customer service Archives

Why is Multi Channel Customer Service Important?

Posted on August 7, 2021August 8, 2021 by David Dinh

We live in a time of plentiful choices. Making the most of it, many organisations or start-ups in globally are creating their impact, in the shortest possible time, by means of integrating multiple channels of customer service in their businesses. These channels include phone support, email and chat support, social media support, or even text support.

Nowadays, integration of multi-channel customer services is one of the most important factors for a business to consider, due to many reasons. By providing a range of options to the customer, businesses in globally are attracting and growing their loyal customer base significantly. They build high value by affecting the way in which people are making purchase decisions nowadays.

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In addition, offering abundant choices to your customers is a forerunner for a business to maintain its presence, meet the customer needs round the clock irrespective of their location, and empower customers to take the right decision. To assist you further, let’s have a detailed look at the concept of multi-channel customer service.

Business Efficiency through Multi Channel Integration

Multi channel customer service holds huge potential in delivering business efficiency and excellent customer experiences. The customer experience offered by integrating a multi channel strategy creates a more personalised, optimised and responsive outlook of a business in competitive and transforming industries.

As per the Fifth Quadrant’s research;

The primary channels that attract the maximum investment of various small or big organisations are 83% online or self-service – digital, 62% mobile apps, 34% email and surprisingly, 57% of investment is focused on the phone or voice channel while 18% towards face to face channels.

This clearly emphasises on the potential that opens up for a business with the integration of multi channel customer service. Along with that, the level of exposure of the customer base to your business improves, as you cater to the needs of your customers by all means, and without falling short of their expectations.

Are you increasing the investment in multi channel customer service this year, to attain higher business value in your particular industry?

If you too, plan to join the forces of digital transformation and differentiate your business from the existing competitors, then you must make the most of these consumer channel preferences, and make only the right decisions, most importantly in the right direction, to optimise your customer service experience.

The top most channels utilised by Australian consumers, to avail customer service, are through phone conversation – 62%, via self-service website – 41% and in person – 45%.

The Prospective Channels of Customer Service and their Importance

Organisations that believe in delivering exceptional customer support, reach out to their consumers through all of those channels where their customers are present. Thus:

If your existing customer base includes avid user of emails, opt for an instant email support.
If they like to reach your business on Twitter, make this platform as your potential channel of customer support to access your customers efficiently.

In continuation of the above stated Fifth Quadrant research, keeping a strong grip on all the available channels of customer support will be the only key factor in differentiating your business and moving it along to a true market leader.

Email: This is undoubtedly the most non negotiable channel for all types of businesses. Almost 91% of consumers utilise an email service, everyday. This is the easiest means of building instant rapport with your customer base.

Social Media: Social networks are now the most excellent means of accessing your customer and to grow your business. Companies who use social networks as customer support channels have 15% lower churn rates than the ones who don’t.

Self-service Knowledge Base: As the name depicts, the self-service knowledge base is extremely useful to help your customers get to know you better, without being present for their assistance, through a live channel of customer support. You can deliver exceptional assistance 24/7 with just a small team.

Voice or live Chat:Phone support is old-fashioned but considered as the fastest means of communication between your business and the customer base. In fact, phone assistance accounts for almost 68% of the speediest interactions. Similarly, 44% of customers say that having a live chat support during an online purchase creates a trustworthy relationship with the service providers and is accounted for, as the top feature a website could offer.

Multi Channel Customer Service – A mean of seamless consumer experience

Your customer wants to be able to contact you with whatever device they hold in their hands and that is what your business needs to do – make itself accessible, by all possible means, for your customer’s satisfaction.

Integrate many digital platforms and provide seamless consumer experience through different channels. If you manage to reach out to your consumer base through numerous channels, your business will be providing fantastic experience to its customers, which is hard to give up.

Gain more loyalty and trust with your instant customer service. Stay responsive to your customers and effectively provide them with updated information and flawless support.

In today’s fast paced and transforming world, a business that shows itself invested in providing exceptional support to its customers, by making the most of the multi channel customer service, will go a long way in building long lasting relationships with its customers and successfully make its mark.

Navigating Your Way Past The “Trough Of Disillusionment” For Artificial Intelligence In Customer Experience

Posted on October 26, 2020July 23, 2021 by David Dinh

Guest blog by Steve Nuttall

The hype around Artificial Intelligence technologies is at its peak. According to the 2017 Gartner Hype Cycle, emerging technologies such as deep learning, machine learning and virtual assistants are at the “peak of inflated expectation”. Cognitive expert advisors have passed this peak and are now descending towards the “trough of disillusionment”. This occurs when interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver.

The benefits of AI for customer experience management are potentially game changing. AI has the capability to analyse vast amounts of data in real time from various sources, including human behaviours and emotions. Expectations are high because this capability can then be used to create seamless and personalised customer experiences that are optimised to the device and channel of choice.

Pragmatists and battle hardened cynics will recall that when automation was first introduced into customer service channels, the results were often spectacularly underwhelming. So, is the application of AI to customer experiences destined to fall into the trough of disillusionment before climbing the slope of enlightenment? Or is there a path to follow to avoid the pitfalls of unmet expectations?

