Methods to improve your ROI with Customer Support Services!

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Any flourishing and successful business relies on excellent customer support service. Customer service's aim is to create and maintain relationships with customers by ensuring that they are satisfied with your products/services and listening to their suggestions on how to improve your organization. As a result, providing a positive customer experience can have a substantial influence on your business's ROI by raising conversion rates, increasing market share, developing brand loyalty, increasing the potential for upselling and cross-selling, and attracting talent. Negative experiences, on the other hand, might lead to a loss of money as well as irreversible damage to your company's reputation.

The benefit to an investor from an investment of a resource is known as return on investment (ROI). A high return on investment (ROI) indicates that the benefits of the investment outweigh the costs. 

At Wow Customer Support, about how important it is to provide excellent customer support service in general. However, we stress the need of using concrete numbers to evaluate the success of your efforts. When you combine the two, you'll be able to see exactly how your customer service efforts are benefiting your company's bottom line. 

Let’s discuss the ways a company can improve its return on investment by taking the below-mentioned measures. 

Tips to improve your ROI from your Customer Support Service

More than 88% of businesses now place a premium on customer experience in their daily operations. Yes, it's that crucial. And it's not hard to see why. If a customer chooses to do business with you based on their customer experiences, then that's where you must stand out. Customer experience is now the primary differentiator for more than two-thirds of businesses. Consequently, you're increasing your company's return on investment because more customers mean more sales. 

Improving ROI by improving customer service management

  • Calculate Customer retention - It’s all about the perspective. If you start watching customer support services as customer success operations, the game changes. Customers will stay longer with the company if they’re getting their answers properly addressed. They are going to continue using your products and services because they know the customer support services provided by your company are reliable. Observe how and when customers reach out with an issue, getting the problem addressed by a call or any type of communication results in reducing cancellations and refunds. This way, you can improve the services and keep your customers coming back!

Nonetheless, we know that excellent customer service is linked to company success, and it's apparent that customers want to contribute their money to organizations that care about them.

  • Educate and Train your Staff -  If your employees don’t have a proper understanding of your products and services, it’s going to cost you a lot of company resources. It’s important that employees are easily able to navigate through different processes and systems are able to help your customers with ease. By training your staff you’ll be able to resolve your customer issues effectively and efficiently. Training them regarding the different processes, troubleshooting skills, product/service knowledge, active listening and resolving conflicts will enable your company to perform better in the long run and a small investment will be worth all of it and more. 
  • Identifying the right ROI indicators - It’s easier to sell your product or service to an existing customer rather than a new customer. Hence, the customer support service provided should be exceptional. Identify which ROI indicators seem to be working for your company and are proving the results. You can start executing modest, measurable trials with specific ROI figures once you've figured out which customer service metrics your team can use and how that adds to the company's performance.
  • Implementing Feedback Software - By installing feedback software, you can get complete information on the customer’s experience. This way, you can understand what’s working and what’s not working. The technique and approach used by high performing employees to handle customer queries can be utilised in training the one’s that are struggling to perform. 
  • Reward Employees for practising great Customer Service - Providing great customer support service and customer incentives that braces great customer experience, a company can expect direct investments in marketing and referrals. Keeping incentives for your employees will drive them to provide a high-quality customer experience. Moreover, prospects when going through your customer service reviews are likely to turn into customers after seeing a positive compliment on your company’s efforts to keep their customer’s happy. 
  • Sales - Customer support acts as marketing by offering a fantastic customer service experience that customers want to tell their friends about.

Improving ROI by reducing costs

A company can get a high return on investment by cutting costs on the customer service operations. The two major factors that play a big role in this strategy are Efficiency and Effectiveness. By improving the efficiency of processes and individual activities, time consumption is going to get lower and hence the cost per unit of work will reduce. If your employees are able to resolve customer issues faster, they would not be required to work extra. 

Similarly, if customer queries are solved on the first call, they won’t have to contact customer service agents several times through different means of communication. Less number of calls to attend means you’ll require less staff. 

Keeping these two factors in mind, there are proven strategies you can implement to lower the cost of your customer service, they are listed below:

  • Customer service tools and data - Improve the productivity of your customer support service operations by installing an IT system that’s updated and services like helpdesk management and online support can help along with customer queries and requests. Agent assisted support can be minimalised if there are self-sufficient solutions available for customers. Furthermore, with the quality of the information provided to agents, they’ll be able to handle customer problems effectively.  
  • Process Optimization - By reducing the number of steps in a particular process, eliminating the need of piling up work and unnecessary tasks will not only help your company in saving resources but is also going to improve the customer support service experience. 
  • Restructuring Customer service operations to build better teams - When customer support service operations increase, the possibility of redundancies developing between teams, business processes and organizations increase as well. Restructuring of customer service operations in specific intervals can create greater synergy and it will also help in reducing overhead costs of customer service management. 
  • Outsourcing - Customer support service outsourcing will give you the opportunity to access less costly resources to perform large scale operations. It will also allow you to work along with global workforces that will be of great support to your company’s needs. 

Improving ROI by improving performance

In order to improve your ROI by customer support services, you’ll have to improve the quality of your customer service functions. Here are the top four ways you can implement to improve your services - 

  • Listen to your customers - Sometimes when a customer comes to you with their query, more often than not they’re looking for a customer service representative to hear them out and empathize with their problems. Even if the problem isn’t resolved quickly if you’re customer service representative is able to communicate and build a relationship with the customer, it will improve customer loyalty and satisfaction. 
  • Don’t keep them waiting - A very simple and effective way to increase the value of your customer service operations is by not making them wait. One of the main problems faced by the companies is customers having to wait to get the agent’s attention and get their issues resolved. By the time, the customer service representative attends to the issue, the customer is already upset. Minimizing the customer waiting time will show them that you value their time and business. 
  • Caring and Knowledgeable staff - When customers interact with your company regarding a problem, they expect to interact with a knowledgeable staff that can assist them properly and handle their issues with utmost concern. 

