marketing is worth the extra effort. This angle works best when other real-life customers are talking about how great your customer service is, so feel free to ask for reviews and testimonials.”

4. It Elongates the Life of Any Business

“Today, only four out of every 100 businesses last through until the 10-year mark. That’s a massive 96 percent failure rate. When you ignore the needs of your customers, and you don’t focus on going out of your way for them, you’re cutting short the potential for longevity in business. With so many obligations and responsibilities, if you’re serious about your business, you have to focus on the core — your customers. Because, without them, you have no business at all.”

5. Great Customer Service Opens Doors for New Partnerships and Other Opportunities

“Treating your customers like gold is infectious. It opens the doors for new partnerships, especially when other businesses see just how well you take care of your existing customers. It says a lot about a company and what they value when they care deeply about their customers. It’s something that you rarely find in business these days, but it most certainly paves the way for powerful partnerships, collaborations and other opportunities.”

As you can see, customer service benefits your company in many more ways than simply helping your customers. It creates customer loyalty which saves you money in the long run, can be used as a form of advertisement, elongates your businesses life, and opens doors through partnerships with happy customers. Businesses should constantly be asking themselves how they can improve their customer service, such as embracing new technology like Innovative Uses for VR in Business, or giving out customer and employee surveys to make improvements where pain points exist. Get started, because it will definitely pay off!

One Company – Multi Customer Channels

Posted on October 12, 2017March 14, 2019 by David Dinh

When someone mentions a retail store, you’ll most probably imagine a building, amidst a crowd of parked cars. A clear picture of aisles and aisles of different products will cross your mind. And then you would also imagine some of the other shoppers you’re likely to meet there. This might ring true for many people but even if you enjoy experiencing the oddity of everyday life, who has the time for such nonsense? After a busy day at work, the last thing you’d want to do is stand in a queue at the retail store, just to buy a 1L of milk. Retail stores identified the ‘need for speed’ and thus, the multi-channel strategies were formed.

Woolworths – The Fresh Food People

Woolworths is one such retail store in Australia, who has adopted multi-channel strategies to serve their customers better. They opened their first store in Sydney, in 1924 and soon afterwards, gained the popularity that have made them one of the leading retail stores in Australia. By revenue, they come on the 2nd place, after Wesfarmers.With over 3000 stores across Australia and New Zealand, the team at Woolworths soon realised that the traditional brick-and-mortar store strategy wouldn’t be able to satisfy their customer needs and so in 2011, they took the initiative to become the country’s leading multi-channel retailer. They decided to achieve their goal through a holistic and integrated strategy so as to capitalise on the country’s growing demand for online shopping. Fast forward to 2017 and the business is blooming for the retailer. For their third quarter in 2017, Woolworths revealed that their online sales have increased by 20%. According to a study analysed by Australian Consumer, Retail, and Services (ACRS) Research Unit, just four advertising channels (websites, personalised direct mail, TV ads and catalogues and flyers) are responsible for influencing 92% of a consumer’s purchase decision.

Online Delivery

The ease of online shopping at Woolworths is certainly unmatched by many other retailers operating in the same industry. With reward offers and personalized shopping experience, customers can easily get their shopping delivered to their home or pick it up from the store, all ready for them.
The ‘Track My Order’ option helps customers know when to expect the delivery and even schedule the time of their delivery.

Shopping App

Want to save even more time? The Woolworths app is available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store. From personalised shopping lists to a store locator, the app offers the ultimate ease for its customers.

Dark Stores

When Woolworths opened its first ‘dark store’ in 2014, it was to reduce the time it took to fulfill online orders faster. The ‘dark store’ looked exactly like the other Woolworths stores, except that it was bigger in size. The aisles were maintained, the products were stocked neatly but it was closed to the general public.
You might wonder why a store wouldn’t allow customers in. That’s because the store isn’t for customers!

In this fast paced world, not many people have the time to waste on grocery shopping. A better alternative is online shopping but there were some issues to ordering online too. Most of the times, deliveries would take too long and Woolworths realised the need for faster deliveries. Hence, the ‘dark store’ was set up. It was Woolworths first dedicated online store and personal shoppers were amazed with the results.

