5 Reasons Customers May Never Shop with You Again
3. Not everyone in your business is on the same page.
Not being able to provide your customers with the information they want, when they want it, is the quickest way to drive them into the arms of a competitor.
In fact, 49 percent of the respondents to our survey cited the prospect of being bounced around to several customer service agents as their main reason for not wanting to call a business directly.
The solution: As noted, the quickest and easiest way to solve this problem is to use a centralized platform that is capable of tracking customer queries across every channel.
This way, if someone calls your business after asking a question via email, the agent handling the call will be able to see details of that enquiry. In theory, the person handling the initial call should then be able to help the customer, without the need to pass them on to someone else.
4. You’ve forgotten customer service is about problem solving.
The foundations of good customer service are built upon problem solving. This is reflected in the fact that 70 percent of respondents to our survey suggested they would be more loyal to a company that provided excellent customer service, and 40 percent would spend more money.
On the flip side, 49 percent said they had left a company in the past as a direct result of poor customer service.
The solution: For consumers, nothing is more frustrating than a customer service agent who fails to solve their problem.However, by educating your employees and investing in training, you’ll prepare them to be able to solve a wider range of problems, which will also create better customer retention rates.
5. You’re not personalizing your customers’ experiences.
Because of developments such as social media and smart tech, today’s digital natives live in a constant bubble where nearly every message they receive is personalized.
As such, when it comes to communicating with a brand, they don’t expect their experiences to be any different. Even when it comes to the biggest brands around, being too large or complex is not an excuse for failing to deliver personalized interactions.
The solution: If you can take steps to combine the right call center technology with an understanding of the purchase pathways your consumers favor, you can personalize customer service successfully. Look for technology that will allow you to use customer data to prioritize the calls of important customers and connect them to agents they already have a relationship with. If you are taking measures to personalize your customers’ service in this manner—especially if your competitors are not—it will also help you to retain them as customers.
Thanks to the increasing number of retail channels, consumers have more power and autonomy over what they buy—and who they buy from. If customers do not receive the type of service they expect from your business, you may very well not have them as customers much longer.
Tim Pickard is the senior vice president of marketing for NewVoiceMedia, a leading provider of cloud contact center and inside sales technology that enables businesses to have more successful conversations. He has more than 20 years of experience as a leader in the IT industry. Pickard served as vice president and board member of RSA Security's international business for seven years, where he ran marketing in EMEA, Asia Pacific, and Japan. He also spent two years as chief marketing officer for SaaS/cloud-based email management provider Mimecast.