Good customer service has always been one of the pillars of commercial success.
For one, it helps you retain customers. They’re bound to come back when they’re happy about your products and services. It’s also great for your marketing. When customers are satisfied with your goods and services, they’ll likely recommend you to friends and family as well. Word of mouth continues to be one of the most credible forms of advertising for consumers. After all, the opinions of those close to you are more believable than ads you see on TV or online.
If you need to improve your customer service, offer a variety of communication channels for your customers. This can be through phone, email, and live chat. Customers expect fast replies. They want you to respond to their queries in as little as 30 minutes. This demand for quick responses may push you to constantly use automated techniques, like chatbots and automatic directories. Automation also lets you hire fewer customer service staff, reducing your overall hiring, equipment, and operation costs.
If you want to improve the quality of your customer service, however, you need to use human representatives. In fact, over 75 percent of consumers still favor having a live agent for support compared to self-service and chatbot methods.
Here’s why a real person is still important to have at the other end of your customers’ line.
Consumers Want a Personalized Experience
Over 84 percent of consumers state that they want to be treated like a person and not another number in a business’s logs. A chatbot, unless it has complex coding, won’t be able to remember (much less empathize with) a customer and their issues.
Upon the first contact, human representatives can understand a customer’s problem from a technical and emotional standpoint. Whether they solve the consumer’s concern, they build rapport with them, which can improve future encounters.
Most customers want their agents to know who they are, what they’re doing with the products and services, and what their immediate concerns are. They don’t want to repeat their issue every time they call or send a message. As such, automated directories or chatbots that ask the same questions over and over may just upset them. A dedicated agent with detailed dossiers about each customer ensures that each caller feels like the business cares about solving their concerns.
Fast Resolution, Better Consumer Experiences
Customers expect responses to their questions in less than an hour. While bots and automatic directories can answer them instantly, the quality of those responses may not be satisfactory. This can lead to frustration, as customers clamor through menus just to get the answer they want or to end up speaking with a human customer service representative.
If they get on the line with a CSR easily, they’ll be able to speak out their concerns in full. The agent can then assess and solve the situation on the fly. This is especially important if a customer has multiple inquiries or concerns to bring up. They get fast answers, but they won’t regret calling because they get high-quality responses to their queries.
Relatability is Crucial
It’s common to speak with customers that are anxious to talk about their concerns. You commonly encounter these customers when you’re in the service industry, like banking and healthcare. According to a recent study featured by the Harvard Business Review, providing them with self-service technology and other automated customer service methods will just make them feel even more isolated when they need help. Talking to a human CSR eases their anxious feelings.
The researchers tested the effect of having another human on the line with over 200 participants. One group was given the chance of chatting with an expert, another had a “chat with another investor option,” and the last group was given no option to live chat. They found that the mere option of talking to another human about their product or service concerns decreased their anxiety. Because of this, they were more satisfied with their choice to work with the firm in the study.
Automation is a welcome addition to customer service. It lowers your costs and gives customers quick answers to simple product or service questions and concerns. However, you shouldn’t just rely solely on your chatbots and automated directories to handle all the customer service for you. When you need your customers to be satisfied and to trust your firm, give them the quick, personalized, and relatable service that only human representatives can provide.
Contact Always Answer for Your Customer’s Care with a 24/7 Live Answering Service Today!
Always Answer provides a first-rate customer support team with trained service professionals. Expect your calls to be handled in the same way you would take care of them personally. Call us at 1-800-606-9898 today for details.
