Customer satisfaction is key to winning more sales and long-term customer loyalty for your business. However, it all starts with the customer's experience with your business. Here's what I mean: how the customer is approached and how his or her questions are answered about your products/services during the interest stage. This helps in persuading him or her to close a sale and continue coming back.
As a matter of fact, according to A RightNow Technologies report about customer experience, it was found out that 85% of customers are ready to pay more for a satisfactory customer experience.
Furthermore, 55% of consumers turned into customers of a brand because of its reputation for a great customer service.
Here are hacks to help you break the ice and satisfy your customers with a great service:
Customers are always looking for information about your business/products before they make a purchase. Why? Because they are naturally scared of buying from strangers, so they have to first develop trust for your business. As a result, they need quick answers to their questions because if they don't get the quick replies, they give up on their purchases.
For example: according to Foster Research, 57% of your potential customers abandon their purchase if they can't get quick responses. Making the response speed one of the most important customer service metrics
On the other hand, quick responses give your customers a great experience and help them through their journey of developing trust for your business. However, this depends on how they're impressed with your customer service.
Sending personalized messages to your customers delights them because these messages are always tailored to a specific customer with exactly what they are interested in. Customers hate flooding their mails with generalized messages as most of them are even off topic far different from what they are looking for.
However, customers always welcome messages tailored specifically to them. That's why personalized mailings have higher open rates of 20% and click rates of 41% than the non-personalized.
Wondering how to do this? You can use your customer's search history on your website to check on their behaviours like which pages they usually visit. By the way, with a customer service app, you can use chat transcripts to get relevant information on your customer's specific inquiries.
After the customer has purchased from your business, don't stop following up on them as you might lose out. Follow up on them to check on their experience with your business. Why? Because it's a sign of care and bonds the customer with your business.
As a matter of fact, follow up gives you the golden opportunity of attracting your customers back and If you don't follow up on them, most of your customers don't come back.
Look at this:
According to a study by Bain and Company, 60 to 80% of customers who consider themselves being satisfied ignore going back to businesses they claim to have satisfied them. Thus, with consistent follow-ups, more customer satisfaction is enhanced because customer experience with your products/services is considered a priority.
Proactive communication is another way of ensuring customer satisfaction because you solve customer issues before they arise. What does this mean? You forecast information the customer might need and deliver it to them before they ask for it. This improves your relationship with your customers as you show concern by providing unsolicited insights.
Best of all, with customer service software, proactive communication can be done through the following approaches:
You can ask your customers during the chat whether they need anything or provide to them a solution in advance if anything arises when they're using your product.
You don't have to proactively communicate with your customers only when they're online but you can also send them support messages via email when they're offline. More so with email automation, you can send the emails consistently.
This involves automatically delivering inbuilt messages to customers according to certain conditions. Like if a customer spends 20 seconds on a page on your website, you can trigger a friendly popup message with an offer to help.
What makes proactive communication so powerful is that it increases sales because of the satisfaction it gives to your customers.
Case in point: A Forrester Research study reveals that David's bridal received a 30 to 50% conversion rate and increased its average order value from 10 to 20% after installing proactive chat on its website.
Providing 24/7 customer service is among the best customer service practices and assures your customers of help whenever they need it. Well, with the convenience of the internet, customers can access your business website with their different devices at whatever time and you should always be at their service.
According to a research by The Sales Force, 75% of consumers say it's critical to engage with a salesperson when needed. Thus, the need for a 24/7 customer service.
Here's how you can achieve this: With a live response service, you can set up bots to handle your customers anytime even when the live agent is away. But that's just part of it, you can also hire an international customer support team to be 24/7 active.
Remember, the internet connects your business to the whole world with different time zones. Why does this matter? As you are winding up for the day's work, others are waking up to embark on a new day's tasks and these might need your services. Don't let your customer service go to sleep with you.
The Bottom Line
Customers today value improved, consistent customer care services more than the price of your goods/services. And according to a research by The Sales Force, 75% of customers hope for consistent customer service each time they engage.
Want to know the best part? An improved customer service creates a lasting impression in the minds of your customers and contributes greatly to winning their loyalty.
The good news is that with the best help desk software, you can integrate all your customer communication in one place and deliver exceptional services to them.