Would you be surprised to know that good customer service is crucial for customer retention and loyalty? You wouldn’t. What about poor customer service? Can it adversely affect customer retention and loyalty? Now, you don’t need the findings of statisticians and data scientists to guess the answer. But if you still want proof, here are some data and stats for you.
Recent research from Qualtrics and ServiceNow found that about two-thirds of American customers said that they have switched brands after poor customer service. As per a study by Newvoicemedia, American companies lose over USD62 billion every year due to poor service.
On the other hand, excellent customer service can improve customer loyalty. An American Express study revealed customers in the U.S. are willing to spend 17 percent more on brands that provided excellent service to them.
When it comes to providing excellent customer service, tools such as communication systems and contact center software play a huge role. This blog discusses the impact of contact center software on customer retention and loyalty. Read on to gain valuable insights into the relationship between contact center software and customer loyalty.
How reliable and effective contact center software enhances customer retention and loyalty?
A study conducted by Call Center Helper found that three out of every five contact centers prioritize customer satisfaction and experience. To ensure that many companies have started leveraging contact center software, which can play a huge role in customer retention and loyalty in the following ways.
1. By enabling companies to remain in touch with customers during crisis times
As per a recent survey conducted by TCN, a provider of cloud-based contact center technology, more than 50 percent of the respondents believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has positively impacted customer service. Isn’t the findings of the survey surprising? We all know that the pandemic was a huge crisis time for customer-facing businesses. But despite that, a majority of customers found that the way companies provided customer service improved instead of getting worse.
That’s because many companies used efficient communication tools such as sophisticated telecom technologies and contact center software to enable seamless customer support and service. By providing timely support and service to customers, businesses enjoyed greater loyalty from their customers.
2. By providing a consistent customer experience
By streamlining different processes and automating repetitive tasks, contact center software can enhance customer service and provide a consistent customer experience. Contact centers that leverage sophisticated contact center software provide customers with a single point of contact and succeed in creating a consistent customer experience. They also enable customers to get their questions answered quickly and easily.
The right contact center software enables customers to connect with businesses using multiple channels. By doing so, they enhance customer satisfaction and reduce wait times. Sophisticated contact center software also leverages analytics and reports to know how your agents speak with customers and how they provide customer service.
3. By enabling businesses to provide proactive support and tailored customer service
Contact centers operate in the digital domain and contact center software leverage digital channels such as live chat, social media, or emails to communicate with customers. By using sophisticated contact center software, they can enable agents to track customer journeys efficiently and view the rage clicks, dead clicks, and bounce rate. By leveraging customer data to map customers’ journeys, they can provide tailored customer service.
Sophisticated contact center software enables easy integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, which enables agents to access customer information and tailor their responses and services accordingly.
Also, sophisticated contact center software allows businesses to track customer interactions and understand customers’ needs and preferences. Companies can tailor their services and offers to meet their needs. This creates a more personal relationship between the customer and the business, which can lead to increased customer loyalty.
4. By providing excellent self-service options to customers
Contact centers offer a wide range of self-service options to customers such as interactive voice response (IVR) systems, community forums, self-service portals, and automated chatbots. These technologies enable customers to complete tasks without having to speak with a customer service representative.
As per a survey conducted by TCN, 65 percent of customers who took part in the survey said that they were extremely satisfied when they used a self-service option. This shows that contact centers can enhance customer loyalty and retention when they implement automation properly.
Sophisticated contact center software leverages automation to provide self-service options, map the different stages of the customer journey, and supplement the efforts of customer service representatives. By using IVR systems, contact center software can provide pre-recorded voice answers to frequently asked questions. Automated chatbots can provide fast and accurate responses to customers’ queries and direct them to the right resources. Self-service portals can enable customers to submit feedback, review order status, and access their accounts.
5. By providing fast responses to customers
In a contact center, customer service representatives are adept at using two or more channels at the same time. Unlike call centers, it doesn’t require them to focus all their attention and energy on one call at a time. Customer service representatives who aren’t speaking with customers can handle email conversations, social media chats, and instant messages simultaneously.
Many companies use effective and well-crafted templates to respond to customer queries and requests. For instance, the company’s customer service department has specialized templates to respond to instant messages, chats, tweets, LinkedIn posts, Facebook posts, etc. By doing so, contact centers can provide effective customer service at scale during peak times without compromising customer experience.
6. By enhancing agents’ efficiency
Did you know that nine out of ten contact center agents feel that the applications they use have to be more effective? As per a stat released by Business Wire revealed that 95 percent of customer service representatives believe that the applications they are using can be far more efficient and effective. That’s precisely where sophisticated contact center software can be immensely helpful.
Contact center software can automate many manual processes and tasks, which can enable companies to reduce wait times and enhance agents’ efficiency. By providing agents with powerful tools and automation features such as automated call routing, IVR, cloud-based calling, CRM integration, and more, contact center software can eliminate the need for manual and repetitive tasks and help agents save time.
7. Analytics and reporting
A McKinsey study found that nine out of every ten CX leaders said that they use stats and studies to measure customer experience. This highlights the importance of using data and accurate information to gain insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The analytics and reporting provided by sophisticated contact center software can help companies to identify areas where they can improve customer service. High-quality contact center software enables managers to monitor and snoop on calls to check quality and compliance with rules.
When businesses have reliable data and insights into customers’ needs and preferences, they can provide their customers with the right services. By gathering data and analyzing customer interactions, businesses can identify the areas in which they need to improve and what they need to do to enhance customer experience.
Taking everything into account
Customer loyalty and retention are crucial to every business. Just as a business’s products or services play a huge role in determining how loyal its customers would be, its customer service plays an equally important role, if not more. To ensure that your customers remain loyal to your brand and keep buying from you more and more, you must focus on investing in the right communication tools and contact center software to enhance your customer service.
