8 essential customer service technologies
Customer support tools don’t just do a lot of the heavy lifting for you in delivering outstanding customer service, they also position your team on the fast track to success! The aim of customer service is always to make the customer’s experience better and more enjoyable.
But customer expectations are sky-high these days – they expect a proactive, personalised, omnichannel experience. Customer support tools make it easier for you to deliver that consistently. They lighten the weight on your staff and make it easier for them to focus on delivering truly memorable CX to your customers.
Here are eight essential customer support tools we believe you can’t do without:
#1 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software
Not only will a good CRM help your service teams handle customer interactions efficiently, but they can also improve your customer retention rates. They improve efficiency by storing customer information, recording queries, and tracking whatever progress has been made in resolving a customer’s problem.
Furthermore, CRMs provide centralised databases that enable multiple agents to access vital customer data like a customer’s history, previous orders, previous interactions, and current requests. CRMs will make your agents’ lives very much easier, and will greatly improve your support service.
#2 Live chat
These days a live chat function is obligatory! Providing live chat has a massive impact on retaining your customers and improving their CX. A customer who utilises live chat is estimated to be likely to spend 60% more than a customer who doesn’t.
Being able to interact with your customers in real-time also enables you to offer proactive and immediate support to a customer who needs help. But, and this is a very big but, your live chat function must be slick and absolutely professional, or it can result in customer frustration and aggravation. In fact, it might be one of the customer support functions you should consider outsourcing to professionals.
Related content: Best practices for customer service through Facebook Messenger
#3 Help desk ticketing system
A help desk ticketing system makes it easier for your support team to give your customers a seamless omnichannel experience. This is despite the huge numbers of customer messages, requests, complaints, and other communications inundating the average customer support help desk these days. It enables your team to handle all customer interactions from a centralised hub.
Every agent can instantly and proactively verify all the relevant information relating to every ticket. Tickets are categorised, prioritised, and routed to the most suitable agents automatically, thus reducing response time and upping the level of customer service. This results in an excellent, pain-free experience and happy customers!
#4 Knowledge base
In this ‘age of Google’, an estimated 81% of customers are inclined to sort out issues for themselves before interacting with a live representative. Your brand needs to facilitate this by providing them with a self-service knowledge base.
A knowledge base software tool creates, stores, shares, and manages this self-service content for your customers in the form of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), blogs, tutorials, and ‘how-to’ videos. This knowledge base is also of inestimable value for your customer support team who can refer to it to answer customer queries and requests faster and more easily.
#5 Internal communication software
A reliable internal communication tool is another vital element in offering the best customer support you can. It enables your agents to interact in real-time to help and advise each other. This can greatly improve the level of support they give your customers. It also helps software teams to collaborate faster and more effectively without long and cumbersome long email chains that can have important data being missed and ‘falling through the cracks’.
#6 Social listening and monitoring tool
Using social listening and monitoring tools can help you track what your customers say about your brand, and how they view your competitors’ brands and services. This enables you to delight your customers with special promotions and offers specifically tailored to their wishes, expectations, and preferences. It will also allow you to proactively deal with things they’re unhappy about before those issues become problems and generate negative feedback.
Related content: Dos and don’ts of social media customer service
#7 Reporting dashboard
Interactive dashboards that highlight crucial customer service metrics offer many ways to analyse the effectiveness of your customer support function. They also provide you with vital insights when you need to make important data-driven decisions to improve your customer service. These in-depth analytics will also improve the productivity and the efficiency of your customer support team.
#8 Customer feedback survey
Customer feedback surveys are time-honoured and unmissable ways in which to collect customer feedback. And make no mistake – knowing as much as possible about your customers is vital to the success of your business.
Surveys will establish what your customers think about your brand and your support structures. Using this knowledge and insights will help you to make your brand outstanding, and your service customer-centric and dynamic.
In conclusion
Utilising these essential customer service technologies effectively will ensure both your customers and your support staff are happier! If you need help choosing or implementing any of these solutions, our skilled and experienced DCC team can help. So get in touch – we are there for you 24/7!
