The customer service landscape is always changing and these changes have become much more pronounced since all the major companies took their services online. In response, given below are some numbers suggesting the gap between customer service response time and customer expectations:
60% of the consumers don’t get their issues resolved in their first contact and as many as 44%of them, hate the concept of waiting for a response over email or social media.
73% of adults feel that valuing their time is of utmost importance in any business, which helps to improve their customer experience.
The average wait time on social media hovers around 9 hours, and about 25% of the users who register a complaint on social media, expect a response within an hour.
User expectations for chat response times are significantly higher than those for email. And this has led to an average wait time of 45 seconds for live chat.
WHY SPEED MATTERS IN DELIVERING CUSTOMER SUPPORT?
Today’s marketplace is competitive and to win the loyalty of your demanding customers, you just have to provide faster customer service.
And if you aren’t yet convinced and think that speed isn’t that important in delivering customer support, then you are highly mistaken, as studies show that customers spend more money with businesses that offer better customer experience and judge the quality of customer service on the basis of whether you’re prompt in assisting them.
Let’s find out how one can improve their customer service response time without compromising on quality.
5 WAYS TO REDUCE CUSTOMER RESPONSE TIME
1. Analyze Your Current Customer Service Process:
One can only fix things when one knows what is damaged. Therefore it is important to analyze and scrutinize your present customer service process well. One should always take a look at customer feedback and online reviews about their brand and customer service and check if the reviews follow a common trend. Talking directly with the customer service agents and asking them what they feel about their own performance is necessary in a quarter or a year.
2. Integrate Live Chat Software For Real-Time Customer Support:
Live chat is one of the best solutions to cut down the response time. It is fast, easy to use, and helps to resolve customers’ queries in real-time. In contrast to the traditional support media like phone support, live chat can help in handling multiple customers at the same time. With agents working in shifts, one can offer 24×7 support, with each agent handling multiple customers at the same time. Live chat also has options for greeting messages and quick replies, which makes it all the more productive. This feature prefills the text space, allowing one to edit the response if it’s needed.
3. Track Customer Service:
While tracking all the other KPIs, one must also take note of the performances of all the customer service representatives. This will further help to assess and evaluate their productivity, success rates at resolving customer queries, and overall customer satisfaction rates. One can pick the top candidate, award them as the agent of the month and this will create a healthy competition among the representatives and help to find if someone needs more training. But these metrics involve a lot of variances. A customer can rate the agent negatively for reasons unrelated to the query resolution. So, it’s better not to make decisions based on these metrics alone.
4. Set A Realistic Response Time:
The journey towards exemplary customer service begins with the goals one set for themselves. A customer service response of less than an hour sounds impressive, but according to a survey, the average time taken to respond to customer queries in different industries varies between 12 to 17 hours. Every company is competing to reduce their email response times, often set unrealistic goals. Hence, it’s important to keep the expectations in check and clock a response time that works both for the customers and the agents.
5. Use Email Autoresponders:
More often, all that the customer needs is a simple acknowledgement that their voice has been heard and their complaint registered. If they don’t receive a response soon via email or on chat, the customers begin to develop negative sentiments against the brands. And it takes a lot of effort to change that sentiment later. The best solution to this is to start using an email autoresponder. It’s a simple technology and has been around for a long time. It sends an automated reply to the customer and lets them know that the query has received their email and will be replied to shortly.
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