Businesses today operate in an uncertain environment. Customer dynamics are increasingly more complex, and brands need to stay in tune with the habits and expectations of their audiences. It can take significant effort to satisfy your users and remain valuable in the global marketplace. Fortunately, there are a few straightforward tips that can help.
In this article, we’ll discuss why excellent customer support is important for your brand’s success. We’ll also look at how to implement it. Let’s get to it!
Why Excellent Customer Support Is Vital to Your Brand’s Success
The success of any business venture depends on its customers. Since you rely on them to purchase or subscribe to your products and services in order to earn revenue, it’s smart to ensure their satisfaction.
Loyal customers can increase the value of your company and help you build a competitive edge in the marketplace. They are also more likely to promote your brand through word-of-mouth advertising, which can be highly cost-effective.
Additionally, it can be harder to attract new customers than to retain existing ones. Consider the fact that 34% of technology and service providers name client retention as one of their top challenges. Therefore, ensuring that you have excellent support structures in place is crucial.
How to Implement Stellar Customer Support for Your Brand (4 Key Tips)
Implementing stellar customer support for your brand can be easier said than done. As we mentioned earlier, the habits and expectations of the market keep changing. However, there are some basic steps you can take to improve your relationships with your consumers. Let’s take a look at four of these.
1. Define Your Company Culture and Values
At the top of our list is defining your company culture and values. Although this may not seem directly related to customer support, it does influence your brand’s focus and priorities, as well as your employees’ attitudes and the experience they provide.
Therefore, you’ll want to empower your support team and ensure they enjoy working at your company so that they’re more likely to put effort into creating positive customer experiences. Plus, when it’s clear your employees genuinely believe in your brand’s mission, your business appears more authentic.
Authenticity is a key selling point, especially among younger consumers. In addition to making sure your employees are happy, investing in your local communities can make it easier for your customers to trust that you also care about them.
You can foster a supportive and authentic company culture by checking in with your team members regularly to make sure they have what they need to succeed in their roles. Publish a mission or value statement on your website where visitors can see it, and send a copy to your support team so they can incorporate these guidelines into their customer interactions.
2. Offer Rewards for Participation and Feedback
You also want to help your users feel that they’re a core part of your brand to foster feelings of connectedness and help nurture long-term relationships. One way to do so is by actively soliciting their feedback.
Encouraging customer feedback can be beneficial in more than a few ways. For one, you’ll gain insight into what your business is doing right as well as where you have room to improve. It also gives your users the sense that they matter to your brand, which can make them more invested.
Providing rewards can encourage participation and feedback. For instance, you could offer discounts to customers who bring in referrals. You might also spotlight them in your social media or blog content for any gestures of loyalty.
If you send out surveys as part of a marketing campaign or purchase follow-up email, you may also consider giving coupons to those who fill them out. Such incentives are useful for securing testimonials or reviews that you can feature on your site as well.
Consider setting a budget aside for these rewards. Most importantly, make sure to actually follow through and consider any suggestions for improvements your users supply. This not only shows that you value their opinions, but can also prevent future support requests since you’ll likely be fixing issues that multiple customers experience.
3. Set Up Instant Support Channels
Nowadays, businesses use multiple channels to communicate with their audiences. These include social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as well as the more traditional email and phone options.
It’s wise to set up all of these lines of communication so that customers can reach you via their preferred channels. However, it’s also been shown that instant responses to inquiries and complaints are highly valuable. About 37% of those seeking support want replies in under 30 minutes.
This is where a live chat feature can come in handy. You might even consider using instant chat apps such as WhatsApp. Note that depending on the complexity of an issue, your customers may not expect a quick resolution. However, it’s important that they know their concerns are being acknowledged and addressed.
As such, you want to complement instant support channels with regular updates on customer issues. Many businesses such as Spark and Carbon send automated emails after support tickets are created. You can also take the extra step to include an estimate of how much time you expect the resolution will take.
4. Build Knowledge Bases to Take Pressure Off Your Team
Support channels are incredibly important for your customers to reach you. However, your team might be wasting valuable time answering the same queries repeatedly. This effort can be better expended elsewhere.
Setting up knowledge bases can take some of the pressure off your customer support team. They can be extremely useful and handy reference documents for both your employees and customers. Although setting them up can take significant time and effort, it’s a worthwhile investment.
Some tools you might use to build your knowledge bases include Groove and Confluence by Atlassian. In particular, Groove enables you to monitor the performance of your articles via pageviews and ratings statistics, providing insights into your most popular content as well as what you can improve.
If you prefer to host your documentation yourself, there are also multiple solid options, including your WordPress site. In summary, you want to do everything you can to support your customers while also ensuring your solutions are time and cost-effective.
Conclusion
Implementing stellar customer support for your brand can be extremely beneficial, fostering loyalty and leading to profitable long-term relationships with your audiences. Some tips for creating positive experiences include defining your values and culture, setting up instant support channels such as live chat, and building knowledge bases to take pressure off your team.
Do you have any questions about implementing stellar customer support for your brand? Let us know in the comments section below!
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