Customer service has long been a controversial topic: consumers demand amazing service and are even willing to spend more to get it.
Meanwhile, companies who don’t adapt to this changing consumer behaviour risk their livelihood. And companies that do are making millions.
Thoughts of poor customer service probably ring a bell in your own mind. And these opinions are hard to change.
But, there is hope.
Customer service is changing rapidly to meet consumer behaviour, providing smoother, more integrated experiences than ever before.
Let’s explore the current shift and trend towards content, online chatbots / live chat, and ticketing systems and how they are changing industries today.
Ticketing Systems Synchronise User Experiences
Traditional customer service has been clunky for decades, providing sub-par user experiences. Don’t believe me?
The data doesn’t lie: 77% of customers are “fed up” with bad customer service and 60% of consumers will continue to buy from brands who have excellent customer service, even if it means not receiving the outcome they hoped for.
There is nothing worse than calling a service phone number or entering an online customer service system and having to explain your problem over and over again.
Especially when it leads to “I’ll transfer you to __ department,” forcing you to repeat the same issues to a new representative.
A company’s first line of support for customers is the help section on their website.
By providing thorough resources for customers to help themselves, you can minimize the number of support tickets the customer support team handles.
Publishing detailed ‘how-to’ guides, like this guide by Buzzsprout for their customers, ensure that customers have the answers they need without contacting support.
These “how-to” guides need to be even more detailed when you are selling in a niche.
For example, if you want to market and sell a product to architects, your guide needs to be filled with thorough details because they are not simple buyers.
If a topic is not covered in your support content, that’s where help desk and ticketing systems come into play.
On the business side, ticketing systems are changing the customer service game by giving representatives critical user information at the right time, combined with the ability to assign, redistribute, and collaborate to solve problems fast with a help-first mentality.
For example on ticketing systems, you can see past user behaviour to see what they are having problems with, giving reps the knowledge they need to properly address a complaint or problem:
If you’re just starting a new business and the area of support isn’t your expertise, simply assign the ticket to the correct rep in your SaaS helpdesk tool.
Ticketing systems are game-changing for customer service on the back-end, giving reps more awareness of a users problem, the ability to save time every week, and ways to solve problems faster.
This streamlining also have impacts downstream for the customer side, providing more personalized experiences.
Now when a rep contacts a customer, they have all the information from past conversations to legal forms and purchase history, without making the customer repeat their claims.
Having an automated customer onboarding process in place ensures that your customer’s entire journey with your company is recorded and accessible for your support team.
Customer experiences are now targeted with helpful reps who are backed by data.
Ticketing systems can combine perfectly with live chat software and chatbots too.
For example, depending on which ticketing software you use, you can tap into your knowledge base and automate customer service actions:
Not only that but chatbots and help desks together make executing your NPS strategy a breeze.
With tools like Advocate.ly or SatisMeter you can customize which customer segments get surveyed, when, and their frequency.
This gives you the opportunity to boost customer reviews and provide more value all within your help desk and live chat interface.
For instance, you could send out SMS marketing messages or personalized emails to your list that includes an automated QR code offering a coupon incentive for completing a survey or leaving a review based on their recent interaction.
There are also a number of helpful WordPress survey plugins to easily add surveys which are great for new blogs.
Why is this important? Because conversational customer service is winning in 2021 and a great future way to make more money online.
Conversational Customer Service Wins in 2021
Conversational marketing is taking over in 2021, and it presents some powerful customer service benefits.
With the rise of people working remotely, they (along with live chat and AI-infused CRM software) are making waves in customer service.
And now that building a chatbot takes just two minutes, companies have no excuse to ignore this trend.
Chatbots and live chat tools give your business the chance to speak directly with customers in seconds, providing both automated help and allowing support reps to jump in conversations, too.
Plus, with the latest feedback tools and social listening software, you can understand your customers and use a Facebook Messenger Bot to interact on social media.
Both ticketing systems and chatbots present an easy way to deliver useful content to your audience, too.
You can send content from your website to a user in need, answer customer queries by linking to relevant content and reduce your overhead.
Chat systems act as funnels for traffic, allowing you to direct that traffic back into other marketing funnels like email sequences, too.
Here is what the marketing experts at Loganix had to say when I surveyed them about conversational customer service and content:
“Content in the realm of customer service is not only for organic traffic now. It’s for discovery and the solving of key pain points in your funnel. What does this mean for customer service wins? Essentially, content can fill the void of unproductive customer service by directing people to modern solutions.”
You can host your AI chatbots either on your service pages or even in your blog content. If you just started a new blog, make sure your content management system (CMS) and chatbot are compatible.
Serving content ties directly back to business metrics, too. By being proactive in your conversational content and customer service, you limit lag-times on the back-end for your reps by solving issues fast.
A great example of performing chatