Keeping Customers Satisfied
Maintaining a strong base of satisfied customers is an important objective for any business operation. This is especially true for service management organizations; in fact keeping customers satisfied is often their primary objective. Each organization has its own methods, but learning to capitalize on new trends in customer satisfaction will keep your organization ahead of the game. In this article we have outlined some of the latest customer service trends relevant to help desks, call centres and other service management organizations.
Extended opening hours
For better or for worse, gone are the days of working the 9 to 5 for many service management professionals. With consumer expectations continuing to grow, the trend of 24/7 service has begun to spread to service desks and call centres. In contrast to just a few years ago, consumers are seeing more and more European service desks that are open on evenings and Saturdays. While working non-standard hours can be inconvenient for the employee, it can make the difference between a satisfied customer and a dissatisfied customer.
Personalization
Personalization entails customizing a product or service to the unique needs of a consumer. Websites such as Amazon.com have lead the way in the digital world, with personalized websites that offer customized selections of books and CDs that are based on a customer’s past purchases. Help desks and call centres are now also seeing the value in personalization techniques. Customer satisfaction increases when clients feel that the solutions to their queries have been specifically designed for them. One way to enable support technicians to better personalize their responses is to give them access to client histories and more basic information about the client. Employing individualized SLAs can also be of help in identifying tailored resolutions for the client.
Text messages and chatting
For a long time now, contact with the service desk has not been bound to the telephone. Email has turned into a communication tool that is vital to most business operations. Nowadays, many service desks and call centres are taking it a step further and beginning to use online chatting and text messages as communication tools. Genesys Telecommunications conducted an international survey on the most preferred forms of communication with contact centres. Results showed that Americans have the most favourable views of chatting: 28% indicated that this was their favourite form of communication, compared to 16% of Europeans and 11% of Japanese people. On the other hand, Europeans prefer communicating with businesses via text messages, while only 2% of the Americans do so. Email, however, remains the number 1 communication tool worldwide: 85% of consumers prefer to email about their requests, problems and complaints.
Business-to-business gifts
A couple of years ago, Annemarie Vosselman, a consultant for a client research agency, observed that business-to-business relations were becoming increasingly more formal.1 Nowadays, the opposite holds true. Vosselman is observing an increase in the (almost explicit) request from clients that organizations ‘pamper’ them with things like complimentary lunches, gifts, invitations to various events or golfing appointments. Perhaps this is a reason to consider not only friends and family during your Christmas shopping, but clients as well?
These days, it is not enough to just offer a product. Clients have higher expectations, but there are also more and more ways in which to keep them satisfied. Text messages, online chats, gifts, personalization and extended opening hours are just a few of those ways, which can make the difference between keeping and losing a client.
1 www.klanttevredenheid.nl
Carrie Brandt contributed to writing this article
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