Do you feel like your business is struggling to gain repeat customers and generate brand loyalty? If so, there’s a high chance your customer service strategy is in dire need of an upgrade.
As business magnate Sam Walton aptly put it, “There is only one boss: the customer.” This means that if customers are unhappy with your business, they’ll likely find the kind of service they want elsewhere.
So, how do you elevate the customer experience? Read on for a detailed guide on how to create an exceptional customer service strategy.
What does a “top-tier” customer service strategy look like?
Some business owners assume maintaining polite tones and smiles when interacting with customers is the epitome of quality customer service. While it certainly doesn’t hurt, there’s more to customer service than friendliness.
To provide exceptional service, you must be customer-centric at all customer service touchpoints. This may involve actions like:
- Offering multi-channel support to assist customers on their terms
- Personalizing customer interactions to help make them feel valued
- Responding quickly to customer issues and inquiries
- Providing resources to help clients get the most out of your products
- Encouraging feedback from customers to help improve your offerings
A customer service strategy entails improving your processes to ensure optimal customer happiness and satisfaction. When properly executed, it can propel your business to unimaginable heights by helping you secure new customers and retain existing ones.
How to understand what your customers need
If you’ve been in business long enough, you probably already know that just because something works for another company doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. The same rule applies in customer service—you have to understand your customer’s unique needs to create an effective customer service strategy, and here’s how.
Customer feedback
Customer feedback will tell you more about what you need to improve to enhance the customer experience than any consulting firm can. Regularly collect client feedback through satisfaction surveys and reviews to determine what works and doesn’t for them.
You can opt for customer satisfaction score (CSAT) surveys for a general idea of how clients find your service or long-form surveys for an in-depth look at your customers’ needs. Either way, ensure your survey is 10-14 minutes long for the best completion rate.
If you decide on long-form surveys, ask open-ended questions, as they’re more likely to give you insightful answers. Then, look for commonalities in the responses to determine what your ideal target audience values.
Also, regularly monitor and analyze customer conversations on social media platforms. You can leverage social listening tools, assess customer comments on your social media posts, or evaluate customer interactions with your influencers for insights.
Customer support
Customer support chats, emails, and calls can provide a wealth of information on processes you need to improve. For reliable insights, aggregate data from multiple channels to get a general idea of your problem areas. Look for similarities in the questions or issues presented to identify what your customers struggle with the most.
When you identify common issues, categorize them to make service improvement easier. You can organize them by department if you have complaints regarding different business areas or by urgency if some problems require immediate attention.
Customer personas
Customer personas help you understand everything there is to know about your ideal customer, including their needs, preferences, and pain points. This enables you to develop better experiences.
To craft an accurate buyer persona, assess your target market’s demographic information, behaviors, motivations, and needs. Find commonalities in these areas to determine your ideal client and base your customer service strategy on their needs and preferences.
8 steps to create a customer service strategy
Of course, developing a successful customer service strategy is easier said than done. This step-by-step guide will show you everything you need to know to craft a great customer service strategy.
1. Define your vision for excellent customer service
Create a company mission statement focused on customer service to ensure every employee knows what to work toward. Then, create SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound) goals that align with your vision to serve as a guide and help you monitor your progress.
For example, if your vision is “to lead in the delivery of products and services,” a SMART goal might be “to increase same-day delivery rates from 20% to 35% over the next six months.”
2. Figure out what your customers want and need
Your customers are your greatest knowledge base, particularly when it comes to enhancing their experiences. Understand their expectations and needs and align them with customer service and support for optimal satisfaction. For actionable insights, use the tools discussed above: customer feedback, support, and personas.
3. Establish clear service standards
Without service standards, it can be challenging for your support teams to know how to handle customer issues. Create clear, specific, measurable standards for all aspects of customer service, including response times, resolution rates, and communication etiquette. This will ensure all team members know how to move forward.
Examples of service standards include:
- Responding to customer issues within one hour.
- Resolving complaints or problems within 24 hours.
- Remaining positive and friendly during all customer interactions.
- Answering the phone within three rings.
4. Invest in the appropriate tools and technology
Speed is everything for modern-day business—90% of customers expect immediate responses to their questions or issues. If you keep them waiting too long, they may look for answers elsewhere, resulting in lost business.
The right toolkit can help you ensure speedy response times and improve customer interactions. Invest in automation tools like CRM systems and chatbots to streamline processes and boost your customer service team’s efficiency.
Also, incorporate live chat software for faster responses and offer help desk solutions to allow customers to find answers on their own before reaching out to your team.
5. Train and empower the team
Your team members are your greatest allies in ensuring high-quality customer service, so don’t forget about them. Empower them to be better customer service agents by offering regular training sessions or allowing them to attend customer experience conferences.
If you intend to offer in-house training, here are some tips to keep in mind for optimal results:
- Tailor training sessions to each employee’s function. For example, your customer support agents’ training should focus on helping customers find solutions quickly, while your delivery clerks’ training should prioritize ensuring timely and safe product shipping.
- Help your team develop strong communication skills to effectively understand and convey customer concerns.
- Provide comprehensive product or service knowledge training to ensure every team member can provide accurate and up-to-date information.
- Encourage creativity to help employees solve customer issues more effectively.
6. Act on customer feedback
Customer feedback is meaningless if you don’t act on it. For an easier time, categorize the feedback by urgency. This way, you can solve the most pressing issues first and address the rest during regular workflows, improving your service strategy.
Also, remember to acknowledge feedback through thank you messages. This shows customers that you value their opinions and that you’re ready to act on their input.
7. Monitor and measure performance
Key performance indicators (KPIs) like CSAT (customer satisfaction) scores and average response time provide valuable insights into the quality and effectiveness of your customer service strategy.
For example, your CSAT score highlights your customer satisfaction rate across all customer service touchpoints. This can let you know whether your strategy is working and help you identify areas that need improvement.
Regularly monitor your performance metrics to stay on top of your customer service process even when operations appear to be running smoothly.
8. Build a culture focused on the customer journey
A customer-centric approach can be the difference between scaling your business and barely staying operational.
Build a company culture that prioritizes customer service by implementing measures focused on streamlining the customer journey. Maintain this focus over time by regularly collecting feedback, assessing your KPIs, training your staff, and recognizing team members who deliver exemplary service.
Tips for measuring customer service success
The key to continuously improving your customer service strategy is identifying areas that fall short. To do so, you need to measure your customer service success regularly. Here are some tips to guide you.
Choose KPIs that make sense
Some business owners get lost in the world of performance metrics and end up focusing on the wrong things. Tracking the wrong metrics makes it impossible to improve your customer service strategy.
So, how do you choose CX metrics that make sense? By assessing your customer service goals and common issues from your feedback. Here are some metrics to keep an eye on:
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): This metric is ideal if you want to measure customer satisfaction. A CSAT question is direct and often asks, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with our customer service?”
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): This is ideal for brands that want to measure customer loyalty. An NPS survey question may be something like, “On a scale of 1 to 5, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends?”
- First response time: It measures how long a customer service agent takes to respond to a ticket. It’s a suitable metric for companies that want to improve their response times.
- Customer efforts score (CES): It measures the customer experience by quantifying how hard or easy it is for a customer to use your products. If your goal is to improve your clients’ experiences, this is the KPI to track.
Implement regular support team reviews
Again, your team is your greatest ally in improving your customer service strategy. Schedule regular meetings to review your KPIs, identify areas for improvement, and come up with solutions.
However, don’t only focus on your shortcomings during these reviews. Highlight your successes and recognize your team’s efforts to motivate them to continue improving.
Benchmark against industry standards
You may lose clients if your customer service isn’t as good or better than your competitors.
Benchmark your KPIs against customer service standards in your industry to help set achievable and challenging team goals. You can find relevant benchmarks by assessing competitors’ metrics and reviewing customer service reports from services like ACSI.
Use Bitly for customer engagement insights
Your engagement rates can help determine if your current customer service strategy is effective. A high engagement rate could mean your customer care is working, as many consumers only engage with brands that offer high-quality experiences.
With Bitly’s tracking links, you can easily monitor your customer service efforts in real time by assessing the number of clicks your links receive. Many clicks could indicate high engagement levels and an effective customer service strategy.
But it doesn’t end there—Bitly links can also show you the most effective content and communication channels, allowing you to refine future customer service strategies.
For example, say your analytics show that customers click more on links directing them to live chat features than on links that take them to the FAQs section. You can focus on ensuring you have enough qualified customer service reps to respond to chat requests quickly and efficiently.
Help your customer retention reach new levels of excellence today
A strong customer service strategy can boost customer retention and convert leads into clients. For optimal results, collect customer feedback to determine what to improve and invest in the right tools to support your efforts. And remember to continuously evaluate and adapt your strategy to meet changing customer needs.
With Bitly, tracking your customer service strategy is easier than ever. When you create and share Bitly links, you can assess how customers interact with them to identify the most popular content and channels. With these insights, you can improve the performance of current and future strategies.
Sign up for Bitly today to get actionable insights into your customer service initiatives and promote continuous improvement!