October 29, 2022
Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have been forced to go fully online and switch to remote work.
While new working arrangements are disrupting almost any aspect of your business, one of the hardest-hit departments is customer support. How organisations and customers interact with each other is always changing and evolving, and it is important for businesses to keep up with current communication trends.
To ensure business continuity and keep user experiences consistent, businesses need to adapt and invest in new technologies. Here are some of them.
Social media marketing allows you to get noticed by the right audiences, engage them, and convert them faster.
By publishing fresh, relevant, and consistent social media content, you will build trust with your followers and encourage them to keep coming back to your channels for more information.
However, social networks may also serve as a powerful customer communication medium.
For starters, you need to listen to your customers. That is where social media monitoring tools, such as Social Mention or Hootsuite, may help you. They allow you to set keywords you want to track and notify you when someone mentions them on social networks. That way, you can keep track of your brand and product mentions and provide customers with faster feedback.
You could also leverage video content to humanise interactions. For example, if a customer reaches out to you on social networks, a member of your customer support team could create a brief video to answer their question and tag them.
Next, post authentic and relevant quizzes on social networks. Using quizzes on Facebook, for example, will keep your audiences engaged, increase your website traffic, and help you generate qualified leads.
Finally, do not ignore the value of live video that is highly dynamic, direct, and interactive. Statistics say that 80% of online users would rather watch a live stream than read a blog post. For you, this is a great way to communicate with them in real-time and get instant feedback.
When working remotely, build a strong social media communications strategy that will help customer support agents provide on-brand and consistent customer feedback. Additionally, businesses in sectors such as insurance can explore new technologies like telematics insurance, which leverages real-time data for more accurate risk assessments and customer engagement. If social media is how you are going to build your customer relations, it could be worth looking into getting telematics insurance.
Even though digital communications channels have been gaining momentum over the past few years, many customers still rely on direct interactions with your call centre agents. According to BrightLocal, more than 60% of consumers would call a company after finding them online.
Consumers love call centres for a few reasons. First, they are more direct and personalised. PWC says that 59% of customers believe that businesses have lost the human touch in customer service. Second, contacting a call centre may help them find answers to their questions faster.
Now, one of the major challenges is keeping your call centre efficient while working remotely. That is where you should consider switching to online phone systems. So, learning what is a softphone becomes extremely important for seamless operations.
VoIP solutions for businesses are built on the cloud and delivered over the internet. VoIP providers also offer responsive desktop and mobile apps that allow your employees to communicate with customer via multiple devices, no matter where they are. On the other hand, their noise-cancelling microphones will ensure exceptional call quality and minimize interruptions.
Most importantly, online phone services can integrate with your CRM tools. When a customer calls you, the system will notify you about their previous experiences, pain points, and purchasing histories, allowing you to create highly personalised customer experiences.
No matter if they are browsing through your website or social networks, they expect you to provide relevant, consistent, and real-time feedback.
That is exactly why the number of businesses investing in live chat tools is growing.
The main benefit of live chat is that it provides humanised brand experiences. It helps customers get to know the people behind your company and communicate with them naturally to get their problems solved. Most importantly, live chat agents will ask the right questions and understand customers’ needs and expectations. That way, they will be able to provide helpful feedback and convert customers faster.
While live support is significant for complex inquiries, many minor tasks can be automated and handled by AI chatbots. Providing immediate, relevant, and customised feedback, chatbots will save your customer representatives a lot of time. Above all, by providing 24/7 feedback in real-time, they will improve user experiences and encourage faster conversions.
When wanting to fix minor problems faster, 67% of consumers choose to use self-service over talking to a customer support representative.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, offering self-service opportunities may help you strengthen user experiences.
For starters, you should start building a thorough knowledge base – a place where you would publish your most helpful articles to help customers find answers to their questions.
You could also build an online community on your IM apps or social networks, where your customers would answer each other’s questions.
Just because you allow employees to work remotely does not mean customer relationships will suffer. By investing in the right technologies, such as calling, social networking, live chat, and chatbots, you will provide your audiences with omnichannel support, regardless of your team members’ locations.
How do your remote teams communicate with your customers?
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
