Too many organizations fall short in translating the desire for great customer experience into customer service actions that create them.
If more than half of customers would be willing to pay more for a better customer experience, why don’t more organizations get more from customers?
Frankly, I believe that most organizations want to deliver better experiences to their customers, but far too many simply fall short in translating the desire for great experience into service actions that create them.
Customer Service, The Forgotten Marketing Channel
Over 70% of the interaction experience for your customers is purely based on how a customer feels. That means that if you take away your product or service from the equation, what do your systems and people do to create the type of feeling that gets customers excited to work with you?
In this customer service infographic by Salesforce, we can see the potential that customer service has to transform the way you interact with your customers and develop the type of relationships that will make customers your advocates for life.
The Customer Service Disconnect
In the data from Salesforce, it’s clear that the problem in service experience today isn’t related to organizations wanting to create better customer experiences or motivating service agents to treat customers right. Just over half of organizations actually provide service agents with the right tools and training to really go above and beyond for their customers.
This means that although agents may want to do right by the customer, they often don’t have enough information from internal systems or systems lack the capability to allow agents to take the proper action for the customer.
Furthermore, agents often lack the proper training in order to totally understand the customers they serve and connect customers with solutions tailored to the needs of the customer.
This breakdown in the desired result and the action provided is why you see in this customer service infographic that:
- 89% of customers stop doing business because of a poor service experience
- 45% of customers abandon a transaction due to lack of information
The Right Type of Service
Service teams must, first and foremost, understand who is the customer, and what they really want from you. Once they clearly understand this, they must become true experts in the use cases of a product or service. They have to be able to see how customers will use the product or service and be able to quickly and effectively advise customers based on individual needs and circumstances.
Every individual who could possibly interact with a customer has to have a basic understanding of things like payment, service terms, return policies, integration options, customization of product/service, most common uses, more common problems, etc.
Service Availability Can Outweigh Product Capability
But more important than knowing everything about a product or service. Agents need to be readily available for customers who need them.
Availability is so important to customers that more than 30% of customers will actually recommend a brand that provides fast, but ineffective service. Whereas this customer service infographic shows that customers would only recommend 17% of brands that provide slow, but effective service.
Customer Service Infographic
Excellence in serving customers is critical to keep customers and encourage them to continue using products and services.
Hopefully this customer service infographic was effective in reminding that great customer service and effective customer experiences can be a powerful marketing engine to help grow returns from existing customers and create positive experiences that help attract new ones in the future.