Customer support agents form the backbone of the customer service that you provide to your customers, so, it’s imperative that you prepare them in the most appropriate manner. Here are the best tips to make your support agents more productive and yield the best results through your customer service:
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Businesses these days, very well know the power of a strong customer relationship. They are ready to go above and beyond to live up to the customers’ expectations to build an emotional connection with their customers. Connecting with your target audience on an emotional level can actually help you boost the level of customer satisfaction and hence, gain long-term customers. But how do you do that? Read on to know:
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Net Promoter Score refers to a management tool that can be utilized to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. It serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research and is correlated with revenue growth. NPS measures the loyalty that exists between a service provider and a consumer. The provider is the entity that is asking the questions on the NPS survey and consumer is the customer, employee, or respondent to an NPS survey.
Working of net promoter score:
The Net Promoter Score is calculated based on responses to a single question: How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague? The scoring for this answer is most often based on a 0 to 10 scale. Moreover the consumers are also categorized according to the score with which they respond:
i) The ones who respond with a score of 9 to 10 are called Promoters, and are considered likely to exhibit value-creating behaviors, such as buying more, remaining customers for longer etc.
ii) Those who respond with a score of 0 to 6 are labeled Detractors, and they are believed to be less likely to exhibit the value-creating behaviors.
iii) Responses of 7 and 8 are labeled Passives, and their behavior falls in the middle of Promoters and Detractors.
The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. For calculating a net promoter score, passives count towards the total number of respondents, thus decreasing the percentage of detractors and promoters and pushing the net score towards 0.
Companies are encouraged to follow the likelihood to recommend question with an open-ended request for elaboration, soliciting the reasons for a customer’s rating of that company or product. These reasons can further be provided to front-line employees and management teams for follow-up action. Moreover, additional questions can be included to assist with understanding the perception of various products, services, and lines of business.
Net Promoter System also requires a process called closing the loop. It is a process by which the provider actively makes efforts to convert a detractor into a promoter.
Proponents of the Net Promoter approach claim that the score can be used to motivate an organization to become more focused on improving products and services for consumers. A customer is able to leave comments in the surveys sent to them which allows a company to use the VOC (Voice of Customer) to ensure that company is meeting the expectations.
B2B lead generation refers to the process of finding new business customers. It includes various stages such as determining suitable target companies, approaching new prospects and eventual conversion from lead to customers. However, you need to know that generating leads isn’t easy and trying to acquire leads in the B2B space makes it all that much more difficult. B2B lead generation inculcates the following terms:
Prospects: It is a marketing term used for describing a potential customer. In case of B2B a prospect is a company interested in your product, service or brand. A prospect may not necessarily be familiar with your company.
Lead:
It refers to a company which meets the criteria you define as being valuable to generate new business. Leads can be:
i) inbound – generated e.g. through form fills or direct calls made to inquiry about products.
ii) outbound – leads can be classified as ones which sales teams may categorize based on certain conversations they had.
Customer:
A customer is a lead that now uses your products or services.
Inbound marketing:
Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services with the help of content marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization. Inbound marketing provides detailed information, an improved customer experience and builds trust by offering potential customers information they value through company sponsored newsletters, blogs and entries on social media platforms.
Outbound Marketing:
Outbound marketing is a form of marketing where a company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience. Rather than taking a passive approach, companies actively push their message to potential leads, whether or not these potential leads are actually looking for them at that time. Telemarketing is one such method whereby companies pro-actively call customers to offer their products or services.
1. Resolve all your consumers’ queries:
Most of the questions of consumers are born from their uncertainty of availing of your product. Their inquiries include everything including your prices, difficulty in setting your products up and other sorts of queries. Make it a point to answer all these questions right away even before the questions or objections have been cast out. Side by side an F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions) list will exempt any doubt or objection they may have that is hindering them to sign up as a business lead or a customer. When you offer a particular brand, product or service, you should expect consumers to throw all sorts of questions or even objections regarding your offerings.
2. Track your lead generation efforts:
Make use of conversion tools offered by different providers to track the conversion rates of your lead generation efforts via PPC. As a matter of fact, if you don’t track your conversions you won’t get the clear picture of your lead generation campaign and that can be harmful to your business. You can employ conversion tools offered by various providers including major PPC networks like Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising which offer conversion tools of their own to help you track your lead generation efforts.
3. Provide 24/7 assistance to the consumers:
By putting in a contact number or providing a live chat facility you can help dispel any doubts or apprehension your visitors may have about your product or service after clicking on your PPC Ad. Also, it helps people are find ways to distinguish the real service providers from those who are not and contacting them directly through phone or live chat. Convincing your visitors that you will be there for them whenever they need your assistance deepens their trust in you, thus, making it beneficial for you.
4. Show gratitude through a Thank You page:
Once all your required transactions have been completed, you may lead your visitors to the thank you page. This page can be utilized to:
i) increase brand awareness. to upsell other products or lead them to your social network group or community
ii) upsell other products
iii) lead them to your social network group or community
1. Review your live chat agents’ performance:
Make it a point to review your live chat agents. Their training should include mock chats, secret evaluation and much more. Apart from that, distribute customer success manuals amongst your agents where all important tips and techniques of online customer support have been mentioned in written format. This will help them to go through the important tips whenever they have any doubts.