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Intelligently using Artificial Intelligence for Customer Experience

In order to find out whether the application of AI to your business’ customer experience will take a downturn, it is necessary to first ask yourself: What is driving your organisation’s AI strategy? Is it because:

AI is all the rage in your industry and your organisation is fearful of being left behind?
If you take the lead in implementing AI, it will make you look smarter/cooler than your colleagues?
It sounds like a cool and fun toy to experiment with?
Your organisation needs to catch up with your competitors who have been early adopters of AI?
AI is a great opportunity to reduce the cost to serve our customers?

If the answer to any of the above is Yes, then the trough of disillusionment beckons.

Alternatively, if you are deploying or considering AI because…

AI can enable your people and optimise your processes to operate more intelligently and efficiently, in order to provide individualised and predictive experiences for your customers at scale

…..then a brighter future awaits.

For these technologies to have any chance of success you should have a clear sense of purpose of how to you intend to deploy AI to drive CX in your business. Here are three ways you can use AI in a purposeful way to create meaningful customer experiences.

1. Use AI to Enhance your Knowledge of the Customer

An example would be using data analytics to anticipate the needs of individual customers at each moment of truth and key stage of their journey. Some specific examples oh how businesses are using AI to enhance customer knowledge:

2. Use AI to create stronger emotional connections with your customers

Using AI to recognise a customer’s emotional state helps agents better respond to the customer during an interaction, thereby creating stronger emotional connections.

3. Use AI to empower your service agents

Not only can AI empower agents with emotional intelligence to reply appropriately to customers, it can be used as a tool to connect service agents with the right information in the organisation’s knowledge base in real time. Examples of why this can be powerful to a business:

A recent study Fifth Quadrant CX undertook for Oracle showed that CX leaders acknowledge the potential of AI and are more advanced in trialling and implementing these emerging technologies to enable better customer experiences. AI is being used to combine data from multiple sources to create individual profiles for each customer, enabling agents to take immediate action on what customers want. Consequently, CX Leaders are outperforming their counterparts by creating emotional connections with their customers through more predictive and personalised customer experiences.

As a result, nearly two thirds of CX leaders say their organisation’s revenue growth outperforms their industry counterparts, compared with only a quarter of CX laggards. The proof is therefore clearly in the pudding: when applied in a purposeful and meaningful way, AI technology can enable organisations to increase agility and overcome competitive threats and leverage this advantage to drive acquisition.

Written by Dr Steve Nuttall – Head Of CX Research, Fifth Quadrant. Steve has worked in various leadership roles as a market research insights professional for over twenty years in Europe, Asia and Australia. He leads Fifth Quadrant’s program of CX strategy research and is an international speaker and presenter on best practice customer experience. Steve assists organisations to deliver their customer-centric strategies and business performance goals including designing and implementing programs to help optimise the customer experience.

Build Customer Empathy by Listening to Their Stories

Posted on September 6, 2018March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

Guest Post by Demian Borba

Whenever I start a conversation with someone, I think about how I can best connect with that person. Sharing stories is an excellent way in.

Stories not only reveal details about the storyteller, they allow you to connect on an emotional level. In fact, the connection may go even deeper.

A study at Princeton found that during storytelling the brain activity in persons listening to a story closely matches that of the person telling it.

The analysis revealed that during successful communication the listener’s brain responses become similar to the speaker’s brain responses. This implies that people understand each other by mirroring each others’ brain responses. (Image courtesy of Uri Hasson during the Princeton study).

Stories can help create alignment. They can take you along on the roller coaster of the storyteller’s experiences, letting you in on the highs and lows, successes and defeats, and, importantly from a product manager standpoint, the needs and pain points they hit when working with a particular product.

As I noted in an earlier post, design thinking aims to build products people want, products they’ll find useful, and products that can reasonably be built given current technology. It’s the process that’s guided development of Adobe XD from the beginning.

Design thinking seeks to identify needs rather than solve problems. It follows five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

Empathizing with your customers means understanding where they’re coming from, what their needs are, and where the pain points are. We are not looking for hard truths here — we’re seeking insights.

To build empathy, we can lean on several anthropological techniques: watch people as they perform an activity, experience performing that activity ourselves, or conduct interviews with a selected subset of the people we want to learn about.

Successful interviews draw out stories; and successful interviewers know how to ask questions without getting in the way of the story.

Seek quality over quantity when collecting customer stories

Because stories are subjective, interviews must be qualitative, not quantitative. Rather than quick interviews with 100 people, you get better insights by talking to fewer people for a longer time. When forming your interview pool, look for a good mix of experience and interests.

For example, if your target number is 10, you might recruit six designers who fall within the mid-range of users and two to four “extreme users” — long-time users who have seen the products through multiple evolutions, or designers who use the products in an unusual way.

When interviewing, I typically follow a step-by-step process, outlined in the chart below.

First, I introduce myself, then the project and its purpose.

The next — and critical — step is to establish rapport, finding those moments in a conversation where you connect with your subject. You can create these connections through stories. Stories allow you to explore emotions and identify pain points.

Remember, you’re not trying to solve problems here; you’re just looking for the needs, driven by what users say or do, and by what users think or feel. Try not to limit your interview to a set time — allow time for the interview to evolve.

When you’ve finished, wrap it up, thank the interviewee, and you can move on to unpacking your findings and creating empathy maps.

Here, I’ve listed some practical tips for conducting interviews that can lead to powerful customer stories.

Get authentic customer stories with these nine interview techniques

1. Ask open-ended questions

Think about how you phrase your questions. Avoid starting with comments like “you know” or “normally,” which can influence the response. Ask open-ended questions such as, “tell me about the last time you did x or y.” This type of question will encourage your subject to tell a story rather than just answer “yes” or “no.”

