Customers have always been the lifeblood of every business, and keeping them happy is important for building a business. However, today’s markets are becoming increasingly customer-centric. Businesses need to put in place omnichannel marketing and communication strategies to cater to as many people as possible and be there to help them resolve their issues. Therefore, the need for quick responses for customer service departments has become more important than ever.
In reality, it seems that businesses fail to realize the need to reduce their customer response time. Even though the speed of customer service is the element that can make or break a business, 62% of enterprises don’t even respond to their customer emails.
Factors that Lead to Slow Response Times
There is a multitude of factors that can lead companies down a path of slow response times and poor customer service.
- Not prioritizing inquiries. Not all customer inquiries are created equal. Still, if your customer service team is treating them that way, some more complicated or urgent inquiries could prevent other inquiries from being handled quickly.
- Not establishing the right processes. To set yourself up for success, you need to have a standardized set of practices regarding collecting, evaluating, and answering.
- Not utilizing technology for automation. If your customer service team is handling everything manually, they are wasting resources. Without automation, you won’t be able to reduce your response times.
Relying on Customer Feedback
Interaction with customers by responding to their inquiries can be crucial to businesses that are looking for ways to improve their customer experience. The majority of customers don’t complain because they think providing feedback is not worth the time because the company doesn’t care. If the customers know that there would be an instant response, they will give their feedback. The feedback can then be analyzed to provide actionable insights companies can use to improve their customer experience and reputation with their customer base.
Automation for Quick Responses
ServiceNow and its ticketing system have managed to revolutionize automated customer servicing capabilities. Companies can integrate a ticketing system and emails to improve their customer service efficiency and flexibility and work at maximum efficiency. Once you’ve established a process for responding to customer service inquiries (e.g., what to do, who will answer it, how to prioritize them, etc.), the automation can take care of certain steps for you.
For example, it can solicit feedback, trigger pre-planned responses, and streamline your process so your customer service team can handle other tasks. All that ultimately reduces response time and effort, and speeds up your entire workflow.
Speed is a crucial component in improving customer experience and relationships, but it should never be achieved at the expense of quality. The quality and speed of your responses must be balanced. To help you achieve that, you can use tools, such as ServiceNow, to automate customer responses. However, don’t ever underestimate soft skills that can come from employees who are at the heart of your customer service. For help in using ServiceNow to automate your customer responses, give us a call or ask a question on Twitter.