Why White Glove Service is Key to Your Customer Success Strategy

With inputs from Nipun Sharma, Principal Solution Engineer

Imagine you arrive at your regular hotel on a business trip, and your room is laid out to suit your tastes and needs – muted interiors, a dedicated corner with video conferencing facility, and a fresh pot of coffee (just how you like it) on the table. You see the hotel staff put away your bags and start preparations for an early lunch because you need to go out for a meeting. And when you finally step out, there is a car awaiting you in the driveway. 

This is white glove service, and this is what your customers expect from your business too.

Traditionally associated with high-value customers, the 'white glove' approach is about delivering premium – prompt and tailor-made – services to customers with acute attention to detail. Indeed, 95% of customers say they will stay loyal to brands that provide quality customer service. 

Today's digitally-savvy customers expect the same personalised, 1-on-1 attention that comes with in-person assistance. And pushing white glove service out of the realm of exclusivity and making it available to all customers can help businesses to meet and exceed these customer expectations. Those that believe scaling white glove service is cost- and labour-intensive will miss massive opportunities. The key here lies in pivoting around technology. 

In the example above, the hotel could give you white glove service because they have known you for a long time and understand your needs. Imagine being able to provide that level of personalisation and care at scale, even to customers you just onboarded. Technology enables this by making customer data consolidation more more efficient, agents more productive and informed, and putting customers at the heart of all your processes.

Customers today don't have a straight journey to your brand. They move across digital touchpoints and even visit offline stores to get the look and feel of products they wish to buy. The same holds for customer complaints and queries where mobile and social channels are often preferred for issue resolution. 

Technologies that allow you to track these intricate customer journeys can help provide white glove service across multiple touchpoints. Here are ways businesses can equip their service teams to deliver white glove service at scale:
 

1. Provide agents with a 360-degree view of customers and the right tools to delight

The more you know about your customers, the better you can anticipate and fulfil their needs. Combine customer data with useful tools to create a single source of truth and point of action that

• Enables agents to deliver personalised experiences by providing them with a complete, digital view of each customer – profiles, past purchases, interactions, etc.
• Allows agents to quickly respond to customer requests on any channel from one console, so customers never have to listen to "please hold the line" on loop
• Uses AI to enable auto triage and assist agents with the most relevant product recommendations, content, and next best steps to drastically bring down case resolution times
  

   

2. Enable your business to service your customers on channels of their choice 

Allow agents to truly deliver 1-to-1 customer interaction by providing customer service on their preferred channels. Use intuitive AI-enabled tools to automatically redirect cases and requests to agents most suited for the job, so they can 

• Provide live chat service online or in your app(s) based on how customers engage with your brand 
• Quickly route chats to subject matter experts, so customers always get the best, most personalised answers to their questions
• Provide chatbots and live chat support to customers on their preferred social channels like WhatsApp and Messenger
• Provide impeccable service in the field and while on the go by accessing details regarding issues and required actions on a single integrated device

3. Make your agents customer-ready

Businesses need to continuously bridge agents' skill and knowledge gaps as customer expectations keep evolving with time. Here's how businesses can support and equip agents to offer white glove service

• Coach agents in real-time while handling cases with private messages
• Provide agents with the necessary resources to learn how to make full use of available tools
• Build a culture of knowledge within agent teams by encouraging them to create and share  relevant knowledge articles on root cause analyses and other topics
• Access analytics and reports to measure team’s performance based on metrics like wait times, average handling times, etc. and fix problems faster

According to Gartner, investments in technology are expected to return more value in the next two years of deployment than right away. Automation in the service industry is inevitable, as with any other sector. Businesses must equip their teams for the new normal before customer demands catch up. 

Salesforce Service Cloud is an easy-to-use, intelligent, and personalised customer service platform that lets you deliver exceptional experiences. With this solution, you can provide white glove service to all your customers irrespective of the industry you operate in or the size of your business. 

Service Cloud lets you connect all aspects of service – customer support, field service, digital services, etc. – on one unified platform. Its built-in AI optimises service operations and provides deep insights into customer journeys. 

With a slew of tools to help maximise agent performance, Service Cloud enriches your customer’s experiences with valuable interactions that build trust.