Even if the stories aren’t true, they can reveal what the person thinks and feels. Moreover, in telling a story, the interviewee is likely to recall details he or she may have forgotten.

2. Always ask why

Be the curious kid. Even if you think you understand what the interviewee is describing, ask why.

In another post, I describe the five whys framework — that is, by asking five whys, you can get to the root of any problem. Never assume!

3. Look for inconsistencies

Sometimes, interviewees will describe a process that they don’t follow or make statements that aren’t true. You can usually tell based on their answers.

Inconsistencies are important because they can lead to insights about implicit needs — perhaps they’re explaining how something could be done better, if only . . .

4. Look for nonverbal signals

If the person you’re interviewing is fidgeting, twirling their hair, or avoiding eye contact, it’s possible that what they’re saying isn’t 100 percent true. There’s a vulnerability in not telling the truth, and it’s worth exploring.

People tend to act out how they feel, especially when they’re uncomfortable or nervous.

5. Don’t be afraid of silence

This can be one of the hardest tips to follow. It’s natural to want to help someone if you think they’re stuck or unsure. If your interviewee is silent after a question, give him or her time to think through the answer. It may take a minute or two, but be patient. You’ll get a better response.

6. Never suggest answers

Stay as neutral as possible. Often, if you propose an answer, the person you’re interviewing will agree, whether or not it’s what he or she wants or feels.

Instead of asking, “This is a good idea, right?” say, “What do you think of this?” or “How might you do this?”

7. Keep your questions concise

Long questions lose people. They’re confusing and people often aren’t sure which part of a multi-layered question to answer first.

As a general rule, I try to limit questions to 10 words.

8. Stick to one question at a time and one person at a time

It might be faster to interview several people together, but you’ll lose out on quality. Interviews are most successful when they’re one on one, so resist the urge to pull your teammates in as well.

Don’t overload the interview with multiple questions. Take your time and make sure each question is answered before moving on to the next.

9. Be sure to record the conversation

You’ll want to save the conversation for later unpacking. You can use audio, film, video, or even have someone sit in taking notes. You get the most immediate and authentic feedback when interviews are in person because there’s typically more friction when people meet face to face. However, interviews over Skype or the phone can yield great material as well.

Putting on your anthropologist hat at this first phase of design thinking will help you gather the stories you need. And those stories will ultimately help deliver products that meet the design thinking goals: desirable, usable, and technically practical.

5 Marketing Automation Strategies to Increase Profits

Posted on September 5, 2018December 10, 2018 by David Dinh

While the concept of automation has been around since the beginning of the industrial age, its presence in today’s economy seems to be growing at record speeds. New technologies, combined with a better understanding of how they work, have allowed business of all types to grow in ways previously thought impossible.

marketing automation strategy business charts

One of the more recent developments in automation is its application in marketing. The emergence of Big Data, and the expansion of internet and smartphone use, means marketers now have their hands on a tremendous amount of information they can use to more effectively reach their target market.

However, as with any technological advance, just using it doesn’t automatically translate into results. You have to have the right strategy.

Marketing automation is all the rage right now, and here are five strategies to make it work for you.

Lead Identification

One of the most frequent debates that goes on between sales and marketing departments is what constitutes a quality lead. Differing opinions not only slow down the process, but they also can lead a salesperson to go after a lead that doesn’t really have much promise. One of the best marketing automation strategies you can pursue is one of lead identification. It uses data to help eliminate the guesswork ,giving sales team better leads to pursue.

The first step in this strategy is to automate data collection, as this will allow you to figure out exactly who is coming to your site. But more importantly, it will give you a chance to learn who is engaging with the content you produce. You can track clicks, time on page, downloads, etc. (using tools such as Google Analytics and UI parameters) and this will help you figure out which part of your target audience is responding most to your tactics.

Another great way to identify leads using automation is through subscriptions. Work with your web developer to have a subscription box pop up after people have spent a certain amount of time on the site. Signing up demonstrate affinity, meaning sales tactics will likely be more effective won these individuals. Implement these simple automation and use them to help make your sales efforts far more effective.

Lead Nurturing

The second strategy to pursue is lead nurturing. It’s one thing to identify good leads, but you need to manage them properly to be able to turn them into sales; even the best leads don’t all convert into sales.

The secret to this strategy is drip emails. These are emails that go out gradually (as if they were dripping) to confirmed leads. And they’re really easy to automate. You start by writing out the content of the emails, and then you set your system up to send different emails at different intervals. You could manage this manually, but you’d likely go insane trying to keep track of everything. By setting it up to work automatically, you can sit back and let the emails do the work for you.

And there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest these types of campaigns work. In fact, one study found that every $1 invested in an email campaigns produces a return of $38. It’s tough to beat those kinds of results, and they’re really only attainable with an automated lead nurturing campaign.

There are a variety of different software options out there that can help you nurture leads, the most common and effective being Drip, ConvertKit, Vero and Mailchimp.

Brand Management and Engagement

Building and maintaining a brand is one of the key functions of a marketing department. And it requires a multifaceted approach across many different platforms. But it’s hard to beat the effectiveness of social media in building a brand. People use these platforms to stay in touch with those they care about, so being in on these conversations can only help your brand.

