Customer Self-Sufficiency: Your Anchor to Loyal Customers
Customer relationship is the new competitive battleground. It’s where a business can win or lose.
Haven’t you ever looked for ways to strengthen customer relationships and loyalty?
Well, wonder no more because your answer is right here and much simpler than you might have imagined.
Customer self-sufficiency: a small step for your customers, a massive leap for your company.
A happy customer experience comes from feeling empowered and in control. The game-changer occurs when you let your customers be self-sufficient instead of hiring an agent to perform tasks for them. This, at the same time, delivers improved engagement, reduced expenses and retains your customers for the long haul.
Sounds too good to be true? Read on to discover how.
- Provide support through multiple channels
Long gone are the days when a fax or a phone call were the only available options to contact a support team. Today, customers like to take their pick; email, phone, SMS, live chat, and social media. The list is endless.
According to a report, companies with omnichannel customer engagement retain approximately 89% of their customers, compared to 33% of customers with weak omnichannel strategies.
This is because multi-channel support directly impacts buying decisions which affect the company in terms of retention, revenue, and reputation. Having multiple channels also guarantees minimum support personnel as the majority of the tasks can be automated using the latest cloud technologies.
But can adding support channels truly boost customer loyalty? If yes, then how?
Well, according to your customers, it augments loyalty. A study says that 91% of customers use Google to troubleshoot their issues before contacting a live support agent. Makes sense, right? When you make customers feel empowered, they want your brand more.
Moreover, this frees up the support representatives to tackle more complex issues which self-service can’t handle. New channels mean new technologies and opportunities. Your customers are already looking for you, so the transition makes complete sense.
2. Implement maximum personalisation
Remember when spotting your name in an email subject line appeared like revolutionary progress in marketing?
Today, in this increasingly savvy marketplace, offering your clients personalised experiences that keep them engaged requires a more robust and strategic approach. When done right, it can do wonders for retaining customers and your bottom line.
One way of doing this is to create a highly specific knowledge base or FAQs that help customers understand niche applications of your products or services. Another way can be a support chatbot that can guide them towards the right solution.
Furthermore, making it easier for customers to navigate through your self-service options also helps boost engagement and hence, retention. This might include making your website user-friendly and opting for technologies such as a simple IVR to deliver customer service through the phone.
Also, with the help of reliable Cloud services, you can gather cross-channel information to identify your prospects and use CRMs and AI to optimise customer experience, thus creating the best, personalised journeys for your audience.
Other ways might include:
- Optimising mobile marketing
- Capturing useful customer insights and using them as effective feedback
- Being proactive and regularly updating the resources
Personalisation and ROI go hand in hand. The more personalised your support is, the better your customer experience will be and hence, the longer your customers will stick around.
3. Be proactive in terms of customer delivery
Understanding customers and their needs can be difficult at times, even with constant feedback and robust analytics.
But difficult isn’t impossible.
One of the ways to predict customer behaviour is by making it easier for them to find the resources they’re looking for. Look for the issues that your customers face while seeking help, and fix them to enhance their experience and satisfaction. This will assist you with gaining loyalty over time.
Furthermore, this process is much simpler than trying to guess what your customers need because it ties into smaller tasks that you can implement instantly.
- Make your content easy to comprehend
- Look for ways to save customer’s time
- Train your representatives with easy and simple references that they can share on different mediums
The more you personalise, the better — always!
Try and eliminate all friction points from your customer service experience to retain your customers for a longer haul.
4. Work on being mobile-friendly
We have already discussed how being mobile-friendly boosts personalisation and hence, customer self-service. However, there’s more to it. Your entire customer journey needs to work seamlessly over a mobile phone because that’s the entry point for many customers. But what does this mean, exactly?
To put it simply, if your content is inaccessible on the mobile phone, you might as well don’t have it at all. It is actually the fastest way to cater to customer queries.
According to a recent study, 80% of customers say they will buy from a brand having an easy-to-navigate mobile experience. Hold on, that’s not the only shocking number.
The same study shows that 61% of customers will never return to a website having a poor user interface. The indication is super clear. You need to have customer support that is mobile-first before anything. Make the navigation easy, have attractive graphics and simple text.
When everything comes together, your self-service will be a huge asset for your customers and major progress in your brand loyalty efforts.
5. Never stop working on your customer service delivery
Lastly, if you want to boost customer loyalty in the long run, find ways to improve your service delivery and support. When your product changes over time, your support should evolve too. Map out a simple customer journey and then track the same. You need to identify customer needs, map the progress and then align your customer support accordingly.
Implement technologies such as AI and cloud telephony to sit abreast with the competition and gain key customer insights. Focus on your efforts to eliminate any resistance towards customer self-service and drive success forward.
Remember that the design and user interface of your content is just as important as the content itself. Follow a simple and methodical approach to improve your customer experience.
As mentioned above, don’t be afraid to take customer feedback and refresh your content accordingly. All these elements will help you grow consistently on your customer experience parameter.
To sum up:
New innovations in technology will always aid customer support in unique ways. However, you must start with offering multichannel support to your customers and create more knowledge-based content to guide customers through their issues.
Personalisation makes the whole process a lot more attractive and easy to follow. Simplify your customer journey as much as possible. The more a consumer resonates with your brand, the more likely they are to buy from you again.
Ensure all of the elements are mobile-friendly and serve mobile browsing efficiently. That’s where your customers are most likely to spend the majority of their time. Finally, build a foundation of trust and constantly track your progress.
Other than the points mentioned above, it’s essential to be courteous and warm while addressing their concerns to increase customer loyalty. Customers are peculiar about how conversations begin and end with an organisation. Make your service direct and easy. Loyalty will automatically follow.
Make the most of technologies such as the cloud telephony solutions with Servetel to gain valuable customer insights and make them stay for the long haul. Comment down below if you’re already abreast with these innovations to drive customer loyalty.
