Your business is growing, and with it, your customers’ needs and preferences. So, while you should celebrate your growth, it’s also important to stay driven and consider how you’ll successfully support your newly expanding business.
Evaluate your current customer service system and plan your strategy accordingly.
Your growing business means a growing need for customer support. Every business will find different obstacles they need to overcome with their customer service, which is why it’s vital to analyze your current situation, so you can react properly. Take note of how many agents you have, the number of customers you have calling in, as well as if they’re new or old.
Evaluate how your customer service agents are handling their calls and dissect your customer satisfaction results. Bain and Company found that companies who have achieved a superior customer service experience see revenues between 4 and 8 percent above their market. These spikes are credited to the loyalty developed through a positive customer service experience.
When to scale: Once you have analyzed your existing customer support, you’ll be fully equipped to enhance your strengths and address any weaknesses you were able to uncover that could possibly be driving customers away.
There are a few obvious signs that your customer support needs assistance within itself. If you have noticed:
- An influx of bad reviews regarding your company and services, or specifically your customer service
- Your customer service strategy isn’t addressing the ever-evolving needs of the customer
- Lost customers due to a poor support experience
- Dropped calls resulting from long wait and support times
Even if these issues aren’t blatantly present in your customer support team, there is still the potential for them to rise. With every facet of business, it’s better to be proactive than reactive. Plan a strategy that contains how many staff members you absolutely need to serve the customers you have, in the most efficient way possible.
What to Scale: As your customer base grows, you’ll be able to scale up accordingly. However, keep in mind that growing your customer support team should not be focused solely on quantity, but on quality.
GlowTouch Technologies suggests working with what you have currently and taking advantage of the opportunities that are already at your disposal. So, before you take the plunge and onboard several new agents, think about the ways in which you can develop your already existing support team and customer service process.
Rethink your support team training strategy
Quality work and timeliness starts at the time of hire. If you reevaluate and restructure your training methods, your support team will be properly prepared to face an array of customer service situations. By teaching your new hires about the different obstacles they may face and equipping them with the most efficient way to give high-quality care to your customers will benefit both your agents and overall company. As a result, your staff will be more confident in speaking with your clientele to identify the issue and have the expertise to handle each specific situation.
Create a better work environment for your team, especially in a high-stress position that handles customers directly and on a daily basis.
The Founder of Customer Centric Support, Nate Brown, suggests instilling mindfulness in your support team. Customer service proves time and time again to be a daunting position to take on. However, with the proper tools utilized during training, and then continued into employment, you will be able to decrease stress in the workplace and increase your support team’s focus and productivity. Not only will this result in higher employee retention, but in customer retention, as well.
Efficiency while ensuring a positive customer service experience should be the goal of any support team.
Although you could find answers in outsourcing and hiring more employees, they are only short-term solutions that won’t add to the efficiency or value of your business in the long-run.
Implementing (quality) automation and staying up-to-date with advancements in technology can greatly impact customer service.
A successful customer service experience relies on the clarity, reliability and functionality of the technology you use. You can successfully scale your customer support by boosting customer satisfaction with technology that will eliminate the common issues you find in a struggling support system.
By taking advantage of specific features offered by your phone service, you will be able to streamline your customer service. Through call queuing, selective call routing, and several other features, your support team can grow in efficiency and quality, instead of in numbers. It can also provide your customers with a helpful navigation that can solve the majority of their problems. According to the Center for Generational Kinetics, self-service is important to 65 percent of Americans.
The addition of speech analytics has the ability to improve your customer support and overall business with real-time technology.
This software can track your employees, customers, and site ID while also actively listening for keywords and phrases that could alert you to a potential issue. Through this quick detection, an improved agent-customer relationship can be built. With this technology, your business will not only scale up in customer support, but in profit.
Your customer support team needs a powerful and affordable phone system that grows as your business grows. At Vaspian, we have a wide range of features and solutions available to help you expand your communications system and enhance the quality and efficiency of your customer support. Give us a call at 855-827-7426 to learn more about our voice over IP phone service and optimizing your communications today!
