Why Digital Customer Service is Important for the Growth of Your Business

In this new digital era, companies need to adjust their business models to reflect the changes this brings. Customer demands are increasing day by day. To meet those demands, companies need to offer an exceptional customer experience. Placing effort into producing a better experience will produce more customers, more sales, and encourage loyalty. Businesses need to see the value in focusing on the digital customer experience when it comes to achieving their business goals, significantly reducing costs and creating more satisfied customers.

What is digital customer experience?

Digital customer experience is the sum product of the interactions between customer and brand taking place on digital platforms such as mobile, desktop, iPad or other tablets.

Why digital customer service?

McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm, conducted a study which concluded that e-care is the future of customer service. According to the survey, by digitizing customer service, customer satisfaction can be increased by 33% and costs cut by 25 - 35%.

Source: McKinsey

The more digital the journey, the higher the customer satisfaction.

“We cannot promote our brands as responsive, caring and customer-focused while ignoring too many of our customers’ needs and complaints in social media.” – Augie Ray

Digital technology has changed customers’ habits. They expect to get what they want almost the exact moment they want it. Customers are market-savvy, comparing the prices of products, or checking reviews, all within seconds thanks to this digital era.

Making customer service functions digital means more than just creating a company Twitter or Facebook account for customers to tweet complaints or leave reviews/ratings. To offer great customer experience, you need to implement a watertight strategy that reflects the requirements. With proper planning, streamlining customer processes, and eradicating inconsistencies and errors, you can build strong customer support.

The need for this provision is reflected in our everyday shopping habits. Today, people use multiple devices to browse, research, read reviews, compare, ask peers for recommendations, before finally moving on to actually buying something. Throughout this process, queries related to the products might come up, you may have problems, and you could need support.

Source: Nuance

How can digital customer service improve your customer experience?

Although the medium has changed, the underlying theme hasn’t— customer service is all about resolving issues for the customer. Today, the difference is that companies need to be available across all digital channels to truly boost customer experience. Digital customer service has become a marketing channel itself.

Earlier, customer service meant dealing with customers in a physical location. But today customer service includes texting, website chat boxes, answering multiple phone lines, website user experience, sales presentations, being on social media, listings, cobrowsing — the list goes on and on. There are several different cornerstones that make up successful customer service.

Cobrowsing is one of the best tools when it comes to providing top-notch digital customer service. With the help of cobrowsing, customer service representatives can see and interact with the customer’s screen, making it easier to solve queries quickly and effectively. Customers can see what customer service reps are doing, so they feel safe, and this builds up a sense of trust.

Stats show that cobrowsing reduces call handling time by 14%. This improves the customer experience and reduces cart abandonment.

Build relationships. Engage your customers. Increase efficiency and revenue.

“One customer well taken care of could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.” – Jim Rohn

For a long time, for customers to get help, they had to call the customer service department and talk to a live customer support representative.

Though it still remains a hugely popular option, both customers and businesses stand to gain from embracing online assistance methods.

Numbers speak louder than words — With 92% customer satisfaction, live chat leads the way ahead of email, telephone, and social media support and 63% of customers would return to a website that offers live chat.

If done right, adding digital customer service solutions that provide instant support and resolve any issues, doesn’t just make for enhanced service experience, but also cuts back on overall costs.

Chat support is barely over half of the cost of call center operations. Live chat enables real-time communication with customers and reduces response times too.

Increase customer satisfaction.

“Here is a powerful yet simple rule: Always give people more than they expect to get.” – Nelson Boswell

Thanks to advances in technology, people can now shop online using smartphones, laptops, and other connected devices at any time of the day or night, no matter if it is Sunday or even Christmas.

Providing support at that time may not be viable for a small company, and making existing or potential customers wait could sour their experience.

So, what’s the solution?

The answer is— digitalization. If a business or brand offers online customer support, things can greatly improve, visitors can use it to get their queries answered and find solutions faster.

The most important features in providing an effective digital customer support experience are:

• Easy navigation
• Clear and easy to understand information
• Easy and quick resolutions

How can you effectively digitize your customer service?

“If you do things well, and you do what customers actually want, they will figure it out.” — Jeff Bezos

If you really want to differentiate your business and enhance customer experience, it’s time to provide your customers access to on-demand support. Making sure your customers are getting their issues addressed as swiftly as possible is one of the most important things you can do. Instead of taking calls, or replying to lengthy customer questions through email, switch to advanced customer support — live chat.

Here are a few ways business and customers benefit from live chat support:

• Allows multitasking
• Provides proactive outreach
• Know customer pain points
• Improve customer loyalty and satisfaction
• Get access to report and analysis
• Real-time convenience for customers
• Higher sales, conversions and average order values
• Provide chat logs for proof of contact and transparency
• 24/7 customer service
• And much more!

According to one study, over 90% of customers find the ‘live chat’ button gives them confidence they can find help if they need it.

Digital customer service best practices

Unify customer communication across multiple touch-points.

Accommodating customers’ needs means being available across multiple touch-points and communication channels. When you digitize customer interactions you may find a customer who had contacted you on social media later wants to converse through a video call.

When agents have to shift between different channels and touch-points like this, they can lose the context of the conversation in the process.

Once you unify conversations in one customer communication platform, you view the entire conversation as one, helping you offer a consistently relevant service to the end user.

Innovate to offer a seamless interaction process.

It’s vital that when you digitize your services, you leverage the right tools to properly facilitate virtual communication with customers. For example, one of our clients, an insurance company, successfully implemented live chat to cut down on the claim approval process and cross-sell services to customers digitally.

Clearly defined SLA and service standards.

The industry you belong to may vary, but regardless, you need to develop clear service standards to ensure your service meets the business requirements of clients.

Incorporating SLAs in every aspect of your service delivery creates clarity between client and company.

Availability of support agent - Let your customer know what they can expect in terms of your availability. Some of the services might be offered only during specific hours, while you may extend your support hours for premium customers.

Performance standards -  Set service level benchmarks so you and your customer can measure the performance of your staff. Mention resolution time and minimum response time. Set standards for solution delivery, so everything can be measured and monitored.

The final word

If you don’t make life easy for your customers, you will lose them. On the flipside, the quicker and more efficient you make your support, the more customers you will win. Acquire can help your company to digitize your customer service to get the maximum output. No matter the industry area, a better-run business brings in more customers, meaning a bigger market share for you!

Laduram Vishnoi

CEO, Acquire.io

Founder and CEO of Acquire. Passionate about AI, machine learning, chatbots, NLP, neuroscience, and meditation.