Contact Center Innovation: 6 Ideas for Better Service
Wherever customers are trying to find you is exactly where you need to be to provide the best experience.
White Paper published July 5, 2018
It used to be, if you had a problem or a question about a product or service, you’d just pick up the phone. Nowadays, consumers demand more than just phone support. Your organization needs to meet your customers where they prefer to communicate.
We enlisted the help of our Aureon Contact Center experts to provide six ideas to spur innovation and improve the customer experience from within your organization.
Bonus resource: check out our exclusive white paper "Driving Innovation: Six Ideas to Get Ahead of the Competition" for even more customer service inspiration.
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1. Adopt a multi-channel approach.
Today's customers are increasingly turning to electronic forms of communication for their customer service interactions, from email to social media and live chat.
The goal of a multi-channel strategy is to deliver a consistent experience for the customer and communicate with them in the spaces where they are most active.
Engaging customers in a personalized way across channels allows for a deeper connection and increased loyalty. It is the key to great customer service.
2. Integrate support channels into your website.
An effective way to determine what channels are most important to your business is to examine your recent customer interactions. This will allow you to find out how your customers prefer to contact you and how they get to that point. Since websites are the first channel that many consumers turn to for assistance, it’s vital for organizations to integrate support channels into that experience. However, while a website is a good starting point for the consumer, it may not be the best way to solve their issue.
This is when the multi-channel approach to customer service comes in handy.
3. Empower your customers.
A major preference that’s on the rise is self-service.
People want their problem resolved as quickly and painlessly as possible, and sometimes that means looking for a way to solve it themselves. As demand for self-service applications rises, it is important to ensure that other channels are integrated into the experience so that a customer can get help when needed. There needs to be representatives managing these self-service interactions and making sure that customers are getting their problems resolved and not just leaving in frustration.
4. Provide video chat functionality.
Customers want to be heard and appreciated, and knowing that they’re dealing with a real person that can understand them and work to resolve their problem over video is a sign of great customer service. As more organizations implement video chat into their customer service strategy, it’s a good idea to consider it for your own organization.
When implementing video chat functionality at the customer service level, focus on providing comprehensive agent training. Small details such as agents checking their own facial expressions and looking into the camera instead of the screen are critical.
5. Invest in cloud technology.
Cloud technology enables contact centers to quickly react to changes in customer behavior. It means they can scale back or add agents easily. Instead of having to build, assimilate, and oversee on-premise hardware, they can use integrated cloud solutions and make changes without using developers. This allows for greater growth within the contact center by increasing the level of service that companies are able to offer.
6. Think like a customer.
Gear innovation toward your customers’ needs. Since customers are constantly connected, they expect someone to be available 24/7 to answer questions.
In addition, make sure you are thinking of ways to collect feedback from your customers through surveys, online reviews, and social media platforms. Create a plan to ensure that feedback and intelligence are worked back into your organization.
The more value you offer to your customers, the more loyal they become. This is especially true with customer service. Innovation that is geared towards enabling your team to meet customer demands during interactions will help your business succeed.
Questions? Don’t Hesitate to Ask for Help
All of the above ideas have one thing in common: people want their customer service experience with an organization to be personalized and free of frustration.
Knowing what level of support your customers want and their preferred channels for getting that support is an essential part of providing great customer service.
Consider which of the above ideas you can implement within your own organization.
Keep in mind that not all businesses have access to the right in-house resources. You may want to consider enlisting the help of outside experts for a better experience.