Chances that you might win your customer back after a bad customer service complaint are quite slim. According to a recent report from Zendesk, 50% of customers with just one bad experience are likely to switch to competitors. The number increases to 80% for those who have encountered more than one bad experience. The lesson is clear, loyalty is hard won and easily lost.
The Zendesk report was developed from a pool of data containing information from 45,000 businesses world-wide. The objective of the report was clear: To understand the link between loyalty and how businesses serve their customers throughout the entire customer experience. Eventually the end goal was to find out insights on what high performing companies do to create and provide the best customer experience. One of the key finding is that good customer experience drives loyalty, while bad customer experience destroys it.
Here are 3 ways how businesses can avoid providing bad customer experience:
1. Bad Customer Service
The Zendesk research gave a couple of indications on what drove poor experiences. One of the key indication was that bad customer services was the number one reason for delivering a poor experience to customers. To be more specific, consumers pointed out these unpleasing factors:
- Can’t reach human agent
- Can’t find information online
- Unfriendly support
- Support not available through desired contact method
- Long hold/wait times
- Having to repeat information multiple times
- Support can’t find customer information
In today’s connected fast pace environment, consumers want what they want, when they want it. Additionally, they expect the brands that they are loyal to, to be loyal to them. They do not want to start over like new customers every time they acquire a product or service. One of the way businesses can avoid this problem is by establishing a comprehensive Customer Service Management program (CRM). This program allows businesses to store and analyse important customer data and allows organizations to keep track of customers information such as customer preferences, past orders, complaints, and many more. Above everything else, customers expect a seamless experience from businesses when the situation calls for it. Some of the ways businesses can avoid providing bad customer experience is by:
- Searching online for low cost or free customer service training videos
- Asking customers for feedback
- Talking to customer frequently about customer interactions and ways to improve customer experience
2. Best Online Practices
Customers expects to have the same relationship with their favorite brands online as how they would with their close family and friends, whether that’s by instant messaging, social media or email. According to the Zendesk report, high performing companies were 76% more likely to offer self-service to consumers. With today’s advance technology, businesses can easily automate responses for frequently asked questions and direct consumers to the right channel if the need any form of help. The younger generations, like Gen Z and millennials are the most likely to use online messaging and social channels. Businesses can resort to quicker solutions for customers by the availability of chat-bots which provide quicker response time to customer queries.
One of the key factor in establishing smart customer service practices on social media is by giving out quick responses to customers queries. According to a research done by The Social Habit , 85% of consumers on Facebook expects an answer within 6 hours of their queries, while 64% customers on Twitter expects an answer withing one hour. It’s free and easy for businesses to set up instant auto responses on both of these platforms. This will ensure consumers are aware that their messages are being received by brands. It’s up to the companies thereafter to create personalized responses.
Some of the other ways companies can boost their online customer service are by:
- Creating a Frequently Asked Questions page.
- Set an estimate for when the customer should expect a response and don’t exceed that time-frame.
- Creating an online form for customers to express their concerns.
- Use common language in contact pages with words such as ”Help, ”Contact Us, and ”Support”.
- Ensure phone numbers, hours of operations, customer services email, and location are easily found on website and social media platforms.
3. Create a Community
With the existence of an online community, customers can answer other customers questions. This in return can relieve some responsibilities and pressure off the customer service team ensuring good customer experience is created. According to the Zendesk report, online communities mattered most for B2B companies. With the existence of such communities, expert users and peers can yield a lot of helpful advice.
In a social networking community platform, not all users necessarily have common interests. But a community forum owned by businesses will offer more control to companies in terms of how they communicate with their customers and how customers communicate with each other. Businesses can moderate the forum suited to their needs.
Some of the advantages of having an online forum are:
- Companies can delete unhelpful responses
- Companies can block competitors from trying to steal their customers
- Companies can answer customers concerns directly
- Community forums creates more engagement
- Forums can boost psotive cusomter experience
In conclusion, avoiding giving customers bad experiences can prove to be key for businesses in retaining and acquiring new consumer over a period of time. Once consumers associate a brand with bad experience, the brands reputation might suffer leading to loss of revenues.
