A good customer service strategy can be extremely rewarding <\/span>in the age of soaring customer expectations.<\/span> People love to publicly acknowledge when they\u2019ve had a memorable customer service experience. On the other hand, poor customer service can make them forget all the good experiences your company has offered.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Building an airtight customer service strategy is the best way to weather the demands of today\u2019s savvy customers. <\/span>We\u2019d like to help you build a viable customer service strategy that can be a huge differentiator for your business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a quick overview of what we\u2019ll be covering in this blog:<\/span><\/p>\n A customer service strategy is a comprehensive plan of action that outlines how an organization intends to meet customer expectations and address your company\u2019s customer service goals and challenges. It involves designing and executing processes, policies, and systems that improve your overall customer service quality and functional efficiency.<\/span><\/p>\n For instance, let\u2019s say you notice your customers visiting your company\u2019s website often to resolve their concerns with the FAQs hosted on your site. You might then want to double down on self-service as a core customer service strategy and strengthen your knowledge base to make it even easier for customers to find answers by themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A good customer service strategy, ultimately, focuses on constantly enhancing <\/span>customer experiences<\/span><\/a>, nurturing stronger client relationships, and driving <\/span>customer retention<\/span><\/a> to impact your business\u2019 bottom line.<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re wondering how a solid customer service strategy can help your business (and if it\u2019s worth the time and effort to invest in one), here\u2019s a list of benefits to reinforce the value of a support strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n With a clearly defined customer service strategy, you will know what initiatives are to be prioritized over a certain period and how to allocate resources wisely to implement these strategies. This improves your team\u2019s efficiency and ensures that your agents actively contribute to business goals.<\/span><\/p>\n Working on a customer service strategy gives you the opportunity to identify and prevent areas of increasing costs through <\/span>customer support<\/span><\/a>. A classic example is shifting support interactions from high-cost channels to low-cost digital channels such as chat or social media.<\/span><\/p>\n Any customer support strategy aims to meet varying customer needs and keep customers satisfied. As you work on strategic activities that address customer expectations, your CSAT scores naturally improve.<\/span><\/p>\n As per <\/span>Gartner<\/span>, when customers experience valuable service interactions, they are 82% more likely to repurchase from the same company. When your customer service strategy is aimed at delivering more value to customers, you are sure to breed more <\/span>loyal customers<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As you can see, having a robust customer support strategy in place goes a long way in building your brand reputation and contributing to long-term business profitability.<\/span><\/p>\n Since your customer support strategy revolves around meeting customer needs, it\u2019s a good idea to map out detailed service journeys and identify customer pain points, challenges, and goals, across every touchpoint and channel.<\/span><\/p>\n Related resource:<\/b> Your ultimate guide to mapping customer journeys + FREE journey map templates<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Start by gathering and analyzing <\/span>customer feedback<\/span><\/a>\u2014not just from regular surveys and focus groups but also from indirect sources like support ticket data and listening to your customers\u2019 voice on social media, popular forums, and online review sites.<\/span><\/p>\n Collect customer data across sales, marketing, and support to gain valuable customer insights to build a successful customer service strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n Before you list out the strategic initiatives to improve customer service, assess the current state of your customer support function. You can audit your previous customer interactions and agent performance using vital customer support metrics.<\/span><\/p>\n Do you see a lag in response times? Is there a rise in ticket volume over the past few months? Are resolutions taking longer than expected in a particular channel? Analyzing your past customer service data helps you answer these questions and identify areas for improvement and opportunities to boost <\/span>customer satisfaction<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n After analyzing your customer service performance, you\u2019ll arrive at a list of challenges and opportunities that compete for your team\u2019s focus and efforts. You can\u2019t take up all these challenges in your current strategy and expect outsized results.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To help you narrow your list of competing customer service priorities before you strategize, here are some questions you can ask yourself.<\/span><\/p>\n Gauge the priority of your goals and challenges based on the above questions to create more impactful customer support strategies. For instance, if addressing rising volumes of repetitive level-1 queries is your top priority, then adopting chatbots may become your key strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n Customer support KPIs and metrics act as benchmarks to improve your customer service strategy. They can reflect on agent productivity, performance, and quality of support provided to customers.<\/span><\/p>\n Productivity metrics:<\/b> This involves the nature of <\/span>customer issues<\/span> in ticket inflow, the number of tickets resolved, and the active time taken to resolve each issue. Keeping track of these can help in planning your staffing, understanding customer behavior, and agent training \u2013 all at once.<\/span><\/p>\n Performance metrics:<\/b> Performance metrics<\/a> show your customer service team\u2019s resolution time and first response time.<\/span><\/p>\n Quality metrics:<\/b> These metrics reflect the quality of customer service through Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). While NPS tackles customer loyalty and advocacy, you can use <\/span>satisfaction surveys<\/span> after every customer service interaction to know where your business stands in satisfying customers.<\/span><\/p>\n Set realistic timelines to track improvements in each of these metrics.