How a Call Center Can Help

Even if you grasp the concepts of high-quality service, putting them into practice successfully is a different story. Despite their greatest efforts, many companies still struggle to provide excellent customer support services.

So, what can you do right now to improve your customer support services? Contact an outsourced call centre. 

With Wow Customer Support, you can improve your customer service results and increase your return on investment.

Why UX Writers and Customer Support Service Should Team Up

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Most companies haven't tried it yet but user experience (UX) writers teaming up with customer support service has become a major point of discussion in 2021. As the name suggests, user experience starts from understanding user's (customer) expectations and nobody understands people better than customer rep themselves. They get to attend to customers' inquiries, reviews, and complaints. So they know what to do when improving users' experience. 

According to Tech Jury's UX research, 52% of customers leave websites without intending to return due to poor aesthetics. Users who are dissatisfied with what they learn on one website are more likely to switch to another service and continue their research there. Even your domain name has a significant impact on your brand identification and might detract from the user experience of your leads.

By anticipating and, ideally, preventing customer misunderstanding, good UX writers deliver proactive service. UX writing, like customer support service, leads to interactions that prioritize people. UX writers have been known to refer to their work as "the words on the buttons". However, it's more than that, because the collaboration between customer support teams and UX writers has a lot of benefits. Before delving fully into why they should team up, let's talk about UX writers.

What is UX Writing About?

The practice of designing the words, users see and hear when interacting with software is known as UX writing. It's all about figuring out how to make a product and its customer have a dialogue. 

One of the most difficult aspects of product copy is that it is frequently written by the same individuals who are constructing the product. They may unwittingly turn a blind eye to the difference between what they imagine the user does with the product and what the user actually does with the product since they are involved from the beginning. Consequently, the copy ends up not being effective.

This leads to the question: who should be working on the product copy?

This is when a UX writer comes in handy. A UX writer improves a user's experience with a product by improving the product's communication. A skilled UX writer spends time going through tickets and listening to customer calls to understand the issues that customers encounter, and then works towards resolving them. 

However, sifting through a sea of support tickets for incidents that can be traced back to poor product copy is a time-consuming task. While it isn't hard to complete this task on your own, a little assistance from someone who has worked with the customer support service team before can go a long way.

What UX Writers and Customer Support Service Have in Common

Customer Support Service is a Resource for UX

In an ideal world, all products and services would be simple to use and comprehend, and users would never need to contact customer care. Regrettably, this isn't always the case.

Even with an excellent UX write-up, users may have problems or have queries at any time, and they will contact or call you for assistance. During this time, the team of UX writers may be so preoccupied with crafting perfect write-ups for your company's product or service that they would overlook the fact that the experience is far more essential than the product they are creating.

However, one important source of information on user expectations is often overlooked: customer service. Customer support service refers to any action that involves anticipating and offering professional, helpful, and high-quality service and assistance to customers before, during, and after their needs are addressed. As a result, in addition to user experience research, customer support is another powerful source of knowledge about your users.

You can bet that if something is a hassle for your users, it will be a pain for your customer service personnel as well. Customer service and the UX team both want people who don't have any inquiries or problems when using the product. 

They Both Share Common Goals and Methods

As stated earlier, customer support service and user experience both strive for the same goal: a user who has no queries and encounters no problems when using their product.

When a user has a question, however, customer support's goal is to discover the best method to answer it, using the best language possible, so the user understands and doesn't have to ask again. When writing content for a certain feature or page, a UX writer's role is to anticipate these questions. 

When a user has an issue, customer support's role is to come up with a solution within their means and limits. This entails considering what the product can and cannot achieve, as well as providing a different option to bring the user as close to their desired outcome as feasible. Again, a UX writer's job is to come up with the greatest possible solution to the user's needs while working within the limits that they have. 

They Both Impact One Another

UX writers and customer Support have similar aims and use similar strategies to achieve them, but they also have a direct impact on one another.

Customers will complain less about an easy-to-use product, giving your customer support team more time to handle the concerns that do come in. They will be able to respond more swiftly and with more personalized responses, increasing user satisfaction with your product. As a result, there will be fewer complaints and more time to respond, among other things.

Consider this... Every user who has ever emailed customer support has taken 5 –10 minutes out of their day to tell you how they feel about your product. This shows that customer support and UX writers must pay attention to user complaints because they are a treasure mine of user expectations. Listening should be their strongest suit.

How UX Writers and Customer Support Service Can Collaborate

Design Better Interface

Designers accept input from multiple teams when designing a product's interface and customer service should be one of them. Involving a UX writer and a customer support representative early in the design process benefits all three teams – design, support, and UX. Of course, there's also the user.

Support representatives have hands-on experience talking customers through features and proposing solutions when they run into problems. They are a better judge of the flow of a feature from beginning to end as a result of these experiences. They also get frequent feedback on the product and are familiar with a variety of feature requests, which helps them make design decisions.

Understand Users Pain Points

Apart from understanding the audience, you must also consider their pain points when writing text that improves the user experience. To accomplish this, you must identify and eliminate hitches in the product's use through good copywriting. 

Taking customer calls will allow you to discover situations where the customer is having difficulty completing a task on their own. Speaking with support personnel, in addition to taking calls from consumers, can provide you with a more complete view of the issues users are having with the product. One method to achieve this is to talk about features (particularly those with low uptake) and request a download of various use cases and usability issues from the customer care team.

Know the User Better

To write copy that benefits your users, you must understand:

  • Who the user is 
  • How the user interacts with the product in various situations

As a result, UX writers and designers make use of the user's persona. Contrary to popular opinions, user personas are utilized by designers and customer support teams, and not simply marketing and product teams. 

Designers create user personas to better understand the target audience's needs, goals, and personality traits.

You must go beyond user personas to truly understand the user to develop great copy. To accomplish this, you should collaborate closely with customer service representatives, who spend a lot of time talking to customers and will have a thorough awareness of their viewpoints. Customer Support representatives are well-versed in the optimum workflows, use cases, comprehension, and expectations of various user groups. Working with them can assist you in putting yourself in the shoes of your users.