Actually doing this, though, can be a nightmare. Between all the different platforms, there’s far too much for any one person to do. The answer: automate. Platforms such as Hootsuite allow you to set up your social media posts in advance, meaning you can front load all the work and then only respond when needed. The software will alert you when someone has commented on a post or reached out to, and then you can respond directly to that comment, saving you from having to comb through all the content on your various accounts.

Furthermore, these services will help track engagement. They’ll bundle information about likes retweets, shares, etc., and this will let you know what’s working well and what’s not, allowing you to refine your campaigns and increase their effectiveness in helping you build your brand.

Customer Service

To stay competitive in today’s market, you must deliver top-notch customer service. While traditionally thought of as separate from marketing, nowadays both functions are closely connected. This bond has formed largely because of the information you can gather from your customer service efforts, and also because you can use customer service as another means of dealing with people.

The primary tool for automating customer service is a chatbot. These are a wonderful way to break the ice with people and make your site, company and brand seem more human. Offering to help people find something, or pointing them in the right direction when they land on you site, can go a long way towards helping to improve the customer experience and promote sales.

But chatbots can go one step further. Because they’re automated, they can collect and compile data that will help you understand your audience even more. They can identify frequent issues, and they can also help you learn more about what people come searching for when they land on your site. And all this means you can tailor your content to better meet the needs of your audience, increasing the chances you’ll connect with them and convert them into customers.

Tailored Content

Successful marketing campaigns speak directly to your target audience. They start by identifying the needs and expectations of a certain group, and they end by connecting with these people and convincing them to take an action, such as making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter. And the secret to doing this is to segment your audiences and deliver content that is directly relevant to them.

For example, let’s say you’re a B2B business offering employment services or management consulting. Your goal as a company is to help people streamline their HR operations. As such, your audience is going to be people working in HR, as well as divisional managers responsible for making decisions about the business, as these are the people who will ultimately decide whether or not to hire you. And although these two groups are part of the same audience, the content you send to them must be different for it to be effective.

The secret to this is using an automated CRM software. It will help compile information about your many different audience segments, allowing you to create a distribute content tailored specifically for each group. For example, HR generalists may receive information about how to streamline the on-boarding process, whereas HR managers will receive content about how a (PEO) can save the company time, money and resources. It makes sense this kind of segmentation would work, and studies help back up this logic, indicating a 62 percent improvement in email campaign effectiveness with this type of tailored content.

Use Automation the Right Way

Automating marketing tasks presents an incredible opportunity to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing operation. However, for it to work, you need to have a good strategy. The five discussed here are some of the most effective known to date, so give them a try and watch as your marketing efforts produce better leads and drive higher sales figures now and into the future.

About the Author

Jock works with investors and business owners to help people maximize the value of their business. Professionally, he is an expert in high-growth internet companies, having bought, built and sold three different businesses throughout his career. He is currently the CEO of Digitalexits.com.

Customer Service: Its Importance and Value

Posted on July 12, 2018June 23, 2021 by David Dinh

Customer service is often overlooked by many companies because it’s hard to measure the direct value of providing great customer experience.

In today’s highly competitive market, businesses have to make tough calls on what to focus on next to survive, and unfortunately, providing customer satisfaction is usually on the lower end of the list.

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Without being able to properly quantify the direct value of great service, many businesses can’t justify spending time and resources on providing it. Other businesses just see customer service more as a pain, and choose to be reactive, rather than proactive to customer expectations. However, the truth is, great customer service is absolutely crucial to the long-term survival of the business.

Customer Service Importance and its Value

You can argue that price is the main reason your customers choose you, so you focus your energy and resources on being the most affordable. I’m telling you, there will come a day when a competitor comes in with a better product for a cheaper price.

In the the same way, you can also argue that you focus on innovative developments and that’s why your customers buy from you. Again, there will come a day a competitor swoops in and take your customers from you because they made better innovative progress. Do you know what you can invest in that your competitors can’t take away from you? Loyalty. Good old customer loyalty.

The best way to gain customers’ loyalty? You charm them with your service.

By continuously engaging with them through customer service and marketing efforts, you are fostering a relationship with them. It’s hard for people to walk away from someone or something they have formed an attachment to.

A study conducted by Forrester Research found that strong emotional connections with a brand is a stronger driver than other factors like ‘ease’ and ‘effectiveness’ across 17 different industries.

So now you know why it’s important, what’s the value of providing great customer experience and service to create highly engaged customers?

The Value of Customer Service

1. Retaining customers is much less expensive than acquiring new ones

It’s true. Acquiring a new customer can be anywhere from 5-25 times more expensive than keeping a current one. You don’t have to spend so much time and resources finding a new customer and converting them. Instead, you just have to make sure they’re satisfied and will repurchase from you.

Customer support contributes a large portion to the retention and satisfaction of customers. Many companies put a lot of time and resources in their sales and marketing teams, when just as much emphasis should be put in support or success teams. When done right, they can have a bigger impact on your bottomline than new acquisition activities.

2. Repeat customers generally spend more than new ones

A study by McKinsey found that eCommerce spending for new customers on average is $24.50, compared to $54.50 for repeat customers. Even better, highly-engaged customers buy 90 percent more often and spend 60 percent more per transaction.Making a customer happy shouldn’t be a one time thing at the beginning of the relationship. Most relationships are more valuable the longer they are. Businesses should be putting more emphasis on their customer service, success and support teams because the financial growth potential is much larger than in newly acquired customers. Plus, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, whereas the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5-20%.

