People are the backbone of all organizations. Satisfying those who patronize a business ensures a healthy flow of opportunities, which is why good service is crucial. Happy customers are loyal—and loyalty means you’re a step closer to long-term success.
As important as this is, maintaining consistent quality service can be challenging as your business grows. The pressure to keep up with consumer demands and global trends regarding mobile apps can shift your focus. That’s why it’s paramount to make customer service management a consistent part of your success blueprint.
But what is customer service management (CSM)? Put simply, CSM is how businesses run their customer service operations in a way that consistently delivers an exceptional experience.
Encompassing support process optimization, outstanding service representatives, and service success measurement, CSM can help your brand achieve customer loyalty. If you have a mobile app, good service extends to that part of your brand as well. Because in turn for a consistent experience, you enjoy a bottom line that goes beyond revenue.
The world of mobile apps can be volatile. As customer demands change, so should your efforts for your brand app to provide the best customer experience and stay ahead of the CSM game. So here are our top four strategies to accomplish this in 2023:
Top strategies for app customer service management
Customer service management can seem complex, but its principles are actually simple. It can be implemented alongside your digital efforts—social media, email marketing, and more. A recent survey by Zendesk hypothizes that 70% of organizations see a direct connection between customer service and business performance.
If you want to boost your brand app with more well-rounded customer service management, consider the following strategies:
Incorporate personalized live chat
Personalized live chat works in tandem with chat features, allowing users to contact your business’ customer service agents directly.
Through chat, they can communicate any queries about your products and services, raise issues, and ask for anything else they might need. Your customer service representatives are available on the other end of the line, quickly attending to customers’ needs.
It all sounds simple, but a study by Econsultancy reveals that live chat garnered the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel. Customers prefer to ask questions and receive answers immediately.
Live service is better than simply giving customers an email address to contact, as they cannot track the responses. With real-time chat, you assure them of timeliness, reliability, and consistency.
Great service reduces the possibilities of frustration and poor reviews, but it also goes a long way to building a reputation of quality and consistency for your business. Discover how Amity’s Chat SDK can help you integrate live chat to your platform.
Build community forums
Creating a space for your customers to connect with each other is another beneficial service strategy. Apart from third-party social media sites where you can’t control content, consider building a dedicated community forum where customers can discuss topics related to your brand while still enjoying a safe and consistent social experience.
A Vanilla Forums study reports that 88% of companies say that community forums improve their customer support in the simplest (but most impactful) way possible. When users try to find answers, they usually try to look for others in a similar situation. Community forums are home to like-minded people who likely already have found a solution.
Even if a user can’t find a solution, they can start a new topic that generates discussion, effectively providing you with user-generated content. Since existing community members are those engaging in the community, you don’t have to pay for as many agents. At the same time, you provide customers with specialized (and seemingly personalized!) support, reduce costs, and boost customer loyalty and retention.
While online forums aren’t in real-time, incoming users can still have access to previous responses. You can easily organize content depending on numerous factors, including date, topic, and popularity.
The only caveat to this feature would be content moderation, but this can easily be solved by choosing a PaaS provider that offers moderation tools for their forums, like Amity Social Cloud.
Integrate in-app customer service
If you’re venturing into mobile app development, it’s crucial to think ahead—straight to customer service. The modern consumer expects their digital experiences to be accessible, seamless, and reliable—and most importantly, fast.
Given the amount of content they’re exposed to daily, users want mobile apps that have it all. That’s why so many product teams see the value in making customer service an in-app experience. In-app support chat, for instance, allows users to make queries without having to leave the app. They can expect quick answers from your customer support team or a chatbot, and as long as their concerns are resolved, they’re happy!
Provide avenues for customer self-service
Customer self-service is a crucial feature that your brand must offer, as a whopping 81% of consumers attempt to look for solutions regarding their issues before contacting customer service representatives.
A resource page or pre-recorded tutorials provides users with the tools they need to troubleshoot common problems instead of waiting for customer service agents. Not only does providing customer self-service help your users and increase their satisfaction, but it also reduces the load on your customer service agents. Their expertise can be reserved for more complex situations that don’t involve a quick fix.
Customer self-service can be easy to adopt, as it can take various forms. For instance, you can include other support avenues in your mobile app, including video tutorials, an interactive FAQ section, and even a regularly updated manual users can browse through.
Focus on an organic customer experience
Customer experience is a culmination of your audience’s interactions with your brand app. It’s the overall impression they have of your products and services from the moment they set off on the buyer journey. This shapes how they perceive, engage, and eventually be loyal to your brand—all of which can contribute to your return on investment (ROI).
Technology makes it possible to create a consistent and quality customer experience, as this also means that you won’t need to sustain a reactive customer service team. Proactive customer support will be able to catch probable issues before they escalate. So long as users get their problems resolved quickly and efficiently, your brand’s name will remain in good standing.
Best practices for improving your app’s customer service management
Your customer service strategy should evolve as your brand and users do. The following best practices will help you stay on top of trends and continue providing an exceptional experience:
1 - Gather and analyze data to understand your customer base
Customer service is not just about answering users’ issues as they arise; it requires companies to take proactive steps that benefit both the brand and its customers. One way to do this is by understanding your audience and studying their habits and preferences.
Thankfully, getting to know your customer base is easier than ever. You can collect data through various channels and build robust customer profiles, even on an individual level. Doing so can help you personalize experiences, boost your sales, and improve customer service.
The data-rich profiles you have about customers can provide your service agents with context regarding the user’s past interactions and purchases within the app. Through this, users can get personalized answers without having to explain the same issue over and over again.
2 - Support your virtual customer service team with artificial intelligence
In an increasingly fast-paced environment, your virtual customer service team needs all the help they can get. By keeping your company up to date with technology like artificial intelligence (AI), you can provide them with a much-needed boost. According to the 2021 McKinsey Global Survey, 27% of organizations have already adopted AI in service operations optimization.
AI is an excellent tool that comes in various forms, and one great example is chatbots. Chatbots can provide timely answers to frequently asked questions, remind customers about their carts, and ask users to give feedback. With these AI-powered features, you can provide 24/7 customer support and solve problems even more quickly than a human could.
AI can also work in synergy with your virtual customer service team by collecting and analyzing data. They can gather relevant information from customer communications, which your team may use to gain insights regarding your customer base’s needs and preferences.
Artificial intelligence allows your customer service team to forgo manual data collection and analysis, which can be tedious and prone to human error. Investing in it is a significant step to improving your customer service management.
3 - Create a long-term rewards program
There’s a reason influencers have changed the name of the digital game—customers need social influences and opinion leaders to help them make decisions. But as trends change, more customers are inclined to listen to people they relate to.
One of the best ways to improve your customer service is to empower your customers to build communities, interact with peers, and become brand advocates. You can do this through long-term programs like a rewards or referral system—one that will make them feel like they’re not only seen in the brand journey but are able to take an active part in it.
You can also encourage customers to respond to surveys and feedback mechanisms, which allow you access to actionable data you can use for product tweaking and revamping.
4 - Motivate and reward your customer service team
Customer service management is not just about adopting the latest technology (although it can help tremendously). It’s also about keeping your human customer service representatives fulfilled and motivated. As much as you want to improve customer satisfaction, it’s also necessary to improve your team’s satisfaction to lower turnover rates and keep productivity high.
It may be helpful to reward customer service representatives who go above and beyond and exceed expectations. Identify praiseworthy achievements and devise a regular program for recognizing team members.
As with personalizing customer experiences, it may also be more motivating for team members if their rewards are personalized. Some representatives may want a team-wide shoutout, while others just want direct messages or handwritten notes highlighting their value.
Markers of successful customer service management
Investing in a powerful customer service management strategy is one thing, but what indicates success? Here are some markers to look out for:
Personalization
In a highly saturated space, personalization is special. It’s a mark of excellent customer service, but it also lets your consumers know that you care about them. Your customer service team should be able to extract insights from a customer’s profile and purchase history, but they should also use it as a baseline to provide tailored solutions to user problems.
Omnichannel support
Apart from personalized live chats and in-app messaging, a good customer service management plan retains emails, phones, and social media as user contact points. You want your customer service management to be omnipresent in the digital world so that users from across ages and preferences have access to support.
High conversion rates
An exceptional customer experience means happy customers, and happy customers lead to high conversion rates. Good service signifies reliability and efficiency, which makes users more likely to come back and spread the good word.
Good customer feedback
Of course, successful customer service generates excellent customer feedback. You’ll have a treasure trove of likes, comments, and reviews, which you can use as social proof for future leads. The insights can also help you better personalize experiences, as well as break through barriers to improvement.
Success strategies for consistent customer service
Businesses cannot exist without customers. It only makes sense that you should invest in strategies that build rapport and trust while reinforcing your ability to deliver a consistent quality experience. When your community feels seen and heard, they are much more likely to stick around.
With so many brands out there that likely offer the same products and services, creating long-standing relationships with your customers is what makes one stand out. Even the most innovative product in the world can be outshined by a small business that delivers excellent and personalized customer support.
Apart from funneling your budget solely towards marketing campaigns, consider recalibrating some towards your customer service management strategies instead. After all, most testimonials highlight not just quality products but genuine experiences.
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