Use a Language That Customers Understand

A UX writer's major goal is to provide copy that is appealing to the user. Thus, you must ensure that the language you employ is consistent with that of your customers to achieve this.

Customers tend to refer to your product's qualities in a variety of ways. They may borrow vocabulary from previous products they've used, or they may invent new phrases depending on their understanding of the functionality. 

Final Thoughts

Customer support service representatives in any firm can be found attempting to limit the number of how-to queries they receive so that they can focus on assisting clients with more complicated issues. A UX writer aims to improve a product's usability through words, reducing the number of how-to queries in the process. When two teams with the same aim collaborate, the result is twice as satisfying: better UX writing and a significant decrease in how-to queries. 

If you're looking to outsource your customer support service and improve your user experience, look no further than Wow Customer Support. Contact us today to learn more about our services.

Your Guide to Omnichannel Customer Service: Connect with Your Customer at Every Touch Point

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Guide to Omnichannel Customer Service

From texting apps, social media channels to video chats and emails, the way we communicate has become accessible and seamless. Consumers expect the same level of communication efficiency with businesses as well. There are various interactions that companies have to manage throughout the sales and purchase cycle. It includes answering emails, calls, chats, social media messages, etc., promptly. 

To be a successful brand in the market, you have to be available for your customers at all times. It implies going beyond conventional means of communication and choosing the most convenient platform for interaction. Although the multi-channel approach works great for customers, it can be challenging to maintain consistency for brands. It is where omnichannel customer service plays a pivotal role.

Mapping The Modern Customer Journey 

The way customers shop has changed significantly, and so are their expectations from the brand. Though their purchase journey isn't predictable, customers expect you to cater to their needs on their preferred channels. They expect connected experiences irrespective of the channels that they use. Slight friction or a broken conversation might stop them from buying your products and services. 

But, How to create this seamless experience? In this detailed article, I will discuss actionable tips to assist you in delivering a seamless customer experience.

Empower customers with self-service options

76% of the customers try to solve issues on their end before contacting customer support. 

One of the best ways to empower your customers with self-service options is through chatbots or automated text messaging. Your company may have an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section on your website, but that's about as far as it goes. 

Customers may be used to getting their answers fast through Google search or Wikipedia, so why not set up a chatbot program with an FAQ feature? Customers can ask questions and get an instant response. Moreover, brands can embed informational articles in email autoresponders. 

Integrate AI 

Approximately 73% of customers consider live chat the most satisfactory communication medium to interact with brands.

The future of customer support service is personalized. Technology has made it possible to deliver a tailored experience across every channel, even if that means engaging with your customers through an automated chatbot or voice-activated assistant rather than an actual human being. 

AI can help you achieve this goal by learning what each customer wants and how they like to communicate. AI integrated chatbots can help your business improve customer satisfaction by delivering a more personalized experience.

Provide a smooth transition between AI to agent

69% of global customers prefer brands that offer proactive and seamless services and notifications. 

For example, if your customer wants to hold a conversation with you instead of typing out their issues. This is especially important in retail and banking industries, where customers want to speak face-to-face when dealing with sensitive information. And, this means an agent needs to step in at the right time, on the right platform. 

Make sure the transition is smooth, and they can switch over to phone or video chat without any hassle. Meanwhile, ensure the customer background from the chatbot is transferred on time to the agent with all the information in hand.

Use data intelligence to enhance customer experience

One-third of the consumers say that they are considering switching to another brand after one bad customer experience. 

It is crucial to learn about your customers today. This data will provide insight into what they want, how they want it, and where they are looking for information. It can give you the competitive advantage in delivering a positive experience with your business from start to finish. Your agents and chatbot can utilize this information and provide quick customer support across channels effectively.

Empower agents to focus on what's important!

Let your agents focus on important customer interactions while you can automate the rest. Centralize your customer information to ensure your agent doesn't have to worry about the background work but focuses on what they need to do best - help your customers.

It's also time to automate common service requests to simplify and quicken the response time. This will help your agents focus on areas that require human intervention and deliver a personalized experience to each customer.

Communicate on social media channels

48% of consumers expect to get a reply from brands on social media within 24 hours 

You can quickly respond to customer issues and interact with them while generating new business by monitoring your social media channel. But this doesn't mean that every message is a chance for revenue: You need to set up filters, so you don't get bogged down in the noise of other messages. 

An example of responding to a customer on social media is asking for suggestions or recommendations. You can also use the channel as your way in with these people and create an opportunity for them to interact with your brand and ultimately buy from you.

Offer round-the-clock support

In today's hyperconnected world, customers expect to be able to reach you anytime and anywhere. If they can't contact your business 24/7 via a traditional phone line or chat interface, the chances are good that they'll turn to social media instead. That might seem like a great way to vent their frustration – but it's also one of the worst ways to cultivate a good relationship with your customer. 

When you're ready to go above and beyond what your competitors are offering, it's time to turn on the "24/7" light. Offering round-the-clock customer support service is a great way to prevent your customers from going elsewhere. Customers who need immediate service will be impressed by how fast they can get in touch with your company – and they'll be more likely to return the next time.

Get a 360-degree view of your customers

More than 35% of customers expect to connect with the same customer support service representative on various channels. 

Omnichannel customer service is more than just talking to your customers on social media and over the phone. It's also about knowing where they are online and what they do there so that you can engage with them in a personal way at every touchpoint — whether it's across their preferred channels or not.

For example, if you see many Tweets coming from a specific location, research that area and find out what's going on. Perhaps there was an event recently, or the local economy is doing well — whatever it may be, connect with your customer to let them know they are in the limelight.

Assign the right people for the task

83% of customers believe that they feel more loyal towards a brand that resolves their complaints timely.

When your employees are equipped with the right knowledge, tools, and training to engage customers from different channels, you'll have a 360-degree view of their customer journey. Gather data from all sources so everyone on the desk can be as consistent as possible when delivering amazing service across every channel.

Moreover, if you don't have the budget to set up an internal customer support service, you can consider outsourced customer service. Wow, customer support is an efficient customer support outsourcing agency that will be available for your customer 24x7. 

