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New Year Resolutions For Offering Better Customer Support In 2015

by iOPEX - January 15, 2015

New Year Resolutions For Offering Better Customer Support In 2015

In 2013 globally, 66% of consumers switched brands due to poor customer service and around 82% of those who switched said that the brands could have done something to stop them— Globlal Consumer Pulse Survey, November 2013.

This pointer is an impulse enough to trigger the need for an innovative and supportive customer service that can be a game-changer in 2015 and beyond. Let’s now look at some innovative approaches that can make a difference and should surely be a part of the customer support team’s New Year resolutions.

Offer different support style for different products/services

Support normally tends to follow a pre-set procedure and remains same for almost all products; however choosing different support styles, communication channels, and procedures for different products is an innovative way to amaze your customers. For instance, at iOPEX, we categorize products based on customer demographics, channel preference, type of users (commercial/personal) and other peculiar features of the products and base our support style and procedure on them. We also assign the right agents for such tasks. This enhances the quality of support and also enriches the support experience for our customers.

Develop multichannel support expertise

With more channels of communication available, customer support teams must carefully look for channels that are mostly used by their customers and prospects and hinge on to them and make them more active. This alone can make support interactions timelier as customers immediately use these channels, thus avoiding support lags and frustration of interacting on channels that they are unwilling to use. At least, this coming year, add one or more communication channels which are not yet offered by you but are desired by your customers. Offering more channels is not the end, developing expertise in each field and allocating the right skilled resources for each channel is the next part. At iOPEX, we understand this requirement of our clients and thus offer training to agents in different channels.

Offer video support

Face-to-face support is what customers may be looking for. Definitely interacting one-on-one visually is more effective than virtual assistants, emails, and chat for certain categories of products or services. In most cases face-to-face support can help in solving the issue in a single session and the support executives can also get a first-hand feedback/experience of the customer. This is also extremely effective and popular than conventional support systems as proved at Amazon. The Amazon ‘Mayday’ button is used to connect the Kindle Fire HDX tablet owner to a customer support executive via webcam, now around 75% of users are using this button for customer support.

Aim for single session resolutions

Whatever the channel, ensure single session resolutions if possible. To do this, support executives may have to go that extra mile and resolve the issue, this can add a lot of value to your customers and will build a great brand image for your product. So rework on your standard procedures of taking support tickets and passing it through the loop. Look for departmental integration if possible to work out on single session resolution. For instance, iOPEX reduces Average Handling Time significantly by using automated knowledgebase and support software that makes it easier for the agent to resolve issues.

Faster resolutions to increase loyalty

With e-tailing gaining popularity there is a noted trend of customers changing their products more frequently than before. For instance, ten years ago a mobile phone had a life of around 3 to 5 years but now that surely has come down; thanks to a number of companies launching newer products ever so frequently. This implies that support for a particular product may only be aspired for lesser time frames and this calls for sharper resolution of product issues, as delay in issue resolution may prod the customer to immediately switch to another brand.

Enhance the experience throughout the customer lifecycle

Not only support, improve the overall product experience for your customers through quality products, fast shipping, improved logistics, inter departmental cooperation for faster product delivery and issue resolution, launch of newer products, loyalty rewards, proactive support, and up-sale initiatives.

Grow knowledge in allied fields

Today, support is not only about helping customers resolve issues pertaining to your product; but also about understanding interactions of your product with other technologies and devices and offer a wholesome support experience to the customer so that he does not have to call multiple solution providers for one issue. This calls for developing and growing easy-to-access knowledgebase and arming the agents with the right technologies to offer one-stop support.

Analyse everything and optimize everything

As it becomes easier to capture all aspects of customer interactions with the brand and the support agents, utilizing the data generated in order to optimize the operations further is the next step. Data is out there, but using it to increase support efficiencies, streamlining operations, boost agent performance, reduce turnaround time, minimize issue resolution durations, and increasing customer satisfaction is the big thing. At iOPEX, we have a special in-house BI tool to help us understand the various aspects of agent performance, optimum channel utilization, knowledge growth, and so on.

Conclusion

Support is an area which can make or break a brand. Even mediocre products in the past have sustained due to excellent post-sale support and with such thriving competition and fast product rollouts it’s extremely important to maintain a flexible, innovative and potent support system for sustained profitability.

 
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