With conventional stores, an ever present flow of customers makes it difficult for the staff to pick up online orders. The only time online orders can be picked is either early morning or at night, when the customer flow is at its lowest. Now, the dark store has solved this problem.

With no slow-moving customers blocking the aisles, the team at Woolworths dark store was able to fulfill orders quickly and at any time of the day. At peak hours, there can be as many as 80 pickers on the floor, at the same time.

Conclusion

Supermarkets are just one niche that Woolworths deal in. With a number of liquor stores, liquor supermarkets, petrol stations and discount department store chains, Woolworths Limited deals in numerous channels.

In order to enhance their digital business capabilities, Woolworths invested in contact center technology-as-a-service and in doing so, experienced a 40% reduction in touch points for email. Woolworths have expanded due to their award winning multi-channel initiatives and with their attention on innovation for increased customer experience, they are changing the face of Australian retail.

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.

5 Online Companies With World Class Customer Management

Posted on August 17, 2017March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

Giving world class customer service is at the core of keeping your business afloat. After all it is a satisfied customer that forms the building block of your company. Failing to retain your customers will inevitably result in a systematic slow demise of your business, something that any successful business would all like to avoid. Technology has changed the landscape of customer relationship services by bringing about a unique set of tools, also known as customer relationship management (CRM) software, to streamline the cumbersome process of communicating with numerous clienteles.

Learn how to identify valuable customers in one view. Request a FREE Conversation Software demo today!

By successfully implementing these tools, companies have been able to gain a more thorough understanding of their customer’s needs and if their products are able to match their expectations. Australian companies that are adamant to spearhead their businesses efforts to succeed will have to do more than just understand key internet metrics and viral campaigns. They will have to build a successful CRM strategy. They will need to successfully segment their customer base and schedule bulk emails without spending too much time on them.

What is CRM and Customer Management?

1. By effectively using business analytics to pinpoint a problem with your product which a customer is experiencing, you can easily fine tune them before they spiral out of control and affect all of your customers.

2. A CRM can help you track your customer’s online activities such as the number of times they press the like button on your Facebook posts and their responses to your emails. This will help you gauge their interest, which would allow you to build products that can engage them better.

3. You can also generate an automated response each time your customer submits a complaint. We understand that your customer representative team is not always available to answer any queries, but a CRM can do exactly that! As soon a complaint is submitted to your online forums (or Facebook page), the CRM software will promptly generate a helpful message which will keep the customer engaged to your website and allow more time for the sales team to address their grievances.

4. For most businesses, their emails just stack up on top of each other and are ignored. A CRM ensures that the right emails land in the right category depending on the contact and content. This way your business can ensure that key information about the customer is retained.

Related:
Customer Experience Strategy

Below are 5 Companies that are Killing it with their World Class Customer Management

The following companies have done exactly that and much more – to not only retain older clientele but also increasing the scale of their business to achieve a larger outreach.

1. Dollar Shave Club: Know Your Customer:

By using an in-house CRM solution, Dollar Shave Club has been able to provide some of the best customer services, which most companies can only look at with envy. Their policy of “We don’t respond to situations, we respond to people,” has helped them grow into having millions of subscribers and satisfied, returning customers. This strategy was so successful that Unilever has acquired them for over $1 billion!

2. YouTube: Suggesting Similar Content to Users

When you watch a particular genre of video on YouTube, say a gaming video, YouTube quickly picks that up and feeds that into their algorithm. So the next time you log on to their channel, you only see content related to video games. This way you won’t be spammed by boring content that might serve to push you away from their website. Because of this strategy, users who might waste 15 minutes on YouTube searching for their favourite content, can now find all relevant content on the front page.

