The Digital Age of Customer Service

How to Stay Ahead While Keeping Your Customers Satisfied

There’s no question that the “Digital Age” has changed the way we do business, advertise to our customers, and stay on top of things when it comes to customer service. The current world of everchanging technology and the rise of social media platforms has offered not only great opportunities for retailers, but challenges as well. Those challenges can be overcome by keeping up with the newest technologies and trends coming out of the digital age. It doesn’t matter how innovative things become, the essential skills of customer service are typically going to remain the same. Customers will still want to feel as though they are important and listened to and they are still going to expect timely responses and individual customer care.

When it comes to giving great customer service, you as a business retailer must make sure you are staying up to date with the various ways customers can use to engage with your business. Being a customer focused business can give you an edge over your competitors, especially if they have a reputation for not being a customer friendly establishment. Even recent studies have shown that businesses that focus more on customer service, making it a top priority, are likely to see higher percentages of growth within their company.

Today’s customers are not only going to be more tech savvy, but they’ll also be more aware of how you’re using a more digital age approach to your customer service. Customers will be using different avenues to get in touch with you and have more options to choose from than the standard making a phone call option. They demand faster and more active response in the digital age and that can also mean getting out the word through various social media outlets if they’ve had a terrible experience with your business. That means it’s more important than ever to know your customer service options in this digital age and be able to use them to your advantage so that your business can flourish both in sales and customer service reputation. So, let’s look at a few ways you can keep up with the times and keep your customers engages and satisfied while competing for their business in this digital age.

Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are some of the fastest growing outlets for customers and business alike. You’d be hard-pressed to find a customer in this day in age who doesn’t use one or more social media platform. And with the significant increase of purchasing being done online, that means customer service should also have an impressionable presence on social media.

Social media is also a useful tool for your business’ marketing purposes, but you should invest in striking a balance between devoting time to marketing and customer service via your social media platforms.

You can use these social media platforms to directly interact with customers and help resolve their issues through direct messages on most forms of social media. This means a quick response time and indicates to the customer that you are going to deal with their concerns in a timely manner. It’s also a terrific way to check back in with a customer and follow up. For instance, if a customer posts that they had a positive experience with your customer service on Twitter, you can respond by thanking them for their choosing your business and expressing your happiness that the problem they had was resolved successfully.

Social Media can also be used to do social listening. This means finding out who is not only talking about your business and products, but also what they may like or dislike about it.

Email and Live Chat

It’s important to realize that customers really do appreciate live, one-on-one interaction when it comes to customer service. That means you should think twice before using an automated email response when a customer emails you with a concern or complaint. Your response emails should be crafted with friendliness and a personal touch. The same is true when using a live chat response. Be sure that those who are doing the live chat and are responding to your customers do it in a friendly and informative manner. The tone should be gentle and helpful, indicating that you hear their concerns and will do what is necessary to make it better for them.

Integrate an IVR Into Your Phone System

The IVR (interactive voice response) system is one of the best ways to help ascertain what your customers’ needs are whenever they call into your customer service. It not only acts as an easy to use self-service tool for callers, but also is very efficient at routing calls to where they need to go. The IVR system is an integral way to make sure your customers are given the proper customer service needed without being put on hold and transferred numerous times. The system can help take a load off of your customer call centers by being able to deal with basic inquiries and can direct customers to a live customer service representative if needed. It’s an efficient system that eliminates the bad customer service practice of putting customers on hold or risking having them hung up on when being transferred.

Mobile Service and Accessibility

In this ever-changing digital age one thing is certain, more and more customers are using their smart phones to do pretty much anything and everything. That means you should make sure that your company’s website is optimized for mobile use. If a customer is easily able to access your website via their smart phone and take care of whatever problem they may be having, it gives them a favorable impression of your website. Easy access to your customer service via mobile accessibility is a very important feature to implement. This means convenience for your customers, which means they are more likely to continue doing business with your company.

In this digital age, customers will only become more digitally savvy and your customer service must progress and be as equally savvy to keep up with and be at the top of the competition. If you stay on top of changing social media trends and the latest ways to engage with your customers, you and your business shouldn’t have a problem with giving great customer service in these times of smart phones and social media crazes.