The Top Nine Customer Service Tools Your Team Can Use to Improve Customer Satisfaction
Your customers aren’t as happy as they can be. Even with new ways to delight customers popping up by the second, the customer service industry still can’t nail customer satisfaction. And we get why. As customers evolve and their attentions decrease, their expectations grow. So, how do you keep up with those lofty expectations? And, how do you move the needle to improve customer satisfaction?
Change the way you think about customer happiness. Customers marking their surveys with average grades is just a symptom of a larger problem, it’s not the problem. While you’re sitting here pondering what new, shiny feature you can throw at your customers to boost their satisfaction, your competition is figuring out why customers are unhappy in the first place. The reality is, your customers’ dissatisfaction stems from poor customer service experiences driven by unhappy agents.
The root issue lies with your agents. Their experience suffers when they don’t have the tools they need to do their jobs. Improve their experience and give them the tools to deliver better customer service, and your uptick in CSAT will follow.
Give your customer satisfaction a vitality boost with nine tools for your team to deliver better service and track their results.
1. Integrations and systems that share customer data.
Your agents need centralized information about your customers, so they can help them. When your systems, like your Salesforce CRM, your Zendesk ticketing system, and your contact center platform work together to share information, your agents fill knowledge gaps about your customers’ experience. Then, your customers don’t have to re-explain their pains every time they reach out.
Plus, your agents get valuable information about past interaction history, so they can personalize each experience to the preferences of the customer.
2. CSAT surveys.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. If you’re not already, start sending customers post-interaction surveys for a quick look at satisfaction. Then, schedule quarterly surveys to get a deeper view into what drives happiness. Use the feedback you get to address specific pains in the customer journey.
CSAT surveys let you proactively gather feedback to act on and guide your team to find ways to create better experiences.
3. Automation and bots.
Trigger bots to send relevant, self-help articles to your customers. Or, tag them in to answer customers’ simple questions, only routing to a human when needed. Bots power more intentional, efficient services for your customers. Your customers will appreciate the speedy problem-solving. And, when your customers do need a live agent for help with complex issues, bots won’t make it harder to reach one.
4. Dashboards for reporting.
Use dashboards for reporting to compile all the data you’ve collected throughout the stages of your customers’ journey. Instead of copying and pasting all that powerful data into hundreds of cells and dozens of spreadsheets, build it into a single dashboard based on specific criteria.
Dashboards give you a visual way to highlight metrics and surface the information you want to see at a glance. Plus, you can share them with your agents for a deeper look at how they’re tracking towards their KPIs.
Pro tip: Share dashboards with your VP of Ops for a digestible view of your contact center’s performance.
5. Web chat for quick help.
Customers want more control over the experience they get from your company. Queue up web chat conversations for your agents to offer nearly-instant service to customers, and you’ll see a spike in customer satisfaction. Plus, those satisfied customers will put more money back into your business. Some 90% of customers say they have confidence they’ll get help when they need it if they see a “live chat” button on a website. And,52% of customers are more likely to be repeat buyers with a company who offers chat support.
6. A queue that pulls in social media messages.
People craft a tweet and tag a company with their service request, expecting a response yesterday. Connect your social media channels to your agents’ queues, so customer tweets and messages get prioritized and listed in the same space as every other interaction. Then, your agents aren’t sifting through dozens of channels looking for ways to help. And, your customers are happy with the swift, accurate service they get.
7. An omnichannel IVR.
An omnichannel IVR sounds a little counterintuitive but hang with me here. This tool moves beyond voice routing. It routes customers no matter what channel they reached out on or switched to.
Your customers need a consistent communication experience across all channels (like, SMS, chat, voice, etc.). That way every time they reach out, they have the right expectations. Plus, a predictable journey for customers means better tracking, with easier adjustments and quicker fixes for their pains.
8. Metrics for your agent experience.
Use data to measure and refine your workforce engagement management. Dig into the agent experience by looking at three crucial factors: effectiveness, efficiency, and empowerment. Effectiveness looks at your agents’ soft skills and competency, along with how they play to the benefit of your customers. Efficiency checks out how resourceful, how productive, and how timely your agents are. And finally, their empowerment keeps pulse on things like how agents fit in with the team, how supported they are, and how valuable they feel to the organization.
9. Contextual feedback for transcriptions.
The way you coach your agents directly impacts your customers’ satisfaction. Coach and leave comments on your agents’ interaction transcriptions, so they get context for each lesson you deliver. When you leave a comment in-line on an interaction, your agents can see what they need to improve on in future interactions, even down to a single harsh word or confusing phrase. The more actionable and relevant the feedback you deliver, the more empowered agents will be to deliver happy customer experiences.
When you choose contact center tools that make it easier for your agents to do their jobs, you’re choosing to finally improve customer satisfaction.