Wrapping Up

Modern customers are not easy to please, so brands have to go the extra mile to be available at all times. You have to learn everything you can about the customers to provide them with value and impact. Moreover, you should share the information you collect across the channel uniformly to create a panoramic view. Your multiple-point solutions should have a unified approach to provide seamless engagement.

Tips to Improve Customer Service during the Holiday Rush

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The holidays are upon us, and this is the time of year when customer service goes through a huge shift. Though an exciting time for retailers - it can also be stressful. You've got buyers coming in from all over looking for deals on everything from toys to refrigerators. Your team has to be on call 24/7 during Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve. 

It's not unusual for some retail stores' phone lines, websites, and social media accounts to become overwhelmed and spammed with messages. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to make sure your customers are satisfied with their experience. Businesses need to make sure that they have the right customer service to help their customers during this busy season. 

Luckily, there are many ways to improve your customer support service by managing your seasonal staff effectively, or outsourcing your service! 

Read on for some tips on how you can improve your customer support services during the holiday rush!

1. Draw Insights from Past Holiday Trends

This is a great place to start for any business that has been around the holiday block more than once. It's always worth looking back on your past encounters with customers during this time of year and reflecting on what went well, as well as where there may have been room for improvement - you can use those insights to plan better customer support service for this year's holiday rush. Start with asking questions like:

What were the biggest problems that your customer service reps encountered during past holiday rushes?

Were there any particular events or issues with customers that seemed to surface more than others (such as returns, shipping errors, etc.)?

Did you notice any patterns regarding what types of questions certain demographics asked most often about your products?

This is also a great time to have an all-hands meeting with your staff and brainstorm some creative ways that you can make the holiday season more enjoyable for both customers and employees. The goal should be to keep everyone on their toes so that they're always engaged in the process of trying new things - but it's important not to overdo it!

2. Pick your Communication Channels and Assign Ownership to Seasonal Customer Support Staff

It's important to make sure that you're prepared with the right customer communication channels for this time of year. You want to have a plan in place so your customers know who they can contact during the holiday rush, and there should also be someone designated as "the owner" for each channel - like Email, Live Chat, Phone Support, or Social Media handle. This way, you'll be able to monitor each channel and make sure that customer needs are being addressed as quickly as possible.

For example, if someone tweets at your company's Twitter account - it would be best for the social media team to handle their inquiry by responding with a message on Twitter, letting them know who they can contact, or directing them back to an FAQ page on your website.

Once you've assigned channels and reps to each of them, the staff needs to be trained in what they need to do during this time of year! Ensure that these employees know about all the available resources - like FAQs, troubleshooting tips, and other helpful information.

Finally, make sure that you're monitoring your channels, so every staff member has a positive experience during the holidays. Make it clear to employees - especially your seasonal assistants - what their goal should be when responding to customers: If they can solve someone's problem on the spot, then do it! But if not, then they should direct the customer to someone who can help them, like a supervisor or 24/hr support line.

3. Consider Hiring Remote Seasonal Workers

Hiring seasonal employees is a great way to handle the holiday rush. Investing in temporary workers for this time of year will help you alleviate some of that financial burden, as well as making sure your customer service team has enough people on their side when things start getting hectic!

There are many benefits to hiring remote seasonal employees. One is that it's much easier to train them - especially if you have a more sophisticated customer support system and want people who already understand how your product works!

Another benefit of Customer Support Outsourcing is the flexibility they provide for holiday schedules - these are agencies that work dedicatedly in customer support, helping businesses handle the holiday rush with ease. One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing is that you don't have to spend your time and resources to train employees.

The agents you hire are already trained and have worked with a range of businesses. This can give you a competitive edge because you'll have a well-trained, knowledgeable team to rely on when the holidays start. So, you can start from day one.

4. Approach each Conversation with Empathetic Calm and Focus on Fast Solutions

During the holiday season, it can be difficult to stay calm in the face of all that's going on. You need to assign a customer support team leader who can take an empathetic approach with your customers and understand where they're coming from - after all, we've been there before!

One thing is for certain: don't let anything undo your best efforts. Your customers will appreciate it if you're calm, and they'll feel more comfortable talking to you about concerns or problems!

The most important thing for customer support team leaders is making sure that every customer has a fast solution as quickly as possible. If you can solve someone's issue on the spot - do it!

Pro Tip: Every customer should have access to a "first contact" person to handle their needs. If this is not possible, the customer support team leader should designate someone in charge of each channel - like Email, Live Chat, Phone Support, or Social Media Handle. This way, customers will be listened to and addressed quickly with a response they want to hear.

5. Focus on Revenue Based Customer Support Service

In the next few weeks, you'll want to focus on revenue-based customer service. This means that your goal will be to do whatever is necessary for customers to feel satisfied with their purchase and often return - not just this year but in years down the line!

This holiday season can bring a lot of challenges when it comes to satisfying customers and increasing revenue. Therefore, you need to keep track of important customer metrics to know what you are dealing with.

For this, you'll want to leverage tools like Google Analytics, find customer service tools, identify revenue opportunities (Google CPC, Instagram Ads, Facebook Ads, and conversion rate optimization), and start conversing. In addition, it will help you track necessary metrics and evaluate the success of your efforts.

Moreover, you'll want to make sure you're staying on top of negative reviews, responding quickly and efficiently. This ensures that your revenue isn't impacted, and you keep your reputation up.

Conclusion

So, what do you think would be the best way to help make customer support service more positive? One pro tip would be to spend time planning a customer service strategy for the holidays before they start. And have an empathetic approach to conversations and focus on solutions, not just problems! But, most importantly, track important metrics, so you know what is going on with your customers.

Key Ecommerce Customer Service Metrics to Help Boost Customer Engagement and Retention

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Customer service is the key to success for every business, and when you are running an eCommerce store, it's even more crucial. It helps reduce customer uncertainties, answer their questions, establish trust, and convince them to purchase your product. Here are some of the thought-provoking statistics that can prove our point -

These are just a few stats that represent a bigger picture. However, how do you know if your business is offering excellent customer support? How to know your customers are satisfied with your service?

Luckily, there are some primary vital metrics that you can utilize to measure your customer service performance and customer satisfaction. By tracking these key parameters, you can see how your business is performing. In fact, successful eCommerce businesses make many critical decisions based on these metrics. 

Ecommerce Customer Service Metrics that Matters

There are some key metrics you must track to ensure that your customer service performance is up to par. Working on these metrics is crucial to gain and retain high-value customers. Whether you have an in-house team or choose an outsourced customer service, tracking customer care metrics is essential to convert leads into loyal customers and advocates. 

Key eCommerce Customer Service Metrics

1. Average Issue Count (AIC)

Your customer support team must ensure that every customer complaint is addressed and adequately resolved. Keeping a clear track of the average issue count will help understand the quality of performance over time. This data will also help understand your product or service quality and make efforts to reduce the number of common issues that pop up.

2. Overall Resolution Rate (ORR)

Alternative to the average issue count, the overall resolution rate is a percentage at which your company resolves a customer complaint or a request. This metric can be calculated by subtracting the number of unresolved cases from the number of customer inquiries, then dividing this by the total number of inquiries. The fewer left unresolved, the more efficient is your customer support team.

3. First Response Time (FRT)

First response time is the time taken by your support team to reach out to your customers. The longer the duration of the time elapsed, the higher your customer's chances of leaving your website. Hence, bridging this gap and ensuring rapid communication is essential. Ideally, it should be less than 1-2 hours. Take a look at the response time and if you find that it is long, then plan on allocating more resources and implementing a live chat feature to your website to bring down your FRT.

4. First Contact Resolution Rate (FCR)

Unlike the first resolution rate, first contact resolution is the percentage of customer complaints or issues resolved on the first interaction with your customer. This metric shows the effectiveness of your customer support service department. You can either use the below formula to calculate FCR. Alternatively you can also choose to measure the first contact resolution through direct customer surveys.

5. Average Ticket Handling Time

Ticket handling time is the average time that an agent spends working on every unique ticket. It is also an indirect measure of ticket complexity and team productivity. Moreover, the time taken to close the ticket is proportional to the cost spent on it. The more the time, the more you are spending on the ticket.

6. Ticket Backlogs

This refers to the tickets that have been unresolved and have accumulated over time by your customer support service team. Simply relying on response time and the number of resolutions won't be sufficient. The percentage of complaints or requests backlog is a significant indicator of the performance of your support team. Thus, looking into the backlog every month is imperative to track productivity. If these numbers are high, it might be an indication that your team needs more training.

7. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Potential buyers read reviews and seek peers' suggestions before making a buying decision. Therefore, any positive or negative review will help them make a better purchase decision. Net Promoter Score of your online brand is the percentage of shoppers likely to recommend you to others. To gather this data, ask consumers, on a 0-10 scale, "How likely is it that you would recommend [Company Name] to others?" Though it doesn't directly relate to customer experience, NPS indicates whether customers have a positive attitude towards your brand.

8. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

How satisfied your customers are with your eCommerce customer support service is another strong performance indicator. This score proves to be helpful in conjunction with other ratings you obtain in your support service. Moreover, since it is subjective, it allows you to look closely at the mentioned areas and work accordingly. Thus, a customer satisfaction score directly gives you a great measure of your customer service performance. 

Conclusion

By tracking these customer support services metrics, you get a clear picture of the performance of your customer care team. Use all of these metrics to improve the overall business performance and boost your revenue.

Most of the time, in improving customer services, it's easy to lose focus on core business activities. In this case, it makes sense to work with the best customer service outsourcing company.

Outsourcing customer support is a cost-effective way to increase the efficiency of your customer support service while expanding available resources. By choosing the right company, you can amp up your business potential and yield excellent results. Contact us today for customer support outsourcing to experts.

15 Cold Calling Tips from Customer Support Outsourcing Services for Sales Success in 2021

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What does cold calling mean to you? Do you consider it to be a sales strategy that barely gets results? Does it mean making several dozens of calls a day hoping someone shows interest in your pitch? Perhaps you think of cold calling as a strategy that worked a decade ago, and today, it is a waste of time and energy. If so, it’s time to rethink -

With technological advancements today, many believe that cold calling is not as effective as it was ten years ago. The truth is, customers still prefer to be called via the phone before they agree to a meeting with you.

While this data might prove our point, if you are not getting satisfactory results from your cold calling efforts, you might need to revisit your overall cold calling strategy. Here are 20 cold calling tips to consider before you start selling. 

20 Cold Calling Tips for Sales Success in 2021

Know what you are selling 

Know the product/service you are selling thoroughly. Learn more about your products so you can comfortably answer any related questions thrown at you. It’s also a good idea to have a thorough understanding of all the products/services you offer and not just what you must sell. It can help when you need to cross or upsell products.

Map out the conversation

A call can go different ways. Consider all other areas and directions a call could lead and how you will tackle each scenario. Create a mind map that branches into various directions—for example, booking an appointment for a demo, setting up a call at a more convenient time, or even closing a deal. 

Draft a successful cold calling script

A 30-second script will be perfect - a script should include an introduction, a reason for calling, and information about how the product/service is the ideal problem solver. You might have to create multiple scripts and then test each one individually to see which works best. 

Prepare to deal with objections

Rejections and objections are a part of selling your product. When you cold-call, you have a few seconds to deal with it. First, make a list of all the possible objections you could face, and then work on dealing with each of them. Next, get information regarding what questions to expect from potential customers and how to answer them. 

Invest in customer relationship management software for better customer support services

Customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you manage your customer support services, including your cold calls, by:

  • Keeping track of your prospects and productivity.
  • Connecting you instantly with missed calls and leads.
  • Recording calls to offer you better sales insights.
  • Helping with call training.

Personalize your calls

Every potential customer is unique. Research on individuals and learn about them. Then personalize your call to have a more meaningful conversation. Your potential customer visits social media platforms that provide a goldmine of information on their recent activities, hobbies and interests, education, mutual connections, professional background, and more.