3. Uber: Sharing Assets

Customer relationships are at the very heart for companies such as Uber, Airbnb and Lyft. Their entire business is built around satisfying their customers. Uber specifically makes use of Salesforce CRM software to gain insights about their customers and keep track of every single transaction, interaction, ride rating and customer complaint. Uber is a massive corporation with a stupendously large customer base, so how does Uber immaculately address the grievances of their giant clientele? By implementation of a reliable and scalable CRM solution. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/10/how-to-uberize-your-business.html

4. Amazon

Amazon has hit the nail on the head when it comes to CRM implementation. Amazon makes it a point of strategy to ask their customers to create accounts. This is done so they’re able to collect as much data about their customer as possible. They use this data to segment their customer base, store account information, address details and suggest relevant products for them to buy. Their recommended products are able to keep users browsing through their website for hours on end; which drives up sales.

5. Target in Australia

Large scale retailers like Target can never even fathom collecting their customer’s data without a proper CRM strategy in place. They can now collect this treasure trove of data from websites and call centres to help accelerate the flow of customer information and keep them abreast of offers that suit their particular shopping habits.

3 Essential Tools To Help Predict Customer Needs

Posted on July 27, 2017March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

Among the many things that a business needs to keep an eye on, predicting customer needs is one of the most important. Smarter customers have higher expectations and a business that wants to grow has to be able to not only meet these expectations but also predict them. Having predictive customer services might appear tricky but with the help of data analysing tools, you can monitor your customer’s buying patterns, demographics and other behaviours.

Predict Customer Needs. Request a FREE Conversation Technology demo today.

Through enhancing your customer services, you can also offer your clients a better shopping or buying experience as compared to your competitors. In this day and age where even a single bad review can make a difference, providing good quality, predictive customer services can make a major impact particularly in your marketing strategy.

Customer Prediction Tools You Need

Data Gathering

When you’re growing your marketing campaigns, you need to gather proper data on your customers and the following are some of the best resources that let you do so.

Google Analytics

An old one but a gold one, Google Analytics has helped many businesses monitor the different facets of their customers behaviour. From monitoring the visibility of your website to keeping an eye on how much time the visitors are spending on the site, you can get a lot of data regarding your sites usage. The best part is that you can easily isolate the areas which are underperforming and figure out how to optimise them. Moreover, the data sheds more light on showing you visitor ‘habits’ on the site and how you can incorporate those to offer predictive customer services to them. Another good thing about Google Analytics is that it also allows you to test out any new feature and see how well the changes are being received. UpWork created a great article how to understand the customers coming to your website https://www.upwork.com/hiring/for-clients/google-analytics-to-better-understand-your-visitors/

Kissmetrics

Another tool that lets you observe the habits of your visitors, Kissmetrics provides invaluable data that can be used to optimise your website and services. Individual monitoring ensures that you find in-depth information that tracks key growth in various segments as well as shows which features are wanted and not-wanted by the average visitor or customer. If you’re tapping into a new target market, Kissmetrics is the perfect tool for you as it allows you to monitor the response and provide more tailored predictive customer services that hit the mark properly. With a multitude of other features as well that are meant to help optimise your business with ease, Kissmetrics makes it easier to analyse and view all the changes being made. Kissmetrics wrote up a great article here about understanding customer data.

Inspectlet

If you find it hard to review the data you have received, you’re going to love using Inspectlet. With the aim of helping everyone, Inspectlet focuses on monitoring customer behaviour to provide credible data regarding site visitation time, areas of interest and more regarding the consumer. Inspectlet also takes monitoring to a whole other level by providing video recordings or playbacks of every visitor to the site. This in turn ensures a deeper level to monitoring. The best part is that Inspectlet is frequently used by sites such as eBay, Cisco and WordPress who are prime examples of great predictive customer services. Have a look at how to apply the Pareto principle to some of your customer analytics.

Applying learnings to use

Once you’ve got all your data in hand, you have to start using it. Anticipation of customer expectations begins here. For this reason, you need to use tools that help you create an engagement plan for future customers. The following are some of the best ones.

Rapid Miner

Rapid Miner offers an open source platform for data scientists to use with ease. With its comprehensive products that are specifically developed according to a particular industry and its requirements, Rapid Miner makes data application into credible models and their deployment easier.The best part is that it’s all open source; the team can collaborate and access the data with ease, regardless of their locality. Big businesses such as Siemens, Cisco, Samsung, Hitachiand more also rely on Rapid Miner for their predictive customer services plans. For an introduction to advanced analytics.

