As customer support experts, we’ve seen firsthand how great customer support ratings can launch a business to success. And while a fully-functional ticketing system like SupportBee is a solid start, it’s not the end of your customer satisfaction efforts---business owners need to leverage software features strategically to get the most bang for their buck.
In this blog post, we’ll outline five easy ways to improve your customer support ratings quickly and efficiently, whether or not you use SupportBee (but with smart hacks, if you do).
First, Why Is Customer Feedback on Support So Important?
Perhaps no industry sees more impact from customer support reviews than airlines. Think about it this way: are you more inclined to buy a discounted ticket from Airline A, which will leave you in the dust if things go wrong, or would you rather spend a few extra bucks for Airline B, who will be sure to relocate your bag in 12 hours--and throw in a free hotel room?
Your answer is likely the same as ours, which explains why 64% of consumers think customer experience takes precedence over the price tag. In fact, the average consumer will shell out around 17% more for a product or service if the company demonstrates superior service.
Things happen, and most customers understand that. All the same, customer feedback--or your Customer Satisfaction Rating (CSR)--is an invaluable source for improving your business’ products and services because most potential customers will read through online business reviews before making a purchase. The math doesn’t like: poor customer service costs businesses an average of $62 billion annually!
Customer support feedback is of particular importance for e-retailers competing with giants like Amazon. E-commerce businesses know that good reviews translate to customer trust, the cornerstone of their inbound pipeline. In the age of hacks, can customers trust your payment security? In the era of overnight delivery, can they believe their item will get to them on time?
The key to improving your customer support feedback, particularly on public-facing reviews on third-party sites, is to ensure that you capture and respond to as much negative feedback as possible--before someone feels inclined to air complaints on Yelp. And since much of that feedback is routed through your customer support systems and processes, you want a high-functioning email ticketing system in place to route dissatisfaction properly.
For more information, read our blog post detailing why customer service is so important.
Provide Options
Everyone knows there is nothing more frustrating than not being able to contact a business when you didn’t get what you paid for. Or worse: when the only option is a phone number that leads customers down a rabbit hole of a menu.
Modern consumers tend to opt out of phone-based support and prefer text and email resolutions--and if those don’t yield immediate results, they might take to Twitter.
First, don’t create a situation where your customers must spend their time searching for help. Multiple customer support avenues should be available across your digital presence and as part of your rapid response social media strategy.
- Create a system internally where high-stakes customer support issues are flagged and handled with particular care. It sounds like common sense, but when launching a new customer support process can be overlooked. One Size Fits All should not apply when Customer A has a simple question while Customer B received a damaged product. Since business owners need to sleep like everyone else, it’s important to offer customers as many options as possible around the clock.
- Share your view with SupportBee’s Knowledge Base software, which helps users create a Q&A repository. The transparent customer portal software allows customers to see where their issue lies in resolution, helping them feel in control and know that your business is aware and addressing their problem. And, because Knowledge Base doesn’t require a customer login, it’s a low-barrier way for customers to be part of the solution.
- Present different avenues for customers to understand the situation while simultaneously reducing the burden on your staff. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when you may already have written answers to a customer’s question. Easy-to-find links to your business’ FAQs should be available on your website, in your customer support emails, on your social media pages, and your staff should let customers who call in know where to find it, as well.
- Grow your support library as new issues arise. Knowledge Base allows businesses to organize and push out to the FAQs page as they add to the website, so be sure to update answers to new customer questions--this will save you time, as customers can find answers before querying, and may not have to engage support.
Pursue Opinions
Business owners shouldn’t wait for customers to initiate a funnel of feedback--they should go out and get it. Even if the response rate to a proactive customer experience audit is low, you’re more likely than not to glean some useful intel.
You’ll want to make proactive outreach part of the first touchpoint -- a 1% improvement on first call resolution scores (FCR) has shown to equally improve customer happiness.
- Incorporate complementary software. Easy-to-start, easy-to-use integrations can take your customer care improvement further without much effort. Hive, for example, is SupportBee's embeddable option for our Knowledge Base site. It enables you to display help articles on your website or app so that customers can find answers more easily.
- Do some sleuthing online. Look at what people are saying about your business on review sites, social media, and via a simple Google search. Sophisticated data analysis is great, but don’t underestimate the advantage you’ll have by searching for digital chatter.
- Include a Call to Action (CTA) in support email copy. When a customer has received quick and positive care, be sure to insert links to your business’ profiles on Yelp, Facebook, and other review sites to encourage positive feedback about their customer support experience specifically. Some businesses will offer a small incentive for doing this, like a $5 credit toward your product or service.
Need more info about how to assess your customer care? Read about four customer satisfaction metrics you should be following.
Have a Huddle
Now that you’ve looked at all that feedback, it’s time to share it with your team and establish a standard.
- Share insights with your team. One immediate way to get deeper insights with SupportBee is to take advantage of the Insightly integration, which allows the two programs to share and analyze data about a customer. This will make it easier to spot trending customer issues and create a tailored plan for improvement, which should include any staff that uses your shared inbox. Business owners can also leverage Reports in SupportBee, which tracks your support system’s performance and has the ability to organize by teams, agents and labels.
- Establish a uniform tone. 79% of consumers report higher satisfaction with a highly personalized customer support experience. When you have multiple staff responding to customer support tickets via email, it’s important to agree on a uniform voice and approach when responding. One staff member might be more inclined to pepper their prose with exclamation points and apologize profusely, where another might be quick to blame another business in the supply chain. A change in voice can be confusing to customers. Business owners can avoid this by drafting a pre-written library of snippets and labeling in ways that help personalize support--for example, “new customer” vs. “long-time customer.” Here are some ideas for what to include in your staff training for customer service, as well as some good ideas for how to handle customer complaints.
- Maximize collaboration tools. One of the most common issues we hear from businesses who don’t have an email ticketing software set up is that emails were getting lost in the cracks, or details of the situation would get lost among multiple agents. SupportBee’s comments feature is a great solution because it allows multiple support agents across shifts to share important case information, and involve other agents, with notes that are invisible to the customer. Sharing drafts before sending with all agents that are involved in the ticket is another cautious step that will result in flawless customer service.
We’d love to hear what strategies you’ve used to improve your customer support ratings in the comments below. And, if you took these words to heart and applied them within your own business, share your results below! (And read further about ways to improve your customer service.)
