8 Quick Win Steps to Improve Customer Service Communication

For a business to be successful, it needs customers. Let’s face it, they’re your bread and butter, so it makes perfect sense to look after them as best you can. Also, good customer service communication is what will keep your retention rates high.

One of the biggest turnoffs for consumers is poor customer communication. In the US alone, estimates are that the cost is close to $4 billion annually.

If you can communicate with your customers effectively, the impact will reverberate much further than your balance sheet.

Good communication impacts your company by:

• Creating fewer touchpoints
• Increasing your conversions
• Boosting customer loyalty
• Providing faster support

Striving to do better should be your aim, but how best to go about it? The following eight quick win steps are sure to improve your customer service communication.

Why Is Customer Service Communication Important

One of the best ways to help your customers is to give them what they want and the tools to help themselves. First, be proactive by predicting issues or queries your customers might face in the future. Then, help them by preparing solutions or support documents.

Not only will this improve customer service communication, but it will also reduce customer service errors and confusion over your service or products.

There are several ways you can create support documents, for example, how-to guides, FAQs, video tutorials, and a knowledge base.

If you know what your customers want and have things ready to help them, it will positively reflect your business. It will also help reduce repetitive interactions by the customer and improve customer communication skills.

You Only Get One Chance at a First Impression

A good customer service experience makes a lasting impression. However, if the first experience a customer has of your company is a bad one, it’s going to cost your business dearly. Feelings of anger, frustration, annoyance, and being upset will not reflect well on your company.

One good example of this is when United Airlines received some terrible feedback from just one customer. Unfortunately, their experience went viral on social media. The result was a drop in the company value of $1.4 billion overnight.

If you can make an excellent first impression, it will make your customers happier and accelerate your business revenue. But what is the best way to build a solid first customer experience?

Reduce waiting times in your customer service communications

Waiting in a queue can be frustrating for your customers. It is one of the main reasons a customer might leave your website. You can speed the process up by automating your customer support channels. Chatbots, for example, can engage with your customers 24/7.

Avoid canned or scripted responses

Using scripted responses or canned replies to customers’ questions too often leads to a bad customer experience. Instead, try to make conversations impactful and meaningful.

Provide real-time customer support

Use chatbots and live chat to deliver real-time support to your customers. However, this option doesn’t suit all businesses. WhatsApp for Business might be better suited for your type of business.

Know Your Customer

The more information your customer support team has before they try helping a customer, the better. They must have access to the right tools to see any data you have about the customer.

Information that is beneficial and can help customer communication would relate to their purchasing history, previous support inquiries, account credentials, and anything revealed during the sales process.

When your customer support team can access all this information, they’ll have to ask individual customers fewer questions. You’re providing a more personal service and treating them like human beings, which is something your customers will appreciate.

Be Where Your Customers Are – Be Omnichannel

Choose to adopt an omnichannel customer service strategy, and you’ll retain far more customers. What does omnichannel mean? It means you:

• Interact with your target audience via channels they prefer
• Increase consumer engagement and conversion
• Reduce customer acquisition costs
• Deliver relevant content to your target audience

To be able to enhance your customer service communication and adopt an omnichannel approach, you first have to identify the channels your customers prefer.

Customers expect to be able to reach your business easily. Make sure your customer support team is available on multiple channels. Email and phone calls are the most obvious, but SMS messaging or Interactive Voice Messaging can be very valuable tools.

Pay Attention to Social Media

Social media is one of the preferred channels when consumers want to engage with brands. According to research studies, 67% of consumers use social media networks like Twitter and Facebook to resolve issues.

Social media is a great way to communicate with your customers. Still, you have to work at maintaining a positive brand image because social media channels can also be a channel where angry customers can write negative things about your business.

Luckily, there are things you can do to improve effective customer communication over social media channels.

• Understand which social media channels your customers prefer to use and be actively engaged with them.
• The support you provide across the channels should be consistent so that the social service you provide is the same.
• Make use of social media channels when you want to announce product releases, content updates, events, or company news.
• Take the time to respond to comments, feedback, and reviews.

When you engage with your customers on social media, it can provide helpful information, build your brand’s reputation, develop trust, and bring prospective customers to your company via referral marketing.

Live Assistance Tools Are a Must

There are many reasons why a customer might get frustrated with your customer service, but one of the most significant is a lack of speed.

If it takes a long time for your customer to explain their issue, your customer support team will likely take even longer to resolve it.

Thankfully, this kind of issue is easy to overcome with the help of technology. New technology is constantly being released, making the customer service communication easier, quicker, and more efficient.

Live assistance tools include:

• Co-browsing
• Live chat debugging
• AI Chatbots
• Video calls
• Inbound call centre services

If your customer can show you what the problem is, rather than being forced to put it into words, it makes getting a resolution quicker and easier for your customer support team and the customer.

Train and Educate Your Agents

Untrained or rude support agents are bound to put people off, often so much that they’ll switch brands rather than continue on their journey. According to a study conducted by McKinsey, 70% of consumers base their buying experience on how they’re treated.

Here are some best practices if you want to improve the internal communication of your customer service team.

• Empathy: It’s important for the customer to know you understand them. Try to put yourself in their shoes and understand their situation. It will help you communicate empathetically.
• Active listening: This means giving the customer your complete attention. The aim is to understand what the customer is saying without asking questions or interrupting. Listening rather than hearing allows you to figure out what they want, their feedback, and their opinions.
• Personalization: Address customers by their first name and ask how they’re doing. Adding such personal touches makes communication closer.
• Positive language: Words such as certainly, definitely, why not, and absolutely not only sound good, they’re positive and personal too.
• Avoid the jargon: Technical and complex terms often confuse customers. Your customer service communication will be more effective if you use easy and simple terms.

Ask Your Customers for Feedback and Implement It

Oftentimes, responding to feedback can be something as simple as fixing a broken link on your website, improving the timing of text messages, or changing a word in an email. They might seem inconsequential, but for the customer, they can be very frustrating or annoying.

Customer feedback is a great way to find out about these niggles. Feedback also shows how customers feel about your brand, helps build long-term relationships, and opens a conversation with customers.

You can collect feedback in various ways, such as surveys, tracking social media mentions, paying attention to feature requests, processing them, or adding a built-in customer feedback widget to your website.

However you obtain your feedback, the most important thing is to notice what your customers are saying and try to put things right or implement their suggestions.

Wrapping Up Customer Service Communication Tips

If you’re at all worried about the effectiveness of your customer service communication, it’s time to put these tips into action. When it comes to improving customer communication, the devil is in the details. The slightest change can make a huge difference, whether it’s the software you use or how your customer service team shapes conversations.

Follow these tips and best practices, and you’ll expand your customer base. In the long run, you’ll experience business growth thanks to increased conversions and the number of loyal customers.