Customer support has come a long way. Technology has made interactions with customers more accessible and automated to easily improve customer support. With these advancements in technology comes the opportunity to gather information that helps you understand the needs of your customers and makes it easier to better support them. There is valuable insight that you can obtain from each customer interaction. Here are five ways that you can use data to improve your customer support.
Get to know your customers
In today’s day and age, customers expect fast, personalized, and efficient service. So it’s not enough to just gather customer data from your interactions, you need to use it to improve your customer experience – and to do that you need to understand what your customers need.
To better understand what your customers need, you need to understand how your customers interact with you and gather data at each touchpoint. You can then use the data you’ve gathered to identify patterns, segment your customer base, determine preferred channels, and more. The more information you have about your customers, the easier you will be able to understand how to cater to their needs, better support them, and ultimately turn them into happy advocates of your brand.
Improve processes
With data, you can learn track your agents’ performances and identify potential bottlenecks in your processes. More than 90% of customers say that customer service is key in who they give their business to so it’s crucial to improve your customer support processes so customers have a great experience. To gather data that can help you improve, look at data such as:
- Response rates
- Hold times
- Abandonment rates
- Resolution times
- Reasons for reaching out
Customer satisfaction surveys can also help you to uncover insights into which internal processes are working and which are not.
The data might identify patterns and reveal processes that you didn’t even know needed improvement. For example, if you find that a lot of customers are reaching out about the same issue, you may want to create knowledge base articles to encourage self-service support.
Personalize the experience
While there are less one-to-one interactions in modern customer support, customers today still expect personalization, and analytics can help you provide it.
Once you use data to gain a firm understanding of your customers, you can determine the best way to deliver that personalized experience.
Data can help you anticipate your customers’ needs when they reach out for support. You can better assess and predict which additional services or value-add offerings to recommend to a customer based on their previous purchases and activities.
Personalizing the customer experience will help increase customer retention and strengthen customer loyalty.
Provide an omnichannel experience
Customers typically encounter a lot of friction when they reach out for support. Customers do not care how your company is structured or departments are set up – all they care about is the quickest way to resolve their issue and how seamless the experience is. In other words, they want an omnichannel support experience.
It’s valuable to look at all of the customer touchpoints as it provides a more holistic look into their interactions with your company. Customers these days reach out to companies over multiple channels and expect one seamless interaction. With the data of a customer’s previous interactions, your agents are better equipped to field questions and resolve issues faster.
Support these days has to be multi-channel. Some of your customers may prefer traditional phone support, while others may prefer live chat, email, or even social media. While it’s not feasible to offer every support channel under the sun, it’s important to use data to determine which channels your customer uses. And then in order to provide omnichannel support, you need to keep your support channels equally efficient.
Provide faster support
Customers these days expect speedy service – especially if they need help with a product or service. Fast responses to complaints on social media can increase customer advocacy by up to 25%.
Use data to calculate response times across multiple channels and determine which channels have areas for improvement. You can also determine times of peak traffic and staff accordingly to ensure there are no bottlenecks or delays.
Gathering data, interpreting it, and actioning on your data and analytics will help you improve your customer support to stand out from your competition and keep your customers happy.
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