2. Great service reduces the severity of overall problems.

We’ve all had problems with companies before. In the moment, you might be upset, angry, annoyed or all of the above. If you had to talk to a rude customer service rep on top of all that…I’d imagine you wouldn’t be too happy. What originally may have been a small problem would go from 0 – 100.

In the same way bad service can escalate problems, good customer service can reduce them. When delivered well, customer service can diffuse negative emotions from the customer and the situation. Excellent customer service can turn the situation around into a positive. Small things like apologizing, empathizing and being genuine can go a long way to reduce a customer’s negative emotions and the severity of the overall problem.

82% of satisfied customers will “likely” or “very likely” keep shopping with a company and give it another chance if something goes wrong.

3. Builds brand awareness with minimal effort.

Customers are being more and more vocal about how a company treats them and how a company makes them feel. Considering your customer service team are likely to be the only people in contact with a customer, they play a crucial role in shaping their customer experience, and by extension, whether they have good or bad things to say about the company.

It is therefore important that every interaction with a customer should make them feel valued, listened to and supported. Extra points for going beyond expectations like Paul from Zappos. It was a simple response to a customer whose shoes were falling apart, but he made it so much more. This ended up being shared on Reddit, Hubspot and Helpscout and championed as customer service at its best.

Source: Reddit

4. People remember the service a lot longer than they remember the price.

Think back to a purchase you made a couple of years back. Heck, think back a couple of months even. I can’t even remember the price of something I bought in the last few months!

What I do remember though, is the service, the delivery and the effort I had to put in to make the purchase. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. And in this case, the price you paid is the destination, and all that leading up to the purchase, is the journey. People will talk. If they liked the journey, they will recommend it to others.

5. It’s a competitive advantage no one can take away

With rapid innovation reducing differentiation between one product and another, and competitors just a click away, customer service is one of the last frontiers of sustainable competitive advantage for businesses.

Many businesses will pay lip service to the value of customer service, all the while cutting costs and resources to provide it. This will only ensure they provide the bare minimum to support customers, it doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near good enough to be a advantage. When normal customer service standard means going above and beyond for a customer, that is when customers will choose your business over someone else’s.

Customer Service Takeaway: Customer service is becoming more important than ever as competitors increase and are closer than ever. A customer is 4 times more likely to defect to a competitor if the problem is service related than price or product related. No one wants to do business with someone they don’t like. The product or service doesn’t matter anymore. They can easily substitute with other products or services that function similarly. Customers would rather deal with the slight inconvenience that the competitor’s product or service doesn’t function the same way, than to deal with the huge inconvenience of not being supported by your business.

Customer service, when delivered to the satisfaction of customers, not only creates a powerful marketing opportunity for the business, but also helps with the bottomline. Not only are return customers easier to sell to, they will spend more per transaction and would pay extra to guarantee better service.

Using Smart Technology for Smarter Customer Service

Posted on June 26, 2018April 26, 2019 by David Dinh

Smart technology is rapidly changing the world we live in today. From smart houses to high-tech artificially intelligent robots, the world we live in is being saturated with advanced technology that simplifies our lives today. One industry that is fully embracing artificial intelligence is customer service. Companies across many different industries are jumping on board and using artificial intelligence and machine learning to create chatbots, remember customer problems, and create suggested responses. These are just some of the few incredible capabilities that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and other smart technologies are bringing to the field of customer service.

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How Artificial Intelligence is Leading the Smart Technology Revolution?

Smart technology is transforming the customer experience, but there’s also a more self-serving business benefit from its use. Those teams enabled and empowered through the likes of AI and predictive intelligence have higher rates of employee engagement. This is because agents feel more empowered and experience first-hand the positive impact this personalized style of service is having on the customer. There are two main ways that businesses are augmenting their customer care units with AI: “front-end AI-powered bots” and “AI-assisted human agents.” A front-end AI-powered bot is a conversational computer program that interacts directly with a customer without human intervention. On the other hand, an AI-assisted human agent is a human customer service representative who is supported by AI technology. Both these models are being used in service departments across industries.

Here are the 4 Smart Technologies for Smarter Customer Service

1. Chatbots

Of all the fields in the chatbot-crazed world, customer service is one of the prime targets for automation. Virtual customer agents (customer service-focused bots, or VCAs) are intelligent systems able to understand what users ask via chat and provide them adequate answers.

In 2015, the number of people using messaging apps overtook the number using social media. Beyond communicating with friends and work colleagues, individuals are increasingly using messaging apps to interact with brands. Messaging services are a brand new space for organizations to connect with existing and future customers. Businesses now have the opportunity to create new revenue streams using real-time, customized customer service bots within messaging applications. More than 34,000 chatbots on Facebook Messenger alone are a reflection of this opportunity. The airline, clothing and tourism industries are already leveraging this space. Consumers are connecting with brands through messaging apps to purchase airline tickets, book hotel accommodations and receive fashion advice. It’s only a matter of time before the other industries catch up.

The WeChat Messenger bot deployed by China Merchant Bank, one of the largest credit card issuers in China, is another example of a front-end bot. According to the AI technology provider Xiaoi, the China Merchant Bank’s front-end bot handles 1.5 to 2 million customer conversations per day, an inquiry volume that would typically require thousands of additional employees to answer. As most questions relate to card balances and payments, automation via a bot interface presents a relatively easy and cost efficient solution.

