Now is the time to revamp your customer care strategy

There is a user rebellion underway in customer service. 

Armed with an Internet connection that will provide instant access to a wide array of options, customers are demanding superior customer service and customer care. They are no longer satisfied with mediocre anything.

Providing exceptional customer care is challenging, especially in high-volume call centres, but mediocrity is not an option.

Customer care is the effort to build an emotional connection with your customers. Customer service is the advice or assistance your business provides. Customer care is focused on one-on-one interactions and is less quantifiable than the standard metrics used to measure customer service. 

MAY 27 BRIEFING: Three ways to boost your customer Experience | Sign me up

To adapt to the new “the customer is in control landscape” and rapidly shifting pandemic-era realities, many companies are tossing out old practices around customers and customer service to refocus on their customers’ experience.

Why? As Jake Sorofam, Chief Marketing Officer at Visier explains: “As competition and buyer empowerment compounds, customer experience itself is proving to be the only truly durable competitive advantage.“

In 2020 customer experience almost overnight went from being a should to being a must. Repeated studies confirm that consumers now factor customer service into their product or brand decision-making process.

“If a customer likes you—and continues to like —they will continue to do business with you. If they don’t, they won’t.” – Author Paul Greenberg.

A look at some of these customer service stats is sobering;

• For consumers, customer experience will become more important than price and product. – Walker
• Companies in the United States lose $1.6 trillion due to customers switching because of poor customer service. – Accenture
• How a customer is treated dictates 70% of their satisfaction. – McKinsey
• Businesses that deliver better customer experiences obtain revenues between 4% and 8% above their market. – Bain & Company
• 55% of customers are willing to spend more money with a company that guarantees them a satisfying experience. – ThinkJar
• 70% of unhappy customers who experience resolved problems are willing to shop with a business again. – Glance
• Customer service stats show that new customers cost anywhere between 5 and 25 times more expensive than retaining existing customers. – Harvard Business Revi

It’s critical for companies that want to keep their customers happy to remember that today’s consumers don’t just like good customer service – they prize it.

A brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is – it is what customers tell each other it is.” – Scott Cook, co-founder Intuit.

Customers hang the “premium” sign on a company that goes above and beyond, showing a keen interest in their personal needs and strive to add value beyond the purchase.

Being treated well means people will ultimately buy more which, of course, is always a key goal.

“We see our customers as guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.

In turn, 91 per cent cent of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. While half of consumers say, they would switch to a competing brand after only one negative customer experience. 

So, customers today have high expectations and are quick to switch to another product or brand if they think it will suit them better. Loyalty is a concept of the past. 

This vulnerability leaves organizations in need of dialogue around how to supercharge their customer experience.

These customer service challenges also affect call-centre customer service teams. Sometimes floundering to meet their customers’ needs, they may find themselves struggling to implement cohesive service.

How does this apply to your business? Are you seeking some dialogue around how to improve – or future-proof – your customer experience? Are you looking for a way to offer upgraded and more cohesive call-centre customer service? 

If so, ITWC has a briefing sponsored by Talkdesk that will be of interest to you.

Three Ways to Boost Your Customer Experience is a special presentation that includes a panel discussion among experts followed by a live Q&A session. The May 27 presentation will highlight the challenge of customer experience in 2021 and how to employ AI to automate repetitive tasks, improve and monitor call centre performance, and safeguard data from bad actors.