Due to the current conditions of an increasingly uncertain and volatile market, investing in customer service strategies is fundamental to keep the business’s competitiveness.
According to experts, the scenario of those who work with services can be hard. However, leaders and CEOs cannot give up and should prioritize the Customer Experience, investing in areas where the impact can influence the business growth.
“Now it is an essential moment for the companies to concentrate themselves in sustaining and engaging talks based in relationships, in addition to continuing building memorable experiences”, claims Antimo Gentile, CEO of DNK Infotelecom.
Such a statement is reinforced by the CX accelerator 2022, a report that includes insights from customer service decision makers.
Customer service strategies: the main challenges faced by the companies
The report revealed the main challenges that companies faced every day. In addition, they released the main customer service strategies that CX organizations use to keep the high standards of service, as well as creating relevant experiences, cultivating customer loyalty and standing out from the competition.
The leaders were unequivocal about the challenges faced, as well as the importance of providing a quality service.
Among the main challenges faced by companies, stands out: customers are increasingly impatient when interacting with agents or services teams (66%) and customer satisfaction below expectations (18%).
Another data that draws attention regarding the challenges faced inside companies is that missed appointments rose by 157% compared to 2021.
About the service impact for the businesses, the report revealed that for the most part of the interviewed (64%), the customer service directly impacts the business performance. 60% claimed that the service affects customer retention. 49% of the interviewed said that the service affects cross-selling revenue.
Investing in CX is fundamental
Gentile explains that customers’ expectations continue to grow, increasing betting for business. However, the expert alerts that this also impacts the potential rewards of providing amazing customer experiences.
“We need to have in mind that as customers are more adept to new technologies and new possibilities are created, they become increasingly demanding and with increasingly higher expectations. Facing this reality, companies that wish to keep themselves competitive should not measure efforts to put the customer in the center of everything, that means, providing the best experience for the customers in each step of their purchasing journeys”.
Top 3 customer service strategies to stay competitive
While the researched companies were in different stages of maturity of their CX transformations and towards growth, stood out three investment areas, regarding customer service strategies.
1. Combine human and automation strategies
According to the report, humans and robots not only can work together, but companies must seek to reconcile both customer service strategies.
“A good service strategy puts the customer in the control of where and when they want to interact with a company, being through a conversation with a human agent or through interactions with chatbots”, explains Gentile.
Following Gentile’s reflection, the report revealed that 64% of companies use chatbots and human handoffs. The value represents a 12% increase when related to the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The survey has also indicated that around 89% of the service and support teams have as a goal making the interactions with customers to look more as a talkative experience than a transactional one for the customers.
In the opinion of DNK’s CEO, although the use of smart technologies such as chatbots and Artificial Intelligence seems to be “the wave of the future”, this strategy can be challenging and requires deep attention and knowledge.
“Leaders need to understand the right functions for the chatbots, how to collaborate with live agent support and what is the customer’s ideal journey to deliver conversational experiences,” continues Gentile.
Facing this scenario, DNK’s CEO suggests the following actions for companies to implement customer service strategies:
- Creating a hybrid chatbot model;
- Developing the recommended practices for chatbots transferences;
- Offering conversational experiences that sets your brand apart.
2. Integrate important data from critical applications
According to Gentile, when disparate data point solutions don’t work well together, silos arise across the organization, limiting the business’s agility and making it difficult to create revenue-generating opportunities from support interactions.
Therefore, the expert highlights the importance of interacting with the customer in all contact channels.
“To gain support, a better collaboration optimizes customer’s engagement at all contact channels. For sales, this offers for the agents a new channel to discover cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Identifying, tracking and acting based on shared metrics help companies to keep customers satisfied, reduce turnover and create lasting relationships.”
Gentile gives some tips to make the implementation of customer service strategies easier in this investment field.
“The first thing is providing the agents with the necessary information at the right moment. The second is focusing on data quality and not quantity. It is also really important to customize the types of data agents are presented with and extract what is most relevant to the customer during the call. Lastly, but not less important, leaders should provide to the teams a complete view of the customer journey”.
3. Evolve the CX function investing in your agents
It is not surprising that many companies are suffering from high turnover and that KPIs are decreasing. The main reason for this problem is due to the fact that many agents are overwhelmed with repetitive tasks.
“The agents are usually unknown heroes, trying to solve problems and make customers happier. We need to have empathy with the ones that are in the front line with customers, providing them with the tools and training that they need to have the best performance. This is absolut fundamental because it reduces the turnover, while providing better support and customer retention”, explains Gentile.
In the director’s opinion, investing on smart automation and workflow processes, it is possible to provide the agents the power to improve their skill set and solve deeper problems.
The report also revealed that 83% of the customer service employees are trained or guided to discover sales opportunities in the course of their customer interactions and that the top cross-selling opportunities come from social media conversations (41%). Besides that, customers have spent more in the last 6 months.
From the data presented above, Gentile recommends some actions for the implementation success of customer service strategies in this field. Are they:
- Training of agents to increase work satisfaction and to produce a more empathic support;
- Sharing information between departments;
- Transforming the agents into revenue generators, allowing them to assign opportunities to the sales area.
DNK’s smart solutions are the ideal option to implement customer service strategies
Aligned with the market trends and needs, DNK offers the best solutions for Call Center and Contact Center, being specialized in the development of high-performance products, solutions and services for companies in the area.
The use of last generation technologies together with a team of experienced professionals, took DNK to constantly innovate to transform the experience of customers and partners with their consumers.
DNK cherishes excellence in customer service, providing their partners with tools and platforms with innovative and customizable functions in order to guarantee a satisfactory and unforgettable Customer Experience.
With DNK’s products and services, customer service is made through an integrated omnichannel platform, which connects all service channels (WhatsApp, voice, web, chat, among others) with fast customer’s data and information recovery, in order to provide a complete and satisfactory management of customer journey with differentiated results, maximum security and in compliance with the standards required by the LGPD.
The company is recognized by the market and awarded by its solutions and successful cases. Winner of the “Best Self-service Solution” category in the XXI Modern Customer Award and champion of the silver trophy at the 2020 Cliente SA Award, in the “Leader in Innovation Strategy” category, in partnership with a customer, DNK understands that a well-served customer is the secret to successful service.