These above examples of chatbots already in use give a great introduction of the possibilities that AI brings to the field of customer service. AI makes it possible to create these large indexes so that the bot can respond back with pre-understood phrases or suggest responses to the human controlling it.

2. Suggested Responses

AI and ML are frequently misunderstood in the business world. They are not taking over jobs, but further enhancing current human positions. With suggested responses, companies can get through all of the requests at a much faster pace. AI bots can be used to read through customer requests and find the problem they are having. If you have repeat customers, customer conversation history is extremely important tool for your AI and ML. It can learn from past experiences and more accurately detect the problem the customer is having.

3. Conversation History

Woveon, a startup that provides intelligent customer service, uses AI programs to enhance its customer conversation history. Conversation history is simply saving past conversations between the customer and the business. Customer service representatives can then go back and use this data to help future questions the customer may have. Woveon is using this to essentially make a 3D diagram to further help the representative. The program will be able to go into the conversation history and track down the problems. It will then make a web with the biggest points being recurring problems. Branching off of the bigger problems will be other related problems that customers often have. This program, though still in development, will change the way customer service is able to work with customers. Woveon’s software, as mentioned above, is an AI-Assisted Human Agent and proves the importance of human interaction as it simplifies and speeds up these interactions.

4. Smart Tech Integration to the Business World

“As humans, we advance, that’s what we do. And the rise of AI in the customer service field is just another step in our advancement and should be looked at as such. There might be some growing pains during the process, but we shouldn’t let that stop us from growing and extending our knowledge. When we look at the benefits these chatbots, suggested responses, and conversation history can provide to the consumer and the business, it becomes clear that we are moving in the right direction.”

Managing Multiple Customer Channels

Posted on June 7, 2018March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

The way people reach your business’ customer support has changed significantly in the past couple of years, primarily because of the advent of the internet, social media and more importantly, smartphones. Companies are now expected to answer the customer’s grievances over a vast array of channels – these can include emails, messages over social media such as Facebook and Twitter, SMS, contact page on the website and last but not the least, the very traditional but still relevant… phone.

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The customer expects your representatives to be available for any queries around-the-clock, 24/7 and wants prompt replies. Failure to address your customer can result in losing out on important business resulting in loss of revenue. All the different channels of communication should be consistent with each other, for instance handling the customer’s emails should not keep your agents so preoccupied that they miss out on a customer’s phone calls.

Here’s How to Manage Multiple Customer Channels

1. Different Channels – Different Challenges

Each channel has its own set of requirements, challenges, resources and your customer representative team will have different skills. You can’t expect one agent to perfectly handle all your channels with perfect tenacity. You will have to gauge their strengths and weaknesses and assign them certain roles accordingly. You will need someone with good communication skills in order to handle a large number of phone calls, while fast typing speed would be required of someone who is handling emails and social media.

With phone calls and chats, both the customer and the support agents are available at the same time and this can allow you to find common ground very quickly. Channels such as SMS and emails mean that neither the customer nor the support agent are burdened with the pressure of time, and can respond to each at their own leisure (not really true for support agents). While both channels have their strengths and weaknesses, the main purpose of a well oiled customer support team is to ensure that your customer has access to useful information in a short amount of time.

How you can go about designing your customer support team depends entirely on the size of your business and how much volume each channel receives. Depending on the type of business – whether it conducts most of its business online or offline – most customers might try reaching your support team on social media than on phone. This is most often the case with media publication sites with a strong online presence. For insurance or professional service companies, however, phone calls and traditional letters seem to be the order of the day.

2. It isn’t Practical to Blindly follow someone else’s Multichannel Strategy

It really isn’t one size fits all, and the preferable means of communication really depend on the customer. For most small scale businesses in Australia, it really isn’t a good idea to invest in every single type of channel you can get your hands on. It takes time and resources to gather useful, talented individuals and train them to properly handle their roles. It isn’t practical to be available 24/7 across phone, email, SMS and social media. Pick one service that might work best for you. If you’re an online seller, chances are that your customers might not really try to reach you on phone. However, that might not be the case if you’re a physical business with a physical store. For restaurateurs, it is more beneficial to have support agents dealing with phone calls 24/7 or during working hours, rather than having a team address customers online. Your preferred method of communication also depends on which channel the customer themselves choose.

3. Variety is Beneficial for both Employees and Customers

A key point to understand is that your support team also needs a break from the hassle of going through a monotonous job on a daily basis. You need to change their roles every now and then to keep them engaged so that the quality of your support teams doesn’t falter. For instance, one week an agent would be addressing the customer over chat, the next they might engage them over phone. The idea is to ensure they don’t get bored. Boredom can kill productivity and your customers might actually interpret this as lack of concern or empathy for their problem.

The operator over the phone needs to have an encouraging, bubbling voice that exudes enthusiasm which can instill confidence in your customer. So even if their problem might take some time for your team to get back to, they will always be patient because the person on the end of the line was so… enthusiastic.

Studies have shown that deploying omnichannel solutions can boost the employee’s morale by more than 80% while giving your customer more options to reach you.

4. Make Notes about the Customer

By keeping a history of the customer’s purchase history, complaint records and other such data, your support agent will be able to address their problems more efficiently the next time they receive a complaint. This also means you can track the customer’s trends by quantifying key business metrics such as the customer loyalty and retention.

Has customer service and experience changed? What’s next for your business?

