Customer service is critical to almost any business — it vital to the success of your products and services. But customer service must be better than excellent. It should be stellar.

Ultimately, customer service is the way you win new customers and keep old ones loyal to your brand. Your customer service metrics must be as good as your other business metrics. Otherwise, you will start to lose customers quicker than you can count.

Keep reading to learn how to boost your customer service metrics.

1. Deeply Understand Your Customers’ Needs

You cannot hope to start moving the needle on KPIs, such as customer response time or customer conversion, without deep insight. The better you understand your customers’ needs and journey, the better service you can provide.

What do your customers need at each stage in their buyer journey? If you deeply understand these touchpoints, you can allocate resources, training, and information to boost important metrics.

2. Automate Your Processes

If your customer service department isn’t automating repetitive processes, this is your sign to get started right away!

From categorizing customer service tickets to responding to complaints, there are plenty of processes that are repetitive and time-consuming. They don’t have to be manually conducted, however.

Process automation is powerful, and there are plenty of technologies out there to help automate your workflows. Automation provides consistent customer service and gives your employees more time to focus on the stuff that really matters.

3. Offer Self-Service to Customers

A key performance indicator for customer service is ticket volume. Ideally, you want to see this number decrease, as this means customers don’t need any help or have any complaints.

So, how can you decrease incoming tickets? By providing a self-service option for customers that allows them to figure things out by themselves. This could be a knowledge base or FAQ section, or even a search bar in the navigation menu of your site.

People like being able to help themselves and avoid getting in touch with your customer service department at all costs. So, help them to do this.

4. Provide Proactive and Personalized Support

As mentioned earlier, understanding your customers’ needs is vital. If you understand pain points, then you can create a proactive strategy to deal with the issues before customers even bring them to you.

Each customer should feel like they are getting personalized, proactive support rather than generic, reactive responses. This will create an impressive feedback loop that will help to retain loyal customers.

5. Outsource Customer Service Solutions

If all of the above sounds a bit overwhelming, then why not simply outsource your customer service? Boosting your customer service metrics can be extremely costly and stressful if you’re doing it all in-house.

Outsourcing to a call center will save you money, give you access to the latest technology, and ensure the best service for your customers.

Get a Little Support Moving Customer Service Metrics

These five tips are bound to get you impressive results, all you have to do is start putting them into place!

If you’re committed to boosting customer service metrics, let us help you! XACT is an organic extension of your customer support solution — take a look at our services to see what we can do for you!

The last thing you want to do as a business is to create pain points for your customers. Making things more difficult for customers will only make it harder to acquire and retain them. So, what do you do? Well, the first step is knowing what needs to change and that starts by knowing what common pain points plague consumers when it comes to customer service.

1. Dealing with unfriendly and unknowledgeable agents

This is one pain point that customers often see. Agents need to be trained in soft skills so they’re better able to assist customers with a friendly and empathetic tone. Agents also need to be thoroughly trained on the business and all of its products/services so that they know exactly how to assist customers when they reach out.

2. Being put on hold for long periods of time

No one wants to waste their time sitting on hold. The first step is to make sure to ask the customer if they have time to wait before putting them on hold. It’s also important to explain to them why they need to be placed on hold in the first place. Also, if the call is being transferred, it’s important to make sure it’s to the right person or department so that the customer doesn’t end up having to be on hold even longer.

Another way to reduce hold times is to have access to several agents and to offer various ways for customers to reach out so that they’re not all using the phone line. In addition, you can consider offering a call-back function, where customers can punch their number in for the agent to call them back.

3. Difficulty finding answers

Customers should easily be able to get answers and solutions. Creating a FAQ page on your website (that’s easy to find) can be a big help. This allows customers to get answers to common questions. Also, offering a web portal on your page can be equally smart. Customers can ask questions on the spot. As an added bonus, this can reduce cart abandonment.

4. Not being able to reach customer service through an avenue that’s convenient for them

Some customers will find it more convenient to call, while others will want to reach out via email, text or chat for support. Offering more than one avenue for customer service will increase the convenience and satisfaction factor among your customers. Also, this is another way to make it easier than ever for customers to find answers to their questions (addressing the pain point listed above).

These are four of the common pain points. As you can see, there are ways to address these and improve customer acquisition and retention. And, we’d love to help at XACT. Please reach out to us today.

In customer service, you never know what type of conversation you’re going to have. You may be greeted by friendly, understanding customers or by ones who are outright angry. Those friendly customers, of course, make your job as a service agent easier, but the ones who call heated can make it a challenge for you. The thing is, it’s the customer service agent’s job to keep the customer satisfied, which means helping those who are upset. But, how do you keep a positive mindset while dealing with these calls?

Try to start your morning off happy. When you wake up, put on some music that gets you ready for your day. Choose something that will make you feel motivated, energized and uplifted. Maybe do some stretches first thing too, to help you feel less tense going into work. And, don’t forget to start off with a good, healthy breakfast. One that contains protein and complex carbohydrates is a good choice. Getting a good night’s sleep the night before can also help you start the day with a better mindset.

When you take good care of yourself, your mental clarity and mood will be in their best state. This can help you tackle your day and maintain a more positive attitude when talking with customers.