Call only when your call will be received well

Research proves that certain days of the week and specific times are better than others for cold calling. Therefore, consider making your calls on specific days and at a suitable time. Also, analyze your call records for when you got the best results and schedule your calls accordingly. 

Lead with your prospective customer

Learn to focus on the person at the other end of the call. Listen to what they say to learn about their requirements and concerns. According to some studies, the best sales professionals listen to the prospect 57% of the time and speak only 43% of the time.

Stay on track

Don’t lose focus when on a call. Here are some things to do on a cold call:

  • Engage the prospect.
  • Ask questions but stay on topic.
  • Take notes as they talk – their interests, problems, and concerns.
  • Organize your thoughts around the data you gather to make your pitch relevant to them.

The tone of your voice is important

Your prospective client cannot judge your body language or facial expressions. So, they rely on your voice to better understand you. Voice modulation makes you more human, lends a breath of freshness and enthusiasm to the conversation, and makes your offer sound more appealing. Add warmth to your call. Match your tone of voice with your words.

Gauge the prospect’s response

Understand your prospect’s response, so you know whether you have their attention or are losing them. Learn to gauge their interest by the:

  • Questions
  • Responses 
  • The tone of their voice and volume
  • Choice of their words.
  • Avoiding pitching prematurely

A premature pitch can lead to failure. 

Understand what the potential customer wants and if the product/service you offer can counter their problems. Then, when you are sure you have a solution to their problems, dive into your pitch. 

Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks

Your solution should be as big as your buyer wants it to be. So if you can sell more than what you originally intended to sell, don’t be afraid to drop that pitch and pitch a bigger deal. Your cold-call script must make room for selling bigger and more. 

Leave voicemails

Many people avoid taking calls from unknown numbers. So, leave a short voice mail delivering your pitch uninterrupted. Remember, you have only approximately 15 seconds on a voicemail, so use that time effectively.

Know when to stop

If you don’t get a prospect on a first try, try calling again at a different time. If your calls and voicemails are unanswered after four or five shots, it’s time to move on to other prospects. You could try reaching out to this prospect after a couple of months. 

If you can’t overcome call reluctance, then outsource call center services

If you believe that cold calling is a thing of the past, then consider investing in customer support outsourcing. When you hire an outbound call center outsourcing services to a reliable customer support services company, you can be sure that they will help you reach your cold calling campaign goals.

Conclusion

Take these 20 cold calling tips into consideration and experience better sales success in 2021 and beyond. If you still doubt your company’s cold calling abilities, leave it to the experts. Instead, hire a customer support outsourcing company like Wow Customer Support. We help you wow your customers and take care of all your outbound sales efforts. You can now hire our agents at just $7/hour.Click here for more information on how we can take over your cold calling campaigns.

What cold calling strategies do you follow in your company? We would love it if you shared your tips on cold calling strategies here.

5 Surprising benefits of employing Remote Customer Service Representatives

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benefits of remote customer service

We live in an age where almost anyone can get a job done remotely. Even customer support services can be provided from a remote location. Working remotely is becoming increasingly popular. Then, there is the Covid-19 pandemic that has forced most of us to work from the confines of our homes. The good news is that more employees realize the benefits of working remotely. The better news is that companies across industries (government, retail, call centers, financial services, and insurance) can benefit from providing remote customer service. Here are five of those benefits.

#1. Your customers need 24x7 support

A massive 95% of consumers say that they cannot be loyal to a brand that does not provide good customer service. According to statistics, 40% of people prefer talking to a real person to interacting with a machine. So, there’s no denying you need to provide customer service and have representatives ready to answer calls and solve problems – day and night. Unfortunately, in-house representatives can answer only so many calls per day. When your representatives fail to respond to angry customers, they will not hesitate to take their business elsewhere.

Hiring remote workers gives your customers access to multiple customer service representatives. Your remote customer service representatives have the benefit of choosing flexible work hours. So you can have someone ready to resolve problems and answer questions on behalf of your organization - day or night.

#2. Customer support must be handled across multiple channels

If you think your customers are reaching out to you only via phone, think again. According to statistics, 31% of customers reach out to companies via Twitter, and 33% through Facebook. But that’s not all – over 60% of millennials get online for customer service interactions, while a third of customers use SMSs to reach out to companies for assistance. You need representatives to operate the phones, look after your customers on social media platforms, and talk to customers via online chat and SMS. In short, you need people with different skill sets. Hiring full-time employees can be expensive.

Hire multiple customer service representatives who can look after specific channels individually, so your customers’ needs are looked after 24x7.

#3. It’s cost-effective

Small businesses and startups often can’t afford office space for employees. Then there is the cost of hiring full-time employees. Employees are expensive. They must be paid a salary, provided with paid sick leave and vacation, insurance, and any added costs.  Plus, they need office space, a computer, a phone, and the internet.

When you hire remote customer service representatives, you only pay them for the services they offer and the number of hours they work. You can save significantly on overheads. Your remote workers work out of their homes, use their computer, phone, and electricity, and won’t expect you to foot any of those bills.

Another advantage is that during leaner months, you can condense your team of customer service representatives. That will bring down costs further.

#4. Your remote workers are satisfied

Customer satisfaction is not the only thing you need to be concerned about. Employee satisfaction is equally important. Most representatives are happier working from the comfort of their own home, where they are free from the distractions of the office. When they work from home, they can concentrate on getting their job done.

Customer service reps work independently – very rarely is teamwork involved. So, it does not make sense to commute to an office every day.

Remote workers are satisfied employees – and happy employees are more productive.

#5. Hire from a wider pool of talent

Finding suitable candidates to hire is a task that could take months. Unfortunately, you don’t have the luxury of waiting for the right candidate to fall in your lap.

When you hire remote workers, you shorten the hiring process. You don’t have to worry about going through long resumes, conducting lengthy interviews, or communicating multiple times to arrange meetings. Instead, you hire someone from anywhere around the world. You are more likely to find talented, skilled, and experienced remote workers you are satisfied with than a full-time employee who meets your requirements.

