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Are You Making Your Customer’s Lives Easier?

  • Paolo Fabrizio

    • A few weeks ago I attended the Customer Service Summit in New York. One of the most highlighted topics was customer’s shift towards text-based channels (social networks, instant messaging apps and chat). So what are the consequences of this new habit? Simple and scary: customers have higher and higher expectations, and they easily become impatient because they want super-fast, clear and effective answers. Like it or not, this is a trend that we cannot underestimate since we all are customers – and we’re always connected. Making our customer’s lives easier has become paramount. But I have good news for you: read this article to get actionable tips to achieve this goal.

    1. Different Channels, One Experience

    Now, put on customer’s hat and imagine that you need to get information from your providers (e.g. your bank, insurance company, telco, etc..) three times using different channels. Let’s say you’ve experienced:

    How would it be your overall customer experience? I guess that best word to summarize your feelings would be CONFUSION. Then you’d start questioning brand’s reliability – and you know that doubts are the enemies of customer retention.

    TIP: Be consistent across all support channels.

    USEFUL READ: 5 quick ways to support the impatient customer

    2. Reduce Customers’ Efforts, Save Them Time

    Nowadays, time is the most valuable currency for customers. It is for you when you’re the customer, right? So the issue is: “how can I help them save it?” What I suggest, is that you find new ways to reduce customer effort either on voice and text channels. Practically, keep trying to decrease waiting/response time over the phone, as well as the number of overall digital interactions (email, chat, social network, apps). Of course keep testing, learning and improving by paying close attention to customer’s feedback. If you want to dive into this topic, I wrote an article that helps you collect that oh so valuable input.

    TIP: The easier it’s for the customer, the better.

    3. Anticipate Customer’s Questions

    Don’t forget to also improve your website because it’s one of the first places where still many customers go to search for information. Create support dashboards embedding FAQs, help pages and videos to create useful content for your customers. Example: watch this video to learn how NatWest Bank (UK) has streamlined their website in order to make customer’s life easier.↓

    TIP: deliver proactive customer service, regardless the channel.

    Over to you

    In a nutshell channel consistency, low effort and proactive (self) service are the three main pillars to making customer’s lives easier. Do leverage them to build TRUST day by day and consolidate it in the long run. I hope you enjoyed this article and I’m looking forward to your comments below.

    Have great conversations.

     

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    Paolo Fabrizio

    Digital Customer Service Consultant, Trainer, Author, Speaker. Paolo has been helping companies to harness digital customer service as a business driver. Founder of CustomerServiceCulture, author of books and speaker at conferences in Italy and abroad. Lecturer at the Bicocca University of Milan