There are times when you may feel negative thoughts creeping in. In these moments, try to focus on something positive. Put up inspirational quotes by your desk, trinkets that make you smile, and pictures of your loved ones. Find something to focus on.

When a customer does go on a tirade, try not to take it personally. Take a deep breath, and work to address the issue at hand. Remember that if you keep a calm and collected tone, you’re more likely to appease and even win over those customers.

When you’re able to keep a positive mindset, you’re able to assist customers better and keep them happy. For example, it’s important to use positive language with your customers. This means not telling them, “no, we can’t do that,” but instead saying something like “We’re sorry that happened to you. Here’s what we can offer…” Think about ways you can change your answers to have a positive connotation every time. This is much easier to do when you keep an upbeat attitude. This mindset will also help you keep your cool when a customer calls in upset.

We know it can be a challenge at times to stay positive but work on starting your day off right and refocusing on something positive during those challenging times. You’ll feel better and your customers will be more satisfied.

There’s a lot of training that can help an agent become great at customer service and representing a brand. Agents need to know how to use the technology involved. They need to know what solutions they’re allowed to offer. In addition, they need to be well-versed in the brand’s services and/or products. But, beyond that, they also need to have a few soft skills. These are the skills that will define whether they’re an OK agent or a great agent. But soft skills aren’t easily learned by just reading a how-to. It takes some training. That’s why, at XACT, we include soft skills in our comprehensive training. We know that it’s essential for excellent customer service.

What are some of the soft skills that make an agent great? Here are a few of them:

Tone of voice: You may have heard this saying before, “it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.” The tone of a person’s voice can change the whole meaning of what is being said. That’s why it’s important that customer service agents learn how to use the right tone in every situation.

Empathy: Service agents need to learn how to be empathetic towards customers. When someone reaches out to a company it’s because they want something. Maybe an item arrived damaged or they have a question about a product, as an agent, you need to listen and show genuine concern for the customer. When a customer feels cared about, it will increase the likelihood that they’ll remain loyal and even recommend the brand to others.

Positive attitude: Agents need to learn how to have a good attitude, this can mean learning how to control emotions when customers reach out to them with a heated demeanor. Customer service agents also need to learn how to use positive language in order to better assist customers.

Active listening: Customers get frustrated when they have to repeat themselves. Agents should be skilled in active listening so that customers feel heard and receive the best solutions.

Effective communication: As a customer service agent, it’s important to know how to effectively communicate with a customer. The right balance needs to be found between saying too much and saying too little. Customers should know exactly what to expect and be able to understand what is being said. Your words should communicate clearly without being confusing.

Mastering these soft skills can help agents better assist customers and help brands maintain a great reputation. That’s why, at XACT, we include this as part of our training program. Learn more about the customer service solutions we have to offer and our comprehensive training by reaching out to us at (877) 922-8877.

Most people don’t realize how massive the support dispatch service industry is. It’s already valued at 1.65 billion dollars. So what makes a support dispatch service so important?

Well, the answer is simple. For many small businesses today, having a reliable support dispatch service is vital for more than providing them with an excellent customer setup. It can help build and improve your business in many ways.

If you’re wondering exactly how a support dispatch service works, you’re in the right place. Keep reading to learn more.

How Does a Support Dispatch Service Work?

A support dispatch service is when someone takes incoming calls and creates tickets for each of those service calls. The responsibilities of a dispatcher include keeping customer files in a database organized and updated.

Dispatch tickets are essential because they help keep the company organized and promptly address each customer’s call. When a customer calls, you will take down their information and create a dispatch ticket. This dispatch ticket will then be sent to the appropriate department so that they can address the issue.

How Support Dispatch Services Can Benefit Your Business

Dispatch services provide much-needed support to businesses by managing phone calls and tasks related to customer service issues. This can free up time for your business to focus on other areas of the company.

A successful dispatcher is courteous, articulate, patient, efficient, and accurate. That can leave a positive impression in the mind of your customer. This is just another benefit of using a support dispatch service.

What to Consider when choosing a Support Dispatch Service

Choosing the right support dispatch service is key. Here are a few things you should consider before selecting: How will they handle issues? Is there a dedicated team for your account? Or is there just one person for all accounts?

Do they provide access to data? For example, if you want to see how many tickets were opened today or where tickets are coming from, these details should be easy to access.

Other considerations include how quickly they can respond. In todays fast-paced world, speed is everything. Customers won’t wait 20 minutes for an answer when they can get help from another company in seconds. So look for a company with a reputation for responding quickly and providing excellent customer service.

A company like Xact has an excellent reputation. While being able to provide high-level support dispatch services. It would help if you considered whether the company has technical expertise in the area where they’re offering support services. If they don’t understand your product or industry, they might not be able to provide you with quality results which is what you want from a support dispatch service.

You also want to know if they can handle multiple channels. It’s not just about email anymore. Customers often turn to social media and other online forums when they have an issue with their product or service, so make sure the support staff knows how to handle those requests, phone calls, and emails.

A Support Dispatch Service You Can Rely On!

A support dispatch service is essential for keeping customers satisfied and ensuring that the company runs smoothly. The proper dispatch support will provide the necessary customer service experience and knowledge.

You want a support dispatch service that knows what theyre doing when it comes to providing customer support services. If you’re interested in learning how XACT can help take your business to the next level, contact us today to get started!