Customer service management has always been crucial for developing a great rapport with customers. With an increase in customer expectations and digital adoption, resilient customer service management is more important than ever. After all, how businesses evolve to meet new customer expectations will go a long way towards determining their success in the new climate.
To overcome potential challenges, Customer service management should prioritise:
Agility and flexibility
Adoption of resilient strategies
New technology and integrations
Businesses that fall back on their old customer management style may struggle to connect with the ‘new customer’, who is more likely than ever to click away to a competitor. The world has changed – and so have the benchmarks for an exceptional customer experience.
Below, we discuss the importance of customer service management and how a solid strategy can help teams prepare for the future.
Preparing for the future with customer service management
As we head into a more digitally-driven business landscape, customer service management must shift towards:
Contactless engagement
Multi-channel experiences
Decentralised workforces
Essentially, service teams have a lot on their plate as we move into the new normal. This is why it’s so important to have resilient customer service management.
Customer service management needs to be proactive about implementing necessary changes in the workplace, while also supporting their teams emotionally. In other words, it needs to be resilient, agile, and empathetic. And it all starts with creating the right customer service management strategy.
Create a customer service management strategy
One thing that’s important for businesses to consider is that their team is not competing against their own pre-pandemic level of service – they’re competing against all other organisations.
According to Salesforce Research, 73% of customers say that an extraordinary experience with one company raises their expectations for all companies. Keeping up with the competition is just one benefit of great customer service management. Providing exceptional experiences will also help:
Build better relationships
Create brand advocates
Provide long-term value
When creating a strategy for making customer service management more effective, there are five key things that businesses should focus on.
1. Increasing customer satisfaction and retention
It’s hard for businesses to thrive if they have unhappy customers and high churn rates, so one of the first priorities of customer service management is to find out where customer expectations are being met, and where improvements need to be made.
There are a variety of tools that measure customer satisfaction, including the:
2. Supporting customer service agents to be their best
Support means providing agents with the tools they need to succeed:
- Mobile devices to provide contact-free service
- PPE if in a forward-facing role
- Salesforce CRM which provides a single view of the customer
Support also means making sure that the agents have the proper training and knowledge to adapt to increased expectations.
To re-skill or up-skill their agents to tackle new challenges and roles, customer service managers can create custom trailmixes on the Trailhead self-learning platform.
3. Highlighting the importance of product/service knowledge
Being an expert on a company’s products or services is essential for providing great service. It can also help turn customer service into a sales channel. There’s nothing wrong with being proactive; that’s what upselling is all about! And connecting customer service with Commerce Cloud and Sales Cloud will enable agents to view carts, apply discounts, and recommend products.
4. Driving performance improvement
The bar for customer expectations continually rises. So customer service management will need to make sure that the service team is meeting those high standards.
Management can use a variety of technologies and strategies to improve performance. This can range from:
- Training sessions
- Self-guided learning journeys
- Mentoring programmes
It’s important to approach these teaching moments with empathy. No one wants to hear that they’re not doing their job well. Empathetic communication is paramount in today’s uncertain world.
5. Improving resolution times/efficiency
One of the easiest ways to enhance the customer service experience is to improve the average time to resolution. Self-service portals can be a good way to do this. However, management will want to ensure that they’re not sending their customers down a rabbit hole of information with no clear way to contact an agent for help.
Customer service management will also want to keep an eye on resolution times to make sure that they fall in line with expectations. And quicker resolution times aren’t resulting in a drop in customer satisfaction.
The future of customer service management
Customer service management has always had the same concern at heart. It provides the service team with the support it needs to keep the customers as happy as possible. But technology and time have shaped the role in new and exciting ways.
Customer service management now functions in a world where 9-5 office hours have been replaced by 24/7 engagement. Moreover, omnichannel experiences are offering whole new ways to connect with the customer. In a post-pandemic world, it’s important to turn challenges into opportunities, and creating resilient customer service management will help put businesses on the road to success.
Learn how service leaders can empower their teams to thrive in the current moment and beyond in The Service Leader’s Guide to Resiliency.