Conclusion

Today, more companies realize the benefits of hiring remote workers for their customer support services. The benefits vary from customer and employee satisfaction to monetary benefits.

Finally, consider outsourced customer service companies that can take over your organization’s customer support tasks. These companies provide remote customer service. Customer support outsourced is cheaper than hiring full-time employees. But more importantly, you get a suite of services that ensures your customers’ queries are answered immediately.

About us

Wow Customer Support provides customer support services powered by a team of representatives who are ready to answer your customers 24x7. Click here for more information on how we can help support your customer service team.

Do you have anything to add? We would love to hear from you in the comments section.

5 Ways to Remove Friction in Your Customer Support Channels in 2021

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With a growing customer base looking for instant results in this constantly evolving competitive world, customer experience has become more critical than ever. The most crucial way to improve your customer experience is to remove the friction in your customer support services.

Removing friction in your customer support channels reduces the chances of customers getting disappointed, frustrated, or angry with your business. So what would cause friction in customer service?

Factors that create a hassle in your customer service :

  1. Limited support channels or support not available for preferred channel
  2. Customers have to wait in line to purchase a product or to avail a service
  3. Delayed response to the support email
  4. Hours of waiting on the phone line to connect with an agent
  5. Provide the same information repetitively when transferred from one agent to another
  6. Asking too many irrelevant questions
  7. Complicated processes that confuse customers

Eliminating these factors from your customer support channels would enhance the customer experience and remove friction from your process.

Here are five ways to remove friction in your customer support channels in 2021:

Provide Multi-Channel Support to Customers

In this digital world, every customer has their choice of channel to connect with customer support. Some prefer it through email, some would like to call the agents, and others may like to connect through chat. Multichannel support will provide the customers with an option to choose their preferred customer support channels. With this, they can connect with your support instantly through the device they are using.

With omni-channel support, customers need not run across channels to access customer support. This would allow customers to access your support on the go, reducing their efforts and providing frictionless customer support. Customer service outsourcing to a professional company will allow you to avail this multichannel support.

Multichannel customer support will align your business closer to the needs of your customers. Moreover, channels like social media and chat support are more casual and quicker. The support questions and communication through these channels would be to the point.

Use AI in your Support Process

With rapidly evolving technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is completely revolutionizing the customer support process. Artificial intelligence can be used in support services to reduce the customers' efforts, anticipate the customers' needs, automate your organization's approach to customer support, and ultimately provide better customer satisfaction.

Outsource customer service process to a company that implements AI to reduce the customers' efforts by offering self-servicing tools and chatbots that would automatically resolve most customer queries with high-quality issue resolution. The chatbots would collect the information from the customer and provide it to the agents before connecting the customer to the agent, in case the automated tool is unable to resolve the issue.

Big data can provide real-time updates to the customer support agents, helping them resolve the issues instantly. In addition, an AI-powered CRM tool will provide the agents with real-time information that helps them handle customer issues faster.

Offer Personalized Services

With the growing competition in every industry, it is unlikely that the product and services your company offers have a unique selling point. The competitive environment allows customers to choose the company that values a good customer experience over anything else. A personalized support service would play an important part in delivering satisfactory services.

Using artificial intelligence and advanced Customer Relationship Management software, the customer support agents would have access to real-time information, which authorizes them to deliver personalized services to every customer.

Providing a single point of contact to each customer will make them feel special. Allowing them to connect with the same agent every time they have a query will strengthen the relationship between customer and company. The representative would provide efficient support services using the knowledge acquired from past experiences with the customer. A single point of contact removes friction and allows your company to provide seamless and valuable support to every customer.

Getting customer support outsourced to an experienced team would allow you to provide personalized services to your customer.

Consolidate Your Support Teams to Enhance the Communication

The two most important factors that would increase the customer's friction and the company are having customers wait for an infuriating amount of time and transferring the support call between two or more representatives. Usually, transferring the call to different representatives means that the customer would have to explain the issue to them before someone could provide the resolution. The customer would have lost the patience explaining the problem to everyone and would be highly furious when the call is transferred to the final representative.

For instance, if the customer has called the sales representative with a support query and the support team is located in different locations, the call would travel through various levels of representative before reaching the right person, and the customer would have to explain the query to every person before getting transferred to the next person.

Consolidating different teams and establishing an efficient call transfer plan would improve the problem. This will help them resolve the problem quicker and reduce the waiting time for other customers on hold to get their queries resolved.

Train and Empower Your Representatives

Dealing with an inexperienced or inefficient representative may also lead to an increase in customer friction. Customers may get frustrated while dealing with a representative who cannot provide the solution to the problem. The representatives handling your call flow need to be competent and have the required permissions to resolve the queries.

Furthermore, create a knowledge base that would include all the information about your business. Then, store the complete information using artificial intelligence and CRM software. Finally, many companies upload the knowledge base on their website to allow customers to access them whenever required.

The knowledge base would reduce the need for contacting customer support for simple queries. The knowledge base can also be in the form of an in-depth FAQ section on your website.

Conclusion

Eliminating the chances of customer friction will result in a better customer experience and more satisfied customers. Use these five methods to remove friction in your customer support channels and enjoy better customer satisfaction.

Customer support outsourcing to a company that follows the ways to reduce friction will allow your business to access innovative technology and top-notch strategies that improve customer experience and boost sales.

Outsource your 24*7 customer support needs to our highly experienced team of professionals and provide an excellent customer experience. Contact us today for outsourcing!

Customer Engagement: Why It Matters In This Pandemic Era?

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The year 2020 has been a life-changer in many ways. Storefronts went digital, kitchen tables turned into conference rooms, and how we live, work and shop have had drastic changes. But what hasn’t changed for businesses is outstanding customer engagement. Customers always look for feedback and reviews before purchasing any product. A healthy customer engagement can create a positive image of your brand and this in turn, can bring in more business. A research by PWC stated that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience.