Angoss

Based solely on providing predictive analytics that aid in improving customer services, Angoss has services that are based not only on the industry but also on the nature of the analytics you want. From improving marketing performance to minimising any risks faced, Angoss is the complete solution for any business.Angoss is utilised by PayPal, Walmart, and eBay, TMobile, Cisco, Microsoft and MasterCard. The success of these businesses stands to testament to Angoss’s services. Moreover, with services available on a global level, Angoss is accessible for all, regardless of where they function in.

3 Creative Ways You Can Ensure Your Clients Always Succeed!

Posted on July 13, 2017April 17, 2019 by David Dinh

The one key area that you need to look at when you want to run a successful business is ensuring that you can keep your clients happy. How can you manage such a thing? Well, by making sure that your clients are successful, and that isn’t always possible. There are many businesses that struggle to provide their clients with meaningful services that result in them being successful.

Learn how to manage your customer conversations easily. Request a FREE Conversation Software demo today!

If your clients aren’t successful, then you will not have many repeat customers, because people like working with successful businesses. This concern is bigger for small businesses, because they aren’t always able to deliver top-notch services to their customers.

Here are 3 Creative Ways you Can Ensure your Clients Always
Succeed:

The quality of services delivered to customers is always important for a business, but along with that, the business must also ensure that they are helping achieve customer success in the long run.

1. The Customer Success Factor

So, why is success for clients so important? It is because every major business needs to realize the value of helping their partners achieve success as well. The fundamentals of business haven’t changed over time, but the only thing that has changed is that now businesses must ensure that their clients are successful as well. This can be tricky sometimes because you must do business with a company that wants to work with yours to ensure complete success in their industry.

This means that every business strategy that you come up with, must also include how it affects the success of the client. This is done to ensure that all aspects are covered, and there are no disappointments after business is concluded. There are multiple strategies that you can employ with the right vision and commitment at the forefront to ensure that your business partners and clients are happy and satisfied. It is important to take the success factor into account, because you need to create love between your business and your customers.

2. The Customer is Always King

Any business that places the interests of its customers above their own is going to be a successful business, because they are going to go out of their way to make sure that the customer is content. Most businesses that fail, do so because they stop caring about their customers. It is important that you always treat the customer properly, and remember that they are always the king.

If your business is failing to win over more customers, you should probably look at what kind of customer experience you are offering to your clients. There is enough data around that points to the importance of great customer experience in helping businesses retain and attract new clients.

There are numerous studies that have shown 40% of brands that didn’t receive good services, refused to work with that business again.
It also states that 90% of businesses will go to a direct competitor if they are given poor customer experience.
Nearly 60% of clients are willing to pay more to receive better customer experience.

Businesses that fail to value their clients, and don’t care about their success are likely to lose out, and not get ahead in their industry. Therefore, it is imperative that you find out creative ways to ensure that you give priority to customer success.

We also want our clients to succeed, which is why we are going to provide you with 3 creative ways you can ensure that your clients always succeed.

3. Genuine Interaction – Treat them right

Make sure that you have genuine interactions with your customers, because it is the only way that you are going to help them feel at home. There is no secret about the fact that happy clients are much more willing to work with you and provide you with better word of mouth regarding your business. By treating your customers properly, you will ensure that you build a genuine interaction with them, and they will feel better in doing business with you.

4. Don’t come across as too strong

You need to always respect your clients if you want to keep them happy and satisfied with your services. There are lots of customers who don’t want to scare off your clients or disappoint them. That is the main reason why you should always treat your clients with respect, because if they are upset with you, then your business is the one that is going to suffer. Disgruntled customers are not good for business, and that is where you need to be patient.

You should do everything in your power to get your client in a better mood and try to resolve their issues. There aren’t going to be many clients lining up to work for your business if you don’t work with your clients in a respectful manner.

5. Hear their problems

You should always be listening to your customer’s problems so that you can help them in times of trouble. There are not many businesses that would work with a company that doesn’t take their feedback on board. You should have good communication with your client and always take everything they say into account, because that is the only way you are going to improve your situation and guarantee customer success.