A Complete Guide to the Fundamentals of Customer Service Strategy
A customer service strategy could be the element you’re missing in creating the best customer service possible. At its core, a customer service strategy is the plan of action you design to create the best customer experience possible.
Some common examples of strategies include:
- Optimize Agent Training
- Choose the Right Tools
- Improve Call Center KPIs
- Personalize the Experience
- Make Data-Driven Decisions
- Optimize Quality Assurance
- Offer Omnichannel Support
Investing in any of the strategies above will most likely help you build a better customer experience, but you also want to make sure that your strategy is specific to your business.
Every company has different needs, and you may not even think you need a strategy, but you should probably reconsider.
You may not even realize how much your customer service is lacking until you take a deeper dive into what you’re lacking.
If your customer churn rate is high, you need to update your strategy.
Your customers may be having issues with a number of different things, but when customer service fails to help them with said issues, they fall off your site.
If you’re losing customers for any reason, you need a new strategy. That strategy may include a new customer service system, like ChipBot, or it may just be a refresh on the fundamentals.
If your customers aren’t satisfied with your service, they won’t stick around.
One way to see this is through feedback. If customers are leaving bad feedback, you will need to update your page accordingly. Without a good strategy in place, this will be harder to do.
If your feedback is showing a large amount of dissatisfaction, you need to find a new approach to whatever your customers find fault with.
Check out the customer service of other companies in the industry to see what you can improve on. This will give you a competitive edge.
If you do your research, you may be able to find the next trend in customer needs. That way you can adapt your strategy early and get ahead.
Your company may not be doing anything wrong, but your customers have changing needs, and some companies have a better hold on this than others.
Something that worked in the past may not be effective anymore, and other companies may be privy to that.
So you now know you need a strategy, but how do you start building it?
Visualize what you want and then turn that vision into a plan of action. Goals that reflect your customer service vision will help get everyone on the same page and allow for smooth guidelines for customer service.
You can set goals based on satisfaction, time, or money. To make your goal motivating, try building SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Some examples of goals could be to increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer wait time, or reduce cost per contact. SMART goals would be:
- We will increase our average 7-day NPS score from satisfied to highly satisfied by the first 90 days.
- We will decrease our average reply time for email support from 5 hours to 3 hours in 30 days.
- We will reduce the cost per contact by 10% for free users in the next 45 days.
Adjustment is very important to the success of your goals. If you succeed or fail too early, you will want to reassess your goals and what they mean for your company.
Then, make the proper adjustments. It’s not about meeting your goals and then forgetting them. You have to continue to reset and adjust your goals so that you are always improving.
The best way to make sure your customers feel valued is to always put them first.
Whether your system is completely self-service or you have multiple representatives, customer service should always value customers over everything.
Mindset is one of the most important building blocks of customer service. Like goal setting, it allows your company to have a clear outlook on your customer service.
However, this does not mean that you can just “think” about good customer service in order to manifest it. It only means that you have to build off of the mindset that customers are the most important part of your business.
Whatever strategy you build, whatever type of customer service system you choose, you have to make sure that it serves customers above all else.
By starting with this framework, you can create a customer service strategy that propels your customer service toward successful and profitable relationships with your customers.
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