Posted on April 30, 2018June 23, 2021 by David Dinh

Guest Blog By Cassie McInnes

That is a very good question! The answer is yes, and no. I’ll explain why.

Why the meaning of customer service and experience hasn’t changed

The description of ‘customer’, ‘service’ and ‘experience’ remains the same in the dictionary:

Customer: Someone who buys goods or services from a business or a person who has a particular quality.

Service: The action of helping or doing work for someone.

Experience: Direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge.

I like to keep service simple, because it is. (Except it is so simple, it often gets missed).

Service = kindness.

So in these simple terms, service has not changed one bit. The language of the heart is love and we know and understand love. No, I do not mean a certain kind of love, for example the way you love your mum or the way you love your partner. I’m just talking about the pure energy or effort that’s put into any interaction because it is ‘the right thing to do for someone else’. To me, this part stays the same, always.

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So, then, what has changed and continues to change?

Our awareness has changed. We’ve woken up. Gone are the days where you’ll hear a company say they don’t have a Customer Service Training module in their on-boarding programs. And if you are reading this and you don’t have induction training that focuses on CS/CX, then you really need to wake up. It is predicted that in a few years, the main reason for losing or gaining customers will be how they are treated. Historically, it has been price and convenience (due to the increasing population of mega corporations competing against each other). Yes, we all agree value for money is important and we all want to save our hard earned dollars. However, value does not just mean low cost, we all know the saying ‘you get what you pay for’. So, the meaning of value is changing.

Our customer satisfaction tools are smarter

No matter how much a business ‘thinks’ they know what a customer wants – the best way to know for sure and keep up with them by always listening to them.

This is usually done by methods including:

Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT)
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Email/ post/ text surveys
Real time feedback during any interaction
Response on social media
Word of mouth/ Branding

Many jobs are created for all those listed above, and businesses are not shying away from putting in to get more out.

If you are a smart business owner, your CX investments will be going into all of your departments, as happy and engaged staff will ensure your chance of happier customers.

When it comes to specific CS/CX budgets, the investment focus of your business should not just be in customer service. The focus needs to be in every division in your business. If you do this and cooperate accordingly, it will result in a positive, healthy and safe culture. Some examples of divisional teams you would want working together are: your managers working on positive leadership initiatives, reward and recognition, social activities, physical and mental health initiatives and development of staff. All of these divisions should be constantly reminded of your organisational service goal or model and the behaviours demonstrated should mirror this in every interaction.

The training for CX and CS coaching and training is evolving at a rapid rate. There is increased research and awareness abroad in marketing, behavioural science and communication skills. In general, people are struggling mentally everywhere, life is tough. One in five Australians will experience mental health issues in any given year and up to fifty four percent to do not seek help. So, people are not feeling okay generally and are craving to be treated better just to get through their day. Because of this, businesses are learning that they not only have customers to win over for business but they have responsibility humankind to help customers through service or as I like to say, kindness. For any caring and sensible manager, it makes sense to be a star in service and experience.

Cassie is an expert in the field of customer service and coaching and loves to develop people. As a certified trainer and facilitator, Cassie is also passionate about designing and teaching Service Training and linking it to behavioural science. In 2014, she received the award for ’emerging manager of the year’ along with 29 other National winners for The Australian Institute of Management’s “30 under 30″ program. She was also awarded the state award for Collaboration at The ARCBS in 2014 which Cassie attributes to her passion for teamwork. One of Cassie’s favourite quotes is: ‘We are all in this together’.

How to Do Customer Service The Right Way

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

Customer service is an extremely important part of a business. Your product is what catches your customers attention, and your service is what keeps them loyal. A strong company will already have great customer relationships. But a smart company will always be asking “What is good customer service?” If you are not constantly on the lookout for opportunities to improve your customer service, then your relationships will stagnate. Here are a few customer service tips for identifying ways to better serve customers.

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Customer Service Done Right

1. Get Personal

Your customers want to feel like they have access to real people, not bots and FAQs. Offer more than just automated email responses, and do not let your telephone prompts or website send them down a rabbit hole. Take full advantage of social media (such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp) and write responses when your customers post on your page. Post photos and bios on your website. This shows your customers that you are real people working on their behalf.

2. Be Available

Part of the personal touch is making sure your customers can reach you. For example if your business is primarily online, meet in person occasionally with local customers and offer video calls (such as Skype) for those farther away. Work early and late when needed, especially if your customers are in different time zones. Even providing customers with your physical address helps build their trust and reminds them that your company exists off the internet as well.

3. Cater to Your Customers

Make sure you are fully meeting your customers needs. Consider assigning reps to specific customers so they can build a relationship. Offer VIP treatment for your best customers to let them know they are appreciated. What special services might your customers like? Set up focus groups, interview customers, or run a survey to get ideas.

4. Create Communities

Your customers will feel even more valued if you treat them as important members of a community. You can bring various customers together in numerous ways, including webinars, interactive websites, social media, trade shows and conventions. And don’t forget that while your customers come to these forums to learn from you, you can learn as much, if not more, from them.

5. Specials Services / VIP

Are there special discounts or services you can offer that your competitors don’t? Can you offer something special for existing customers only? Could your services be considered luxury? Offering special treatment to your customers will help them to feel taken care of, and it’s also something they might be willing to pay more for. There are so many “bait and switch” offers and promotions for new customers only– reward the customers that have been with you the longest.

