Medium or Well Done? Getting the Best in Customer Service

What does it take to offer not just lukewarm, but grade A customer support? 

A 2021 Dimensional Research study discovered 69% positive customer experiences directly correlate with quick resolutions to problems. Likewise, the same study determined 65% negative experiences link taking too long to resolve a query.

In other words, nearly 1 in 7 people were happy with the quick turnaround – and nearly the same number were unhappy with the long wait to resolution! With a staggering average response time of 12 hours and 10 minutes, it’s no wonder customers would leave a bad review!

Read these valuable tips on what customers really want from customer support and how to keep those 5-star reviews in the bag.

Company Culture Translates To Customer Experience

Ever ask a waiter for a recommendation, and get nothing more than a shrug? Product knowledge amongst employees makes or breaks the difference between stellar support and subpar delivery. 

A robust onboarding process does more than just extend worker knowledge - it fosters a growth mindset. Issuetrak’s CEO Dan Flowers perfectly sums up growth-mindset in the workplace with a winning formula of reciprocity: “Our employees act with respect and accountability - and Issuetrak returns it tenfold.”

Therefore, investing in employees using differentiated training, from in-person training to informative videos, grows your business.

In return, employees easily overcome learning barriers and more readily embrace their duties. The result? Not only are there greater satisfaction and retention rates. Workers are also eager to positively represent their company and pass on that feel-good energy when interacting with clients.  

An employee recognition system is great for this. Our own STAR award system lets co-workers nominate each other for performing above and beyond their duties. Imagine: if you’re regularly recognized for your hard work, what are the chances you’ll groom a killer experience for a customer? As mentioned in the Harvard Business Review, “happier employees [yield] larger talent pipelines and greater profitability and productivity”.

Specialists At Your Fingertips - Plus A Bonus

A company like IBM attends to customers by assigning a specialist team to each client. 

To be a true master in customer support, take IBM’s tactic up a notch: offer a freebie alongside dedicated customer support.

Much like IBM, Issuetrak prefers an insourced customer success team, pairing up customer account managers with in-house Product Experts - all of whom are invested in customer success. (You don’t get that from your everyday help desk software provider. Hi-yah!) 

And here’s the clincher: there’s no additional cost to this. It’s just plain ol’ great customer support. Because your success is our success.

The takeaways? If you provide a catered team of specialists as well, you'll have a radical competitive edge and stand out as a superstar authority in your field. More importantly, customers benefit from the more tailored experience you're offering.

Give Customer Support Like It’s 2022!

Face-to-face interactions had their time and place. Now a virtualization innovation has taken the post-Covid professional sphere by storm! Business relationships can now maximize today’s business-as-unusual virtuality. 

Having changed from formal office garb to pajama-bottoms-screen-time, the modern work environment helps employees avoid burnout and customers to comfortably do business.

Basically, to survive in the new era of industry, we must pool communication for remote workers across borders – and international clients across time zones.

Create a virtual customer support space – but don’t go full robot! As useful as chatbots are for your website, remember: people love talking to people. Find a balance. Customers value a quick query answered by a chatbot as much as a complex question answered by support staff.

Excel-Live-is-part-of-the-span-of-ways-to-collaborate-in-Teams-credit-Microsoft

As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in his Inspire keynote, “In a previous era, you could get away with one or two of these quadrants, but now we need all four quadrants to be excellent at any given time for work to be done and collaboration to happen.” This graphic from Microsoft perfectly demonstrates the world’s move from the in-office to the hybrid/remote workspace.

Thinking Of You! Follow Up, But Don’t Hound ‘em

Streamlined, easy, open communication is a top priority heard over and over again from clients. 

Sending out survey emails helps address security hygiene. Plus, for us, it’s just a good, simple check-in on how our customers’ sites are working for them. Uncluttered messaging -  from the webpage to the support call - curates a transparent process for each customer’s journey.

In an effort to boost open communications,  Issuetrak has previously sponsored user groups to bolster community learning. Our Director of Technology Noel Lucas heads an AWS user group to keep the tech community up-to-date with the fast-paced changes in Amazon’s tech world.

It doesn’t take much - just a little effort and a lot of passion to share your trade secrets and offer an incredibly valuable deliverable that keeps your biz top of mind.

We Count on Your Feedback. Seriously.

The simplicity of streamlined communications stretches to the back-of-house, too. 

Adobe uses front-line employees to test out their own product. This ensures they receive the closest thing possible to “laymen’s” feedback. 

When the masses demanded it, Slack wasted no time to produce an emoji for every existing human interaction.

Here at Issuetrak, we learned IT departments would rather opt for simpler software functions than PTO! And when an Issuetrak team member  - from Director to developer - brings up such an issue, the commentary gets fed throughout all departments to improve company operations from within.

Shoot for targets of 100% customer satisfaction garnered from surveys and testimonials because, you know, aim high – or don’t aim at all. 

Customer Support Infographic

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Topics from this blog: Customer Support

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