<\/span><\/p>\n Your customer service team is integral to the success of your customer support strategy. Training and equipping your agents to have a customer-centric mindset is vital in implementing your customer service plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Foster a customer-first work culture and ensure to train your reps on key traits, namely,<\/span><\/p>\n Empathy:<\/b> Empathy is what reminds the customer that it is a human on the other side of the support channel. It is one trait that will help you put yourself in the customer\u2019s shoes and see the pain points in an issue.<\/span><\/p>\n Product knowledge: <\/b>When customers are reaching out to a <\/span>customer service representative<\/span><\/a>, they trust by default that they are contacting a product expert\u2013someone who knows the product in and around\u2013and can understand their concerns in no time.<\/span><\/p>\n Aligning goals with KPIs: <\/b>Support agents need to be able to work towards achieving measurable goals. Build a customer service strategy that records every issue can empower support teams\u2013help them back to the drawing board and assess their performance\u2013so that they get exponentially better at handling incoming customer support tickets.<\/span><\/p>\n Additionally, your customer service strategy requires seamless collaboration between and beyond teams. Customer requirements deal with information pertaining to the product team, sales team, finance, and external vendors, to name a few. <\/span>Get all the stakeholders aligned and actively contributing to making your customer service strategy a success.<\/span><\/p>\n Companies that dream about a customer service strategy can\u2019t afford to live on the razor\u2019s edge with legacy tools and systems. If your data resides in silos across multiple disparate systems, <\/span>your team members<\/span> will be shuttling between tabs to find relevant information\u2014an unwanted addition to the existing agent workload.<\/span><\/p>\n Companies need to optimize the number of screens that their support agents handle in one go. This is not only an issue from a productivity or customer handling standpoint but also the cost to the company. Multiple data sources also mean that your business incurs heightened standalone expenses of business software.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In contrast, state-of-the-art online support software is simple to use, intuitive, scalable, smashes data silos, and discounts all maintenance costs. Make sure the support software you use has a <\/span>comprehensive marketplace<\/span><\/a> with tools and applications that seamlessly integrate to own a truly unified support technology suite.<\/span><\/p>\n Revisit your customer service strategy at the timelines you had stipulated earlier to track the progress of your strategy. Monitor the key metrics you identified earlier, such as response times or CSAT scores. If you don\u2019t see the desired level of improvement, then tweak your tactics to adapt and improve your support strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n Remember, you may have to realign or even build new customer service strategies depending on tectonic shifts in customer demands, market conditions, or even new overall business priorities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n South Africa\u2019s leading media company\u2014<\/span>Multichoice<\/span><\/a>, took stock of their existing support operations, delved into customer feedback, and came up with one significant finding. Their customers expected<\/span> consistent, quick, and accurate answers across human and digital interactions every time<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n With this expectation translating into their priority customer service goal, the customer experience team at Multichoice decided to adopt an omnichannel customer service strategy to deliver seamless, consistent, and contextual customer interactions.<\/span><\/p>\n They consolidated multiple channels, including email, chatbots, and telephony, into a unified, intuitive platform<\/span>\u2014Freshdesk to view customer interactions and access customer information across channels on a single screen. They also integrated other essential tools\u2014like their CRM\u2014 with Freshdesk to have complete context on customer issues.<\/span><\/p>\n It was a winning support strategy as their average CSAT scores climbed to 95%, and their first contact resolution rates improved from 69% to 94%.<\/span><\/p>\n To drive repeat business by consistently delighting your customer base, your customer service strategy <\/span>must become<\/span> part of your long-run support culture. Perk up your support by adopting a support software that readily accommodates your customer service strategy. Usually, a support software requires extensive training to figure out its functionalities. But a help desk is something that needs to be simple and easy to wrap your head around it. Help your employees get familiar with an <\/span>intuitive omnichannel help desk<\/span><\/a> as such so that it doesn\u2019t add complexity to their already busy job.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWhat is customer service strategy?<\/b><\/h2>\n
The importance of a well-defined customer service strategy<\/b><\/h2>\n
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Optimizes resource allocation<\/b><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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Reduces customer service costs<\/b><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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Improves customer satisfaction<\/b><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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Enhances customer loyalty<\/b><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
How to build an effective customer service strategy<\/b><\/h2>\n
Step 1: Map customer journeys and understand their preferences<\/b><\/h3>\n
Step 2: Analyze your current customer service performance<\/b><\/h3>\n
Step 3: Define your customer service goals and priorities<\/b><\/h3>\n
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![\"CX](\"https:\/\/blog-assets.freshworks.com\/freshdesk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/24154916\/CX-Priority-Report-blog-banner.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nStep 4: Identify KPIs, timelines, and metrics to track progress<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"help](\"https:\/\/blog-assets.freshworks.com\/freshdesk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/09162727\/Help-desk-ticket-volume-trends.png\")
<\/p>\nStep 5: Empower your support agents and align teams<\/b><\/h3>\n
Step 6: Assess and build a unified support technology suite<\/b><\/h3>\n
Step 7: Measure and review your strategy periodically<\/b><\/h3>\n
Real-world customer service strategy example: Multichoice adopts an omnichannel support strategy for seamless experiences<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/blog-assets.freshworks.com\/freshdesk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/10170354\/Omnichannel-inbox.png\")
<\/p>\nAdopt a unified customer support solution to cement your winning customer service strategy<\/b><\/h2>\n