Did you know that 78 percent of website visitors said they will buy from a company if they receive a quick and accurate response? And 59 percent of consumers said they will purchase faster if they are assisted within one minute. Outcomes that suggest a quick response is rewarding. It leads to higher sales, increased customer satisfaction and loyal consumers. While a slow response could result in negative reviews and a bad reputation. We learned that not all companies know how to improve on response time, which is why we present seven ways to help you do so.
7 ways to improve on client service and response time
#1 Determine client channels and how to use these
To improve on your response time, we recommend analyzing which client channels you use and how you use these. Do you interact with clients via phone, website, social media or email? When this is clear, you will be able to adjust the customer service accordingly. You might discover that most inquiries come from social media. If so, you need to focus more on this channel and make sure your process is set up for this.
#2 Analyze and optimize the customer service process
Now that you have determined where your target group is at, the next step is to analyze which inquiries from clients are recurring. Take a deep dive into the chat history of the messaging channels. Maybe you’ll learn that your customer service receives many questions on opening hours or delivery times. In this case, a chatbot is helpful to handle these types of questions. You could also introduce creating support tickets for incoming inquiries. Support tickets help you identify which inquiries are in and if they are taken care of or not.
#3 Use livechat support
Livechat helps website visitors find their way. This is where you will gain maximum results. It demands a quick response from the agent and enables this as well. You can also use templates and, or automatic responses which prevent customers from waiting longer than necessary. With ‘routing’ conversations are automatically led to the right agent or department, which will reduce waiting time as well. Label and tag conversations to indicate which conversation has a lower or high priority, or indicate which conversation needs followup. Another advantage of live chat is that you can have multiple conversations simultaneously.
#4 Use chatbots for 24/7 support
Ok, we already mentioned them a bit: chatbots. But we believe that they are really helpful in improving on response time. Besides that, they are available for 24/7 support. Do make sure that they are set up in the right way. Meaning that the chatbot's answers do not always match the asked question. For simple questions, such as, Frequently Asked Questions, chatbots are perfect. But we recommend having an agent ready in the background to takeover when necessary.
#5 Make sure your team is equipped with the right know-how
Here is something that needs more attention in every company: a well trained team. You need to make sure your customer service knows all the ins and outs of your product. If the customer service is not able to provide the client with the right support, it will lead to negative results and bad reviews. So make sure they have the right knowhow and that they are aware of your brand policy.
#6 Create a knowledge base
While there are many clients who prefer to reach out to the customer service, the majority prefers to explore the answers by themselves. This is why you need to have a knowledge base in place. Information such as FAQ’s, tutorials or product information must be available on your website. Having this in place will save your customer service heaps of work and time and leads to a higher client satisfaction.
#7 Use tools, like cobrowsing, speech and video chat
Cobrowsing, speech and video chat are tools that will help the agent help the customer faster. With cobrowsing the agent helps navigate the client through your website. With speech and video chat your company is able to offer the website visitor realtime support. Working with these tools increases conversion and raises loyalty from your customer. And well, at least you offer many options to help a client succeed.
Working efficiently together
In this blog we presented you with seven suggestions on how to improve your customer service and response time. We hope it will help you do so! Delivering perfect customer service is also dependent on how your team is able to collaborate. To help them work efficiently together, Saysimple developed a great solution: the Multichannel Inbox.
In the Multi Channel Inbox all client channels are gathered and loaded into one inbox. Your team will work from this central inbox, which helps them to keep an overview on the many different client channels your company has and they will be able to answer to inquiries quickly.
With routing, inquiries are easily directed to employees with the right expertise. This helps clients to receive a quicker response from the right person. Working with the Multi Channel Inbox has led to the following results for our clients: a 19 percent increase of customer satisfaction and 20 percent more sales. Which is why we know it will help you as well.
Read more: >> Why businesses adopt messaging for customer service <<
Want to know how this works? Send us a request for a free demo of the Multichannel Inbox.