2. Inculcate tech support along with live chat:
In order to create a power-packed support environment make use of live chat features such as canned messages and links, the ability to push files and screen sharing and co-browsing. Also, train your agents to go slow and ask short, simple questions to get to the root of problems and to make solving them easier and faster. More important than training your agents to provide tech support is ensuring they have the resources they need readily available. Ensure your tech support agents are provided with canned links for knowledge based articles, how-to tutorials, videos and other resources they need to help customers resolve issues or problems instantly. Make sure the agents know how to find the resources quickly and then send them to the respective customers whenever they need them.
3. Help them to be platform experts:
LIve chat agents need to have thorough knowledge of the platform they are working on and the tools they are dealing in. When chat agents are familiar with the tools they are utilizing while assisting customers, they perform tasks with a higher level of confidence. Task your agents providing both a customer and organization friendly experience when chatting. It’s important to be fully trained on all customer and agent facing platform features. For this purpose, customers might be presented with a pre-chat survey while initiating a chat request, which gives the ability to choose the reason for wanting to communicate.
The sole aim of individuals involved in digital and outbound marketing and sales is to segment leads into, one of two categories – qualified leads and unqualified leads. Leads can switch from one category to the other with the aid of nurture campaigns.
A qualified lead is a potential customer who has expressed interest in a product or service and meets general buying criteria.
A qualified lead is a person:
i) with need, budget, and purchasing authority.
ii) Working for a company that meets your customer profile for being a customer.
iii) With a buying timeline that falls within the time horizon of the sales representative’s commission plan.
It only takes a few minutes for a true sales professional to qualify a lead. And lead qualification can be done anywhere at a busy tradeshow or on a golf course, provided you have an efficient marketing team.ave completed, or are in the process of
Basically, qualified leads are the ones which have completed, or are in the process of completing your nurture campaign cycle.
Qualified leads are in control of their own buying cycle, completing self-education research who have brainstormed and listed their exact needs in a solution. They have a clearly defined budget to work with and are researching solutions within their means. In addition to this, they have low churn rates because they close on their own terms.
On the other hand, unqualified leads are the ones who have not been nurtured enough to close their sales cycle. They are often unsure of what your company offers and don’t know what they’re looking for in a solution. Unqualified leads may also be the ones for whom your product or service is out of their price range. Though it is possible to convert unqualified leads into customers, the churn rate is comparatively high.
1. Manage all communication channels available:
Having multiple points of contact, allows customers to choose the most convenient medium for communication. According to a research, sixty percent of consumers don’t want to be contacted over the phone about special offers, information, and upgrades, while 75 percent prefer contact via email or text message. Social network tools give you the opportunity to connect and engage with your customers at any time of day, as per their convenience.
2. Offer convenient and affordable services:
Convenient and affordable services make it easier for users to enjoy what they’re paying for. Make sure that your users/customers should spend the least amount of time possible trying to use your product or service, so they can spend the majority of their time making the most out of it.
3. Create brand loyalty:
As per a research, 64% of participants said shared values were the primary reason for maintaining a relationship with their brand. Clearly communicating your brand’s philosophy or higher purpose has become very important to today’s consumers. So, you must choose a technique, which reflects your consumers’ beliefs and demonstrates them through sponsorship, events or anything relevant. Be sure to brand all marketing efforts consistently and keep your product quality high, so consumers keep returning to what’s comfortable.
4. Be there in your customers’ hour of need:
Being there in customers’ hour of need means holding their hand while the problem is solved, helping them cut through the confusion to find the solution, or getting them directly connected to the person who can help them as soon as possible.
5. Try building long term relationships:
Building and maintaining long-term relationships is a simple, effective method for increasing your CLV. While it may take a little extra time, care and consideration, it’s a great way to leverage your existing customer relationships to boost revenues without simultaneously increasing your expenses.
Increasing your company’s customer lifetime value means:
i) increasing customer loyalty
ii) general profitability
iii) marketing allowance
In order to increase customer lifetime value:
When you want to build your business on loyal customers and brand evangelists, you have to do something that is beyond mass consumer expectations. As a matter of fact, people love to feel like they have the best thing, no matter what that thing is. Once they feel like it’s the best, they’ll do way more than talk about it.
Upselling means persuading a customer to buy something more expensive or an advanced version of a product. You sell a more expensive model, additional features or upgraded version of something. This adds value to the product.
Cross-selling, on the other hand, means selling a new or a different product/service to an existing customer. In other words, you’re selling additional products to the customer.
Both these strategies are highly effective and profitable when trying to boost the customer lifetime value (CLV) for your business, no matter, what scale or size.
You need to differentiate yourself from your competitors in terms of features, services, resources, or whatever else your customers will place some value on.
As a matter of fact, choosing the right incentive structure means your customers won’t be the only ones leveraging the rewards. Utilize your rewards system to increase customer retention, and boost your customer lifetime value without compromising your bottom line. Instead of discounts, offer exclusive products or value-added services. This will further increase your CLV by promoting customer loyalty and increasing profitability in the long-term.
Make it quicker and easier for your customers to get their questions answered. Go above and beyond your actual product and give them something that makes their life easier on a regular basis. In other words, you need to understand your customers, figure out what would make their life easier, and build it.