6. Offer Knowledge

Building strong relationships with our customers is great, but we also get to offer and trade knowledge with them. In our trade, a customer can compare several competing copies of a book online, but they won’t get a conversation about the title’s complicated printing history. When we’re speaking with customers, we spend the majority of time talking about the merchandise itself, trends in the market, and the customer’s own collecting habits. Afterward, we negotiate a deal. A customer can even know more than you do on a particular topic! Take advantage of this opportunity to learn more.

7. Let Customers Get to Know You

If you’re running your business from an unknown (or internet-only) location, it makes you more anonymous. This is common nowadays, but adding a face or an address to your business could help assure customers that you won’t disappear overnight. You don’t have to rent office space if you don’t really need it; just be upfront about where you operate from and consider ways of contacting customers aside from email. A little personal information can go a long way, and could minimize concerns of accessibility, trust, or safety.

Customer service is an extremely important aspect of your business that is often overlooked. Following these simple steps can boost your customer’s loyalty to your company and also increase sales! I suggest you start by creating some customer service goals for your support team. Be sure to align these goals to your business goals so you’re on track! This Customer Service Goal Template will help you get started!

How Do You Know If The Customer Service Representative You’re Hiring Will Boost Customer Loyalty?

Posted on April 30, 2018March 15, 2023 by David Dinh

Customer service, the faces behind the business. When hiring customer service representatives, it is important to look for people that will represent your company well. They are one of a few direct contacts that your customers will get. Because of this, it is extremely important to leave a good impression. Having friendly and helpful service agents at the front line is important to the longevity of any business.

Tabatha Naylor writes, “Customers don’t buy from businesses they don’t trust, end of story. Luckily, building trust in a customer/business relationship doesn’t have to be difficult. While it does take effort, the steps to get there are easy if you are willing to be open, honest, and efficient when communicating with customers.” Finding people to hire for your customer service team is extremely important and these are some of the traits you should be looking for:

The Art Behind Hiring The Best Customer Service Representatives

1. Self control

You are sure to come across customers who will be difficult to deal with. For this reason, you must have self control. You must be able to handle both the easy and hard times that comes with serving the public.

2. Superior communication skills

If you aren’t a good communicator, then customer service may not be the field for you. Customer service jobs require that you deal heavily with the public. Do you know how to handle the many problems that come with customers? Communication skills are essential to get a good customer service job.

Communicating to tough customers can be hard, but they don’t have to be! Here’s 5 email templates to get you out of a sticky situation with an angry customer.

3. They are Loyal

Author Alexander Kjerulf says, “Happy employees make the customers happy”. It might sound rather straightforward, but happiness and satisfaction within a company will inevitably lead to loyalty.

When interviewing a candidate, pay attention to what they say about the previous companies they’ve worked for. There might be some underlying unhappiness, but a potential employee that speaks highly of their previous company despite having left is one that is both respectful and loyal. A loyal customer care representative will put the company’s interest first when dealing with difficult customers. They are likely try their best to protect the company’s image even in the presence of the most difficult customers.

4. Natural Problem Solvers

Companies that excel at customer service don’t wait for a problem to arise before addressing it. One of the great customer service skills is the ability to take a preemptive approach in managing possible risks and being prepared when a problem does arise.

Similarly, customer service employees must be able to provide a solution even before the customer poses the question (within reason, of course). In combination with a problem-solving nature, the candidate should also be a great listener in order to gather “clues” and read between the lines during communication.

In customer service, nothing is perfect and things will go wrong. This is not a failure. The best businesses show how they fix their mistakes.

5. Willing to go the extra mile to please customers

The customer always comes first and is ALWAYS right. You must be willing to go the extra mile to please each and every customer. Sometime, this can be at the expense of your pride. You must be willing to swallow your pride and move on.

6. They are highly conscientious

Look for candidates who are highly conscientious. The candidate that arrives late for the interview, looking completely flustered and confused is probably not the ideal choice.

Conscientious individuals are reliable, disciplined, methodical, organized, and goal driven. The Journal of Applied Social Psychology noted that individuals who are identified through tests as highly conscientious are more likely to be aware of how good interpersonal interactions positively affect customer service and are more likely to behave this way.

To a degree, conscientious individuals are pleasers in the sense that they are aware of what works for certain people and what doesn’t. They have a strong intuition about what is morally right and wrong as well as how to treat others.

When customers call a company they’re actively seeking help in resolving a problem. A conscientious customer service agent will be better equipped to pick up the clues interlaced in the customer’s words, which will allow them to resolve pain points.

7. Customer appreciation

A good job in customer service will require that you have a general appreciation to customers. After all, they are the ones who will be providing you with a job. Without them, your job would not be necessary.

8. They are Persuasive

A great customer service employee will also have some amazing marketing and sales skills. It’s not always about being a manipulator, but being able to steer the customer into a direction that is beneficial for both the company and the client.

If you want to know if your candidates have this trait, ask a simple question in the interview such as, “Why should we hire you?.” This way they have to sell themselves in a persuasive manner while listing qualities, traits and reasons–a perfect, practical test of their customer service skills.

Get Out and Hire!

When interviewing candidates to become your next customer service hero, look for for these qualities, traits and skills. Look for someone who is communicative, persuasive, is polite, patient, conscientious, and loyal. Remember these are the people who will be serving your customers directly and you want a positive impact so your customers return again and again!