One of the most common reasons why customers jump ship to a competitor is because of shoddy service. If you can’t get it right, then no matter how good your product is in the market, things will come crashing down. Customer service is gauged on customer interactions.
What is Customer Interaction?
They are moments where potential customers engage with your business. It could be noticing your ad on social media or interacting with an agent on your website’s live chat feature. If the prospect has bitter after-effects post the interaction with your brand, they might not come back at all.
Let us look at six ways to improve customer interactions:
Communicate Clearly
Customers want to know what exactly you offer. If your products have new features and there is any change in your billing structure, communicate the changes clearly to the users. Effective communication is all about being relevant, concise, and being to the point. No matter what it is, whether it is an Instagram story or a promotional email to your newsletter subscribers.
Another important channel where prospects often communicate is with your customer service agents. Make sure that they use a natural and conversational tone, and mix it up with a friendly attitude.
Personalize the Interactions
People want personalized experiences when they go shopping. According to Liveclicker, for every $1 that marketers spend on advanced personalization, they get a return of $20. Why? Because people value personalized offerings and they will always come back for more because you give them exactly what they want. A one-size-fits-all formula doesn’t work with most people.
Customers should feel as if the agent is glad to talk to them and that they will do everything possible within their power to offer them what they are looking for. Being cheerful and communicating positively is important for a personalized experience.
Ask for Feedback & Close the Loop
Getting feedback directly from the customer will offer a treasure trove of information. It shows the customers that you care and are willing to make amends to better the relationship and their experience. Surveys offer the customers a chance to voice their opinions.
The most important step in a survey is to close the feedback loop. What does that mean? When you ask for feedback, your customers respond with suggestions, ideas, and complaints. You need to act on this feedback, and once you do, share the updates with the customers. This is called closing the feedback loop. Customers will not only feel valued when you do this but they will also be bolstered to offer more honest feedback the next time too.
Be Empathetic
Empathy is one of the most underrated emotions in the world. The world will be a better place if there is more empathy. In customer interactions, empathy is even more crucial. There are simple ways you can show empathy in your customer interactions. Let us look at a few of them:
- Apologize to your customers when there has been a mistake from your side.
- Be patient when they do not understand the instructions that you are passing
- Thank the customers for sharing their feedback, for being patient with outages, or for the simple fact that they are in business with you.
- Repeat and confirm what they are asking for
- Let the customer vent if they have been wronged
- Use empathetic statements such as “I am sorry, I can completely relate,” or “I would be upset if this happened to me too.”
Delight Your Customers
One of the biggest parts of delighting someone is to offer them something that they were not expecting in the first place. They don’t have to be massive gestures. It could be something as simple as a handwritten note, a shoutout on social media, company swags, etc. It will create a deeper bond for the customer with your brand. Emotional connections like these, even though they are pretty simple, are a huge motivator for customers to stay loyal.
Do Not Interrupt the Customer:
While not interrupting someone while they are speaking might sound like advice for high schoolers, most adults are still guilty of this. People want to be heard, and the last thing they want to feel is being disregarded. Allow the customers to fully speak their minds before offering suggestions or reassurance.
How you interact with your customers will directly affect your bottom line. You need to keep them engaged and offer them more reasons to come back to you. Every interaction that a customer has with your brand should be a pleasure.
Setting a guideline and training all your customer service agents and staff who are interacting with your customers is a laborious task. Deploying Conversational AI in the customer engagement channels lets the brands deliver a uniform customer engagement no matter what time or on what channel.
Augment Conversational AI along with the existing customer engagement staff will improve productivity by 10%. If you haven’t thought about adopting Conversational AI, this is the best time to think about it.