Customer service represents all intercommunication between the customer and the business that sells its product or services. Nowadays, when automated self-service systems manage a substantial part of customer care, speaking to a human being is crucial to most businesses, positively affecting their interactions with current and potential customers.
Providing excellent customer service is a significant competitive advantage.
What is Customer Service?
Customer service represents the direct interaction between a consumer and a company representative selling its product or service. Customer service stands for the support a company offers to its customers before and after buying and using its products or services. It aims to achieve a comfortable and pleasant experience for customers. Delivering fantastic customer service is essential if an organization wants to retain current customers and grow its business in the future.
Modern customer service reaches beyond providing conventional support over the phone. Today’s customer support is available through various channels and platforms, such as email, web, text message, or social media channels. Numerous companies provide self-service support so that customers can find their answers day or night.
Many companies choose to outsource customer service. This has has several advantages. Outsourcing to a trustworthy organization leads to well-established business and more pleased customers. Handing over the charge of customer service to a reliable, knowledgeable, and well-organized call center allows a company to ensure that this critical part of its business has the management and support to control and fix minor issues and extreme emergencies.
Why is Customer Service important?
High-grade customer service is vital for business success. Firstly, it ensures customers’ loyalty and positive thoughts regarding a specific brand. Secondly, it helps companies build stable and long-term relationships with customers, buyers, and consumers. In short, providing remarkable customer service is a way to retain and engage current customers and draw new ones.
Providing meritorious service to customers impacts several vital aspects:
- It is closely connected to the brand’s image
- Customer retention cuts costs and preserves the budget
- It drives more financial gains and larger incomes
- CLV is increasing
- Superior customer service enhances the marketing domain and creates new opportunities
Statistics show that an average company that employs its in-house customer service team is up to 50% less productive than a business that outsources. Hiring a third-party customer service team is often the most effective solution.
Customer service reflects a brand’s image and values.
There is an unbreakable bond between brand image and customer service. Organizations must keep the two segments aligned and make the most of their customer experience. A satisfying experience will make customers feel valued.
Human-assisted service is much-needed. Some complex requests and particular transactions demand human engagement. Besides, many customer sections favor the humane approach.
Business owners must not underestimate the power of customers remembering how they’d experienced their purchasing journey. The entire buying process, accompanied by adequate customer support and empathy toward the consumers, points out the company’s values and mission.
Customer retention costs less than acquiring new customers.
Business owners usually have too much on their plate, and some seem to forget the significance of exceptional customer service. Here’s a fact – if a company doesn’t take good care of their customers, some other company will. Retaining customers is paramount for countless reasons. One is preserving the budget and going for the most cost-effective alternative. It’s cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one. In fact, according to some calculations, it can cost up to seven times more to find, attract, and win over new customers than to retain the ones who already use a product or service.
Satisfied customers bring more income to the business.
Customers who have experienced superb customer service and felt appreciated are willing to spend more and would most likely keep returning.
Most customers consider pricing and seek quality yet less expensive products or services. Once they grasp what matchless customer service feels like, they would be open to purchasing premium products due to their level of trust and mutual respect. In addition, they would also recommend a product or service that suited their needs while the internal team made them feel welcome and esteemed. Customer satisfaction drives loyalty and attracts more customers, income, and a better overall brand image.
Excellent customer service increases CLV.
CLV is the medium amount of cash customers spend on a business that provides them with products or services during the entire lifecycle of their relationship. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents one of the critical stats associated with customer experience. CLV measures how valuable a customer is to a business.
This metric enables business owners to understand costs per acquisition. As we previously mentioned, it costs less to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones. Improving existing customers’ value is an excellent way to stimulate growth.
There are several ways to increase customer lifetime value. Listening to their suggestions, needs, possible complaints, or pain points and taking customer advice is a big plus and builds a successful long-term collaboration.
It is also great to offer individual gifts, discounts, or advantages to reward customers’ loyalty. Rewarding their engagement will upgrade the relationship with customers.
Being there for customers and respecting their needs should be a prime goal. Providing customer support by answering their questions timely, accurately, honestly, and transparently influences CLV substantially.
Proactive customer service generates new marketing possibilities.
Content customers will recommend a brand to others. Even with all the digital assets, advantages, and elaborate social media and marketing strategies, good old word-of-mouth still represents the most popular and trusted marketing channel. Unfortunately, this is a two-way street. Bad customer experience echoes even louder.
Take care of customer service and provide good support to avoid collecting negative reviews and gaining a harmful reputation. Keeping in mind that some researchers have proven that 76% of British consumers said that a positive experience is more valuable than the actual product they’re interested in, the entire excitement over the customer service makes perfect sense.
Taking care of customer needs will never go out of style, even from the perspective of a vibrant field like marketing. No new trend will lessen customer service’s influence on creating marketing opportunities.
Let’s improve!
Over the past few decades, countless businesses in many different industries and domains have attempted to reduce hiring and overall employment costs by automating their processes to the highest degree possible. Automating specific processes is not only cost-effective but also eases and speeds up the performance of particular tasks.
This trend motivated many companies in customer service to implement systems that would resolve as many problems as possible without a human presence. These automated solutions came through the phone or via online tools and platforms.
Nevertheless, some issues can’t possibly be resolved without human touch, perception, interference, and interpersonal interactions.
Providing customers with valuable insights and doing everything in your power to resolve their problems swiftly and trouble-free gives them the feeling of safety and relevance. Indeed, teams need to show compassion and understanding to their customers.
High-grade customer service inspires customers to stay loyal and makes a massive difference in a competitive market.
Still, exceptional customer service is achievable when the employees are satisfied with their jobs and passionate about the brand.
Motivating a customer service team is the first step towards having a head start over the competition and being respected by customers. If you want to learn more about the next step, an excellent place to start is here.
