Whether you're building customer support from scratch or already consider yourself a pro, Zendesk has identified tips in its CX Trends report that can help you enhance your customer support.
1. Make training support agents a priority
Companies with high-performing support agents understand the need for more training, empathy and focus on empowering their employees. Consider developing a step-by-step training plan that starts with basic technical skills and product knowledge, and gradually moves on to more complicated topics.
Zendesk's CX Trends report found that companies that perform at a high level are almost ten times more likely to strongly agree that their support agents are of high quality. They are about six times more likely to have plans to significantly expand education and training opportunities.
2. Automate repetitive tasks
Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly reliable and popular. In a world where AI can create art and predict your next favorite TV show, your customer service team may not want to spend their time on repetitive tasks. Identify and automate the most tedious and/or repetitive tasks and free up your customer service agents' time to improve performance.
For example, Zendesk's CX Trends report shows that best-in-class companies are almost three times more likely to use AI-powered chatbots to help customer service agents' workflows.
3. Personalize every experience
Talking to a support agent should fall somewhere between talking to Google Home and talking to an old friend. That means it should be personal enough to not be robotic, but formal enough to be effective.
Equip your support staff with the customer information they need to make the experience friendly, helpful and fast. Customers will notice. In Zendesk's CX Trends report, 90 % of respondents said they're more willing to spend money with companies that personalize the customer experience.
4. Evaluate current customer service offerings
According to Zendesk's Trends report, 93 % of consumers will spend more money with companies that offer their preferred option for reaching customer support, whether it's chat, email or phone. Make sure you have satisfaction metrics associated with each channel that you actively analyze and compare performance on each of them.
5. Focus on business impact
Create opportunities for customer support to increase profits through upselling and cross-selling, informed by a deep understanding of customers' immediate needs. Establish a system where customer support can seamlessly transfer customers to the sales team to continue the conversation. Track these opportunities so that everyone involved can see the impact of customer service in ongoing customer communications.
High-performing companies are already doing this: Zendesk's report found that top-performing companies are 7.6 times more likely to strongly agree that customer service drives revenue.
6. Integrate systems
Integrate your customer service and CRM platform to monitor changes in customers and their lifetime value. Sharing data between these systems can lead to the discovery of personalized, relevant solutions to customer issues that would otherwise go undetected.
7. Keep management updated
Companies with good customer support have engagement from top to bottom. Management has an active role in monitoring performance and impact. In many cases, the compensation of senior executives is directly linked to customer satisfaction.
High-performing companies are over nine times more likely to report that senior leaders look at customer service metrics daily and almost eight times more likely to strongly agree that senior leaders immerse themselves in customer support.