Marcus Richards
The future of customer experience is changing and more companies are expected to keep up with the times. You should make excellent customer service a priority and let employees know the importance of it. You can also train customer support staff to become more empathetic and communicate more clearly when dealing with customers.
According to a study by KPMG, customer experience in the UK is declining, dropping by 3.8% from 2022 to 2023. You should ask customers for their feedback in order to determine their experience with your company. It helps to understand what you need to fix and the possible solutions to adopt. In this article, we’ll discuss 6 things that improve customer service and how a helpdesk can do all of them.
Some reasons why the quality of customer experience is declining
There are a few reasons why customer service doesn’t seem to be satisfying anymore. First, many companies are still relying on inefficient tools and processes. They fail to understand that service expectations are changing and they need newer software that has the necessary features.
Secondly, customer support agents are feeling burned out and overwhelmed with the amount of tickets they have to handle daily. Some are not motivated to complete their tasks with the right demeanor. While others are quitting their jobs and increasing the workload of available staff.
Lastly, the quality of customer service is declining because many companies don’t really care about it. They can only invest in making their products and services better. Such companies see customer service as an afterthought and don’t care about how defective their customer service is.
Six things that will improve customer service and how a help desk can do all of them.
According to the KPMG report, Six Pillars of Customer Experience represent the essential characteristics that are needed to create strong experiences. Each of them is as important as the other but they are all interconnected. Any company that wants to improve customer service needs to pay close attention and work on becoming great at it. Below are the Six Pillars of Customer Experience:
1. Integrity (being trustworthy).
The support team should be trustworthy and ensure that the customers’ needs are being met. You should be able to respond promptly to queries, follow up and get back to customers as promised. It’s also important to protect the security of customers and keep their data safe.
2. Resolution
When a customer submits a support request, available agents should understand the problem and inform the customer of the next steps. Sometimes, the issue can be resolved on the customer’s end with a little assistance. But it can also be an internal issue that the technical team has to fix. Either way, tickets should be resolved as quickly as possible to turn a poor experience into a positive one.
3. Expectations
According to HubSpot Research, customers are frustrated by having to wait for an agent to respond and having to repeat the same thing to different support representatives. Other causes of frustration include slow response times and not being able to resolve the issue on time. To provide better service, you need to meet and exceed expectations.
4. Time and effort
Companies should make sure that customers expend the least effort when trying to reach out to the support team. When customers can access support without any hassle, they tend to become more loyal. This is why you need to remove friction so that customers can quickly engage with a company. For example, having multiple channels that customers can use to contact and submit queries through.
5. Personalisation
Many customers don’t want a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to customer service. They want to be seen and heard so their support solutions can become more personal. You can also offer personalized communication that drives an emotional connection. For example, agents can view customers’ profiles for tailored communication.
6. Empathy
Customer experiences shouldn’t be entirely automated with software tools. The support team should know how to speak to customers politely, understand their pain, and let them know their feelings are valid. Empathy helps to build a lasting relationship with each customer. Rather than take and resolve issues only, you should converse like a friend.
How a help desk can improve customer service in all of the six pillars
A helpdesk is a software solution that contains all the tools necessary for managing and resolving customer requests. Here are the features of a good helpdesk system and how they can improve the six pillars of customer service.
1. AI and automation
Automation allows agents to respond to customers easily and work on resolving issues in real time. AI chatbots can also provide 24/7 support and answer simple queries.
2. Ticketing system
A help desk ticketing system can automatically turn requests into tickets, categorize them, and route them to the appropriate agent. It ensures that incoming tickets aren’t lost and reminds you of pending tickets that are yet to be resolved.
3. Self-service tools
Apart from creating a support ticket system, companies should provide self-service tools to empower customers. For example, a knowledge or community forum allows customers to find answers to problems by themselves.
4. Omnichannel support
You should offer multiple support channels so customers can reach out to the company effortlessly. These can be live chat, email, social media, phone calls, chatbots, etc.
5. Analytics and Reporting
A helpdesk should have an analytics feature so you can collect and analyze customer behaviour, preferences, and purchase history. This helps to personalize the interaction as well as recommend other products or services to them.
6. Unified agent workspace
Agents should be able to do everything on one platform. For example, an IT ticketing system lets you integrate with other apps so you can access customer information easily. It also facilitates collaboration between support agents.
