How to make Customer Service more efficient

The world has been changing rapidly for a few years now, therefore making it quite hard to keep up - especially when it comes to technical fields. However, it is extremely important to be up-to-date, because technology isn’t the only thing that changes, but also the customer behavior.

Even companies that have been around for ages and are fairly traditional have to take a step into the modern world eventually. The following article will show you how to make Customer Service more efficient.

1. The equation for good Customer Service

For the time being, one might ask what even makes Customer Service good or bad. There’s an equation for that, looking as follows:

An ideal customer service unifies and implements all these qualities in conversations with the customers. Quick Reaction is a crucial point for success. It goes along with accuracy,or competence, and builds the basic requirements for many customers. Moreover, a good Customer Service has to be reachable easily. Nowadays, customers expect 24/7 services using multiple channels with the possibility to make use of Self Service. Another important point is that the customer communication should be based on easy and understandable answers.

About complaints and how they arise

Often, there are too many tickets in the backlog that can’t be answered in time, which is a huge challenge for companies. Especially during times of great rush, like Christmas, it is not possible to take care of every customer individually. Even when a great amount of requests is solved, there are still lots of unsolved tickets.

Every incoming ticket is a customer with needs and demands, that can’t be fulfilled most of the time. Thus leading to the customers turning away from the company and leave behind bad feedback in the worst case.

Of course it is infuriating receiving bad feedback from customers. However, that’s the reason it’s even more important to know the customer’s needs. The equation mentioned above shows, what points about customer service are most important to users. Little differences could lead to dissatisfaction. But even unwarranted complaints should be treated in a professional and friendly manner.

2. Let automated services do the math

An easy way to avoid receiving complaints is the automated service. The expectations of the equation are, so to say, ‘ticked’ automatically, which gives service employees time to focus on harder or more individual cases.

After looking at the first equation and comparing it with the qualities automated services have to offer, it shows that multiple points are tackled at once: On the one hand, the Reachability, on the other hand the Quick Reaction. Of course - because Chatbots and Co. don’t even know working hours and are always reachable and reply within seconds.

Automated services answer standardised questions directly and filter harder requests for service employees. A large part of tickets in the backlog vanish immediately, as well as the complaints.

OMQ Reply as support, not as a substitute

There will always be special cases that have to be processed by employees. Therefore, automated services will never take over the entire field of customer service. Their duty is to relieve the service employee by taking care of standard requests. Service employees and automated services complement each other and form a modern solution for an ideal customer service.

A new equation could look as shown below:

One of these automated softwares is, for example, OMQ Reply. It replaces the manual workload of employees by recognising and answering recurrent questions in E-Mails. It also creates a ticket out of the communication history and closes it right after processing it. In addition, the AI behind OMQ understands the customer’s intention and can even reply to multiple questions within one single mail. It filters out all the questions and replies to them in a reply text, highlighting the questions as well as the solutions.

Thanks to OMQ Reply, agents are able to concentrate on more demanding cases and supply the customers with high quality responses.

3. Perfect adjustment to different customers

It’s always better to be prepared for everything. That’s the case for every aspect of life and also in the customer service. Connecting multiple channels with each other is a very good solution.

There are three kinds of channels:

• Multi-Channel-Service: There are multiple channels that provide the possibility to contact a company. These channels are all individual and stand for themselves
• Cross-Channel-Service: Various channels are linked up with each other in order to create a consistent service experience.
• Omni-Channel-Service: This one works just like the Cross-Channel-Service. However, it offers every channel there is.

Offering multiple linked up channels is a big advantage. The channels make use of a knowledge database and therefore learn from each other. That means that the right solutions can be found via every channel. Customers can easily switch between channels and it doesn’t matter which one they eventually choose, because they always end up at the right solution.

This is the way that companies use to retain customers because they reach those who prefer human interactions as well as those who want solutions as fast as possible and prefer working with new technologies.

The optimal adjustment to different customers will improve the Customer Service vastly and increase the customer satisfaction.

A modern solution - OMQ Chatbot

Chatbots have been getting more popular throughout the past years. Customers can contact companies fast and non-committal. The OMQ Chatbot can be integrated in many platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram and even WhatsApp!

The Chatbot, like every other OMQ product, is linked to the OMQ knowledge database and therefore learns independently. It associates similar/obvious terms and uses them to find fitting solutions. Texts, photos and/or links are displayed in chat bubbles and offer chat experiences that are anthropomorphic and give the user a sense of security.

Chatbots are online around the clock and therefore available all the time. They build direct relationships between customers and companies and help them with their buying decisions, so that they are made quickly. Also, they decrease the costs for a company but increase the customer satisfaction and trust, which is reached by using anthropomorphic behaviour.

If not now, then when?

The revision of customer service is a topic that companies usually takes care of last,because it doesn’t seem to be a problem at first. However, thinking like that is a mistake!

Some unsolved tickets in the files at the beginning can turn into a mass of unsolved tickets within weeks. That’s not only a distress for service employees, but it also outrages customers and can affect the whole company.

Happy customers are very important for a successful enterprise. As long as they are non-existent, the best marketing strategies won’t help. Take care of your customer service soon, since it only takes a day to install helping softwares, but months to clear overflowing mailboxes.

If you have any questions regarding our products or OMQ in general, feel free to message us. We are happy to be in contact with you.