Here are a few pointers on why customer engagement plays a huge role in any business.

  • Staying Trustworthy

In general, people shop for top brands as they can keep their faith and provide quality goods. This notion still holds true even after the pandemic hit us. Unlike most relationships, gaining trust doesn’t happen overnight. One of the ways businesses can earn their client’s trust is by staying consistent and making sure the customer and clients are always aware of how your business is performing—also, almost 61 percent of the business owners aid customer support outsourcing services.

  • Empathetic, unified teams 

When a customer shops, it is always advised that there should be an interaction with brands to make their shopping experience not only convenient but also infused with empathy and understanding. Furthermore, 90 percent of the clients say the true nature of a business is determined by how they survive during the time of crisis. Customers want to see brands prove they are interested and value them apart from surviving a pandemic situation.

  • Corporate Values

Most brands are in the midst of transforming their businesses to go digital to cater to their customers. In recent reports, 71 percent of the clients pay more attention to corporate values than they did a year ago. Generally, customers want agencies to fulfill the specific needs and expectations at every touchpoint. They are making purchasing decisions on personalized experiences.

  • Consistent Interaction across different departments

Did you know that online interactions grew from 42% of customer engagements in 2019 to 60 percent by 2020 due to this ongoing pandemic!? Besides, 76 percent of customers expect consistent interactions across different departments. Before 2020, customers were well on their way to becoming more digitally dependent in their brands’ interactions. In a socially distanced environment, many have come to view digital engagements as not only a convenience but a necessity. Brands, in turn, have had to accelerate their digital transformation. Due to this, a huge mass of people are working much of their lives online. In fact, the vast majority of consumers say they prefer online shopping. As a result, they’re looking for companies to provide more digital options. In fact, 54 percent of customers would like companies to introduce new products or services in response to the pandemic.

  • Go Digital

Eighty-eight percent of the customers expect companies to accelerate digital initiatives due to the mass pandemic. As the world order is adapting to new ways of running their business, giants worldwide, have a real good opportunity to use this knowledge to revamp their business on a larger scale and make it more interactive with their customers. As a result, they can troubleshoot customer’s problems and solve them as soon as possible.

If you are looking for great customer support services, plan on hiring customer support outsourcing services, we at Wow are one of the leading customer support outsourcing companies providing top-notch customer support outsourcing services focusing on serving the best of what services can offer.

To know more about customer support outsourcing services, click here.

Interesting posts to read:

How to Build a Productive Remote Technical Support Team from Scratch?

Why Is Customer Support Services Vital for Online Retail Business?

6 Core Benefits of Multiple Customer Support Platforms for eCommerce Business

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Growing a business is a challenge in today’s world, especially if you are a small business owner. So do you want to take your business to the next level? Here’s a secret that many eCommerce companies have that enables them to build a strong relationship and have loyal customers. Having strong multiple customer support services has always been a major business booster for the eCommerce industry.

They help you in many ways and boost sales like no other. Customers tend to come back to you when you make their transactions smooth and seamless. Also providing customer support services on multiple platforms such as email, chats, phone, and various social media applications can be advantageous to build strong relationships and sustenance.

Are still wondering if you need to invest in multiple-channel customer support services? Then here are a few reasons that might help you change your mind.

  • Easily manage your customer’s requests

Are your emails flooded with requests from customers but you would instead answer them by a call or a chat? That’s where  multi-channel customer support services come in! You can answer their queries through a call, chat or any means of communication. A multi-channel customer support service can create different streams of information that can be utilized for your business to understand your customer’s needs. Also, it provides the capability to understand, quantify, and review communication with customers. Furthermore, when you outsource customer support services, you can use their CRM system which can help you streamline the way your company handles all customer requests to improve efficiency.

  • Target specific audiences

When there are different customer support channels, you’ll know the transaction analytics and retail experiences of the customers. Hence you can focus on services that they require the most. If a customer enquires about haircare services, you can throw in a coupon or a discount to attract more customers. When you have your customer support outsourced, it enables sectors such as integrated customer service, sales, merchandising, inventory, and enterprise resource planning to perform better—thus increasing your boost sales and efficiency of your business.

  • Route all your customer requests to the right person

With multi-channel customer support services, you can route their queries to the right personnel every time. Be it technical or product-related assistance; your customer service representatives will ensure to connect them in the quickest manner possible. As you don’t have to wait for a single-line of communication, the responses get faster and queries get resolved quicker.

  • Customer Satisfaction

At the end of the day, we all can agree that the challenge is to have high customer satisfaction. Happy customers tend to stay loyal as well as refer more people, thus bringing in more business. Moreover, customer retention is easier than customer acquisition. The more easily available you are to cater to your customer’s needs, the more you build on trust and loyalty. Therefore, if you have your customer support outsourced, your business becomes easily accessible and can build on customer relationships.

  • Keep track of your customers

Most often, when a customer calls for a query, they are put on hold for a while. Meanwhile, the executive looks for their details and history of their business with them. This can get quite annoying when your customers are in a hurry. Therefore, if you integrate multi-channel customer support services in your business, you can streamline all your customer interactions. This helps you sort all their information and records every interaction so that you don’t miss out on a detail. Also, having multiple channels enables you to all generate all kinds of reports. Furthermore, you can keep track of your sales team performance and what know works best for you. You can have your customer’s issues and queries, and feedback organized and well managed.

  • Marketing opportunities

Proactive customer support services create a vast space for marketing opportunities. When you have a wide-channel of support, you can always suggest a better option or throw in a few offers. For instance, if a customer calls to enquire about a service, you can answer their query as well as tell them about a new product you’ve recently launched.  Thereby you can use customer support services as a  marketing tool for introducing and promoting new products and services.

Final Thoughts on Multiple Customer Support for eCommerce

Therefore, when you outsource customer support services,  you can serve your customers better, provide fast and high-quality service and have access to their entire communication history. If you are looking for such services, we at Wow are one of the leading outsource customer service companies providing top-notch customer support services focusing on serving the best of what services can offer.

To know more about multi-channel customer support services, click here.

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