It’s a big, crowded marketplace out there, full of consumers that want different things at different times via different channels. But, have you ever wondered what it is that they really want? Does your definition of ‘great customer support’ align with theirs?

You would think that it’s hard to make a sweeping generalisation about what “all customers” want. But it is not what you think. In fact, it is not what they want but what they need without them even asking for it explicitly. 

Let me also tell you this. It is not impossible to provide that unforgettably exceptional customer experience if you get your basics right.

Here’s How You Can Make Your Company’s Customer Support Strong and Brilliant

#1 Empower customers with self-service

No matter how big or small the concern is, customers never prefer waiting cluelessly to get their concerns resolved. That’s why support teams and customers must work hand-in-hand. 

The key is to have an automated approach to enable self-service for your customers. However, your customers are fans of self-service only as long as it is quick and intuitive. For instance, when they have doubts about the refund status, they wouldn’t prefer typing in their query manually. But what they might prefer is knowing the status at the click of a button.

Well, it takes a dedicated customer support automation platform to make your customers feel comfortable. 

Simply put, imagine a Conversational AI led-platform wherein, customers can be automatically routed to your support agents to facilitate conversations in real-time only if need be. Customers are always inclined towards such support practices. 

 #2 Instant support access – everyone NEEDS it

Being available where your customers are and being available at the right time is all it takes to delight your customers. Make sure your support agents are available on multiple channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook, website, in-app, etc. so that they can instantly access support where it’s most convenient for them. 

Having such a solution in place not just ensures a great customer experience but also enables you to generate a pipeline faster for your sales team by connecting with your potential customers anytime. And if your agent isn’t around, you can even enable your leads to book a meeting with you later. That way, you are absolutely not losing your customers to your competitors. 

#3 When you say 24*7 availability, mean it

Companies win the hearts of customers when they keep their touchpoints early and as quick as possible. Because they can be rest assured that you are there for them when they need you (best feeling, right?). 

Besides having the ability to interact with your customers during business hours, what you might also need is the power to greet and communicate with them even when your agents are not around. 

24*7 availability also means not making customers feel left behind. Customers from different time zones and regions get their queries resolved quickly, agents are looped into the conversation at the right time with the right message, and your customers are informed to wait if agents are unavailable to handle their queries.

Watch Now: Here’s a quick Dashboard tour that lets you understand how you can monitor and measure some of the imperative customer support metrics. 

#4 Timely reminders

Your customers are hustling. Really. Sometimes, they might forget to respond to your messages in an ongoing conversation. So when they’re busy doing other work, it is the responsibility of your support automation platform to remind them to pay their bills, renew their subscription, buy the carted items, and get the details that you want to get. 

Remember, engaging customers with real-time personalisation gets their attention and moves them either to the next step in the sales funnel or engage and retain them as customers for life. 

Suggested Reading: How to Nudge customers without getting on their nerves

#5 Feedback – take it. It’s all yours

Give your customers a fast track to give their feedback on their support/buying experience. Allow your customers to submit their feedback on any channel, and even let them instantly give a star rating. Sounds simple, right? But the real catch is when you have to collect the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and add it up to the CSAT dashboard manually, so you can just jump into insights. 

Tip: The point here is to measure customer satisfaction and understand what your customers expect from your customer service. It is highly imperative to know what your customers think of you and your service on social media. Test and try until you find the best approach to solve this problem.

“ Automation is going to shape customer support for organizations. It helps in understanding the user profile, recommending right products for them etc. By automating the FAQs, we want our fit advisors (agents) to focus on important aspects of buying such as helping customers find the right fit of products for them. ” – Sekhar Sudhamsh

#6 Standing in customers’ shoes: faster resolution

Response – Everyone needs it. And, they need it right away. On the other hand, support agents need to have everything to get greater context to reply faster and close the conversation – which means a higher resolution rate per every conversation. This also means ramping up your support teams’ productivity. 

But, is your customer support team democratised to achieve this?

There are a whole bunch of features out there that can accelerate the response rates of your customer support team. Features like canned responses, dashboards to get more visibility into the team’s bandwidth, and seamless integration capabilities are some of them you might want to look for when you are promising to deliver a stellar support experience.

Suggested Reading: Here’s one of the best ways to resolve conversations faster

Over to you

Always keep in mind that you are solving for your customers’ needs. Especially during this pandemic, your team needs to have more time to focus on problems that can’t be solved by a bot. For which, you might want to consider automating a good amount of your support work. 

When we asked how automation has affected customer support, here’s what Sekhar Sudhamsh, Lead Product Manager at Zivame had to say.

If you still have questions about how you can automate your customer support or are not sure if what you have in place right now is working for you, let us know! 🙂

We are here to help you with making customer support automation a breeze.