The days of mass marketing appear increasingly endangered, if they haven’t already been vanquished. Customers are increasingly demanding the best possible experience and one that resonates with them on a personal level. Organisations must get to know each of their customers as an individual and provide them with a personalised experience in order to gain their trust, loyalty and repeat business.
In the ever-increasing digital age, it is marketing departments that are increasingly engaging the customer due, in part, to the sheer volume of customer communications that take place on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Customer engagement, and in turn customer service, has therefore inherently become a key function of the modern day marketing department.
However, treating each customer as an individual and not merely a number is a great challenge and one that businesses are struggling to successfully overcome.
Businesses are using technology to try and improve their customer service divisions, and tackle issues with customer experience and CRM. Gone are the days of customers returning to the point of sale to make a complaint; interactive platforms are now commonplace to include social media channels, hotlines and integrated live chat.
The recent Zendesk Benchmark report suggests that worldwide customer satisfaction is improving, with global figures revealing that almost 95% of customers were happy with the service they received in the first quarter of 2015. In particular, service through live chat provided the highest customer satisfaction rating among customers, above email, response forms, telephone and social media channels.
When the benefits of an online chat system are considered, it is easy to see why this is the case. Whereas email and social media has a time lag between a question being raised and an answer being provided, live chat instantly connects customers to a member of the helpdesk where questions receive instant and fluid responses.
Another reason that live chat works so well is that service desk staff can speak to several different customers simultaneously to solve their problems. Should a particular query arise that they themselves are not best suited to reply to, the chat can be transferred over to a colleague who has more specialist knowledge. Speaking to customer support staff over the phone may produce instantaneous responses but does not have these advantages – which may result in long queues to get through to an operator and being put on hold several times until the correct department or member of staff is available to handle a problem.
Loyalty to the customer
As well as the reputational advantages of ensuring seamless and tailored services for customers, it makes sense from a company’s financial perspective too – with research showing that on average it costs up to five times as much to win a new customer than it does to maintain an existing one. This figure alone presents a compelling case for organisations to give customers the best possible experience, care and value for money to ensure they keep coming back.
The realisation that an organisation can in fact save money by keeping its current customers happy gives a new meaning to the term “customer loyalty”. Instead of the established notion of customers having an undying loyalty, brands must also now show the same dedication and love to their customers. Going the extra mile to make sure every customer gets a positive experience throughout the purchase process is what will attract repeat visits and positive reviews.
A failure to engage with customers after a transaction is what prevents many companies from forming strong relationships and enticing repeat sales. As well as providing the predominant source of company revenue, customers also provide imperative information to organisations on how they can continue to improve their products and operations through the feedback that they supply.
This customer feedback requires mass storage and utilisation of data to be effective in the long term.
The power of data
In order to keep track of customer purchases and enquiries, it is essential to any customer relationship management programme that businesses develop and store large quantities of data. By storing information about the previous experiences of each customer and analysing the data, organisations can more readily provide solutions and understand customer needs better.
Data can reveal a customer’s history of interaction with a brand, where customer support staff are able to see whether their problem is a recurring one – or indeed one which has been frequently reported by other customers. This helps service desks deliver the correct tone of response and help them to solve a customer issue or query more rapidly and in context.
Conversely, having a limited store of data means that it is harder to glean information about individual customers and make a satisfactory connection with their needs and expectations. It is also harder to instantly pinpoint any problems or customer support interactions that they may have encountered in the past.
Furthermore, a comprehensive database can add real value and actually be an asset to the contact centre – rather than the “cost centre” it is often perceived as. A recent report by the International Customer Management Institute and Zendesk revealed that customer service departments can decrease their financial burden to an organisation and become profit centres. As well as listening to customers and storing their issues and feedback, sharing information across the company can make customer support desks an important hub of information.
There is no doubt that the customer remains king and businesses must become smarter and realise the extent of the role that each individual customer plays in making the company reputable and competitive.
