Trust is Often Missing in Customer Experience

There’s nothing worse than a customer walking away from a customer service interaction feeling like their issues were unresolved or feeling like the quality of service was lacking in answering their queries. Instilling the feeling of a customer having good customer service is the cornerstone to building customer loyalty. But what happens when the customer service experience was a frustrating experience or if the customer received no resolution at all?

Let’s explore the common pitfalls a company may run into when it comes to customer service and discuss ways to avoid losing customers.

The customer experience (CX) is the impression a customer has about your company and its products and services. There are two ways through which a customer forms an opinion and that is through satisfaction with the product that your company is selling, and the other method is their impression of the quality of service. Quality of service may include interactions via a call center, social media, a chatbot, or any other mode of communication your company may have open to interacting with customers.

It is important that all of these avenues are able to direct the customer to exactly what they need to fulfill their queries.

Any type of customer service experience where there are more dead ends than answers may leave a poor taste in your customer.

These days, it is clear that the customers are in charge, not the sellers. They have gained this power via all the options that are available via the internet and what may make your company stand out is through the quality of service.

Having a positive CX is important to your brand growth since word-of-mouth referrals are sure to come from a positive CX and increased brand loyalty. Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your services to friends and family based on how they perceive their needs were taken care of. We have explored the popular methods to increase the quality of customer experience to increase customers’ trust in your company.

Below are several popular methods to source data about the level of satisfaction with customer services.

• Surveys: can be used to rate the service and gather more data about the positive and negative aspects of the CX
• Email contact forms: a great way to get in touch with customers who may want to know more about your products or reach out for a more personalized customer service experience.
• Usability tests: maybe some functions of your website are not as user-friendly as you may have thought. Conducting usability tests can help you understand to create a more intuitive cx and more pleasant experience overall.
• Reviews: it is very clear that positive reviews are one of the first measures of a customer learning to trust your products and services. The higher the review score or having a higher ratio of positive reviews is something customers who may have stumbled across your website might appreciate.
• Social media: allowing direct communication channels via social media is another method to build customer trust. You can have automated chatbots that can help customers with frequently asked questions or even direct them to a customer service agent if the customer’s query is too complex
• Instant feedback: this allows businesses to measure the quality of service immediately after a customer service interaction. This can help narrow down where your business may be excelling in terms of CX and also what you may need to improve upon.

Customer service via human interactions seems to beat out any form of a chatbot or automated services provided. Being able to talk to a customer service representative is a way customers feel the safest when resolving any issue. Hence, it is important to offer the best type of customer experience via a call center option where customers can interact with customer service representatives.

You can also enlist the help of a customer relationship management system (CRM) to keep track of your interactions with customers. This would allow you to have a record of each time a customer may have called in to resolve an issue and understand how to help them with ease. No customer would be happy to recount the numerous times they have called in and have had to interact with different representatives. Hence, it is advisable to invest in a CRM system to track customer behavior and assist them more efficiently.

Showing how much a customer’s loyalty is valued can build trust very quickly. Offering promo codes and discounts to the most loyal customers can solidify their trust in your business and also increase the likelihood of recommending your services to others.

You can take this a step further and introduce a referral program if you’re on the mission to acquire more customers. Customers who refer friends and family may be entitled to discounts or any other special perks to make this feature more enticing making this a win-win situation for all parties.

It is important to quantify how long it took for a customer to reach out via your communication channels and reach a resolution to their query. This may help you understand what types of problems come up frequently and take too long to resolve. You can improve your cx by training your staff to handle the time-consuming queries strategically and possibly move on to automate queries that take less time and are easier to address.

Good customer service can be accomplished via a number of useful tools such as contact center software or helpdesk software, CRM, and even marketing automation software. All of these tools are able to organize your customer service queries and allow you to take the most strategic approach when handling customer service requests. In the end, good customer service is the greatest form of marketing where building customer loyalty leads to future business and so on.