As advances are continued to be made in customer support platforms, self-service options are becoming more and more personalized. This is a major win for most companies, since self-service and automated support can save businesses thousands annually and allow their employees to focus on more complex cases.
Customer Care Service Best Practices
Even though there are plenty of benefits to using self-service care options, the way you design them is still important to consider.
All the resources you provide to your customers need to be carefully thought out and monitored. You can’t just set them and forget them. Here are a few tips to make sure that your automated customer support complies with the generally accepted best practices of the industry.
1] Give your customers some level of choice
Customers crave choice, as it shows them that you value them and their time. While you don’t want to overwhelm consumers with too many options, having a few methods of support is one way to give them autonomy as they work to solve their problem for you.
This may include creating a knowledge base, a Frequently Asked Questions section, or detailed video tutorials to illustrate the finer details of your product. Remember that everybody learns differently, and so some customers may prefer to read instructions, while others would rather watch a video.
2] Take advantage of automatic call distribution
While automatic call distribution has long been used to route voice calls to the appropriate department or agent, omni-channel call center software makes it possible to route a variety of channels to the appropriate agent automatically.
This increases customer satisfaction while also boosting agent productivity, as agents aren’t needing to manually transfer a customer anymore due to the fact that they are only receiving requests that they specialize in handling.
You can implement this in several different ways in order to best fit with your business’ goals. For example, you may want to always route the same customer to the same agent if they had a positive experience the last time they interacted.
Conversely, you may want speedier agents to handle overflow interactions, and more valuable customers to be fielded by your more experienced agents.
3] Include ways to connect with live support
Even if you have a robust FAQ or knowledge base, it’s important to offer your customers a way to quit their current line of troubleshooting and connect to a live agent instead. Try as they might, there are some issues that a customer may think they can solve on their own that actually require a more knowledgeable agent’s assistance.
Make sure that you always include a button or link offering customers the chance to work through their problem with a human being when you ask them if a certain resource solved their problem or not. You’ll also want to make sure that your customers receive seamless support even if they switch channels.
An omni-channel software solution like Bright Pattern gives you this flexibility, and creates a support environment where customers don’t need to reiterate previous steps taken because they can transition between channels without erasing any historical records.
There’s more to automated customer support than just typing up some instructions and including a few reference videos or pictures.
In order to provide a high quality and consistent customer support experience, you’ve got to make sure that customers feel empowered using your system and also have the opportunity to connect with a live agent if they feel like they’re in over their head.
Building your support solution on top of a feature-rich SaaS software platform like Bright Pattern is one way to ensure that you’ve addressed all of the above tips and tricks.
