Customer service and customer experience have been steadily moving to the forefront. Delivering an excellent customer experience is something that all departments of every company are being tasked with. Spreading the customer service training throughout every employee in every department is how companies are ranking well when it comes to customers, their repeat business, online reviews, and social shares. We are seeing an increased blending of social media and customer service departments as more consumers are turning to social media channels to voice their concerns, share their experiences, leave reviews, and even reach out to companies for customer service.
Customer Service Blending into the Marketing Department
Delivering customer service has seen an increase in importance, especially when it comes to marketing. According to 1to1media.com, companies are dedicating a larger percentage of their marketing budgets to customer service. Studies have shown that it actually costs more to acquire a new customer through traditional marketing and advertising methods than it does to retain existing customers. Actually retention costs 6 to 7 times less than acquisition. Therefore, companies are recognizing that investing in making existing customers happy has a better ROI than advertising to try to attract new people that may or may not become customers. Gartner predicts that half of consumer product investments will be directed to customer experience innovations by 2017. Gartner research poll uncovered that 65% of large enterprises have a chief customer officer or similar position and out of those, 58% of them report directly to a marketing executive, not a customer service executive. This is more evidence of the blending of customer service and marketing departments. Here are 3 trends in customer service that you need to know about in order to effectively deliver customer service through social media:
- Customers are expecting a seamless transition between in store and online purchasing from multi-channel retailers. If an item is out of stick in the store, customers should be offered the option to order it from an in-store tablet or smartphone app and have it delivered to their homes. Conversely, if they order it online, they also want in-store pick up available.
- Expect an increase in co-browsing. Co-browsing is when customers are shopping online while they are in a store. They might be just searching to see if you sell a product they are looking for, or perhaps to see if it comes in a different size or different color. Of course, they might be shopping your competitors to see if they can find a better price. Accept co-browsing is going to happen and find ways to make purchasing from you while in your store a better experience, regardless of the price. Many customers are willing to spend more for service.
- Geotargeting will improve customers' shopping experiences when in store or nearby. Geotargeting is a method of sending push notifications to your own applications downloaded to a consumer's smartphone or tablet. The push notification can be a special offer or information based on their proximity to your store. Some geotargeting applications, such as Apple's iBeacon are so targeted; you can deliver the push notification based on a smaller, more focused proximity, so it can be used for sending notifications as customers pass specific store displays.
Summary and Takeaways for Your Company
For some companies, integrating customer service into all departments can be a challenge. Follow these tips and you will begin to see the benefits and return on investment that comes about from a focus on customer retention and making your customers happy.
- Train all employees in all departments in your customer service practices. This ensures consistency when a customer is dealing with anyone or everyone in your company.
- Make delivering excellent customer service a priority for all employees. If making sales or collecting money are made a higher priority, then you will inevitably have upset customers when customer service is not a priority above all else.
- Empower employees to be able to deliver the customer service you want them to. When employees must check with or transfer customers over to a supervisor before making a customer happy, that can end up making the customer unhappy because they might have to wait and they will likely have to repeat their issue or complaint over again. Cut out the middle man and empower each employee to make things right. You can put a cap on the amount employees can spend on remedying a customer service situation before having to turn it over to a supervisor for a more complicated or expensive "fix".
- Expect social media staff to have to employ customer service tactics on each channel. Have consistent techniques for responding to and correcting complaints, comments, and problems in this public forum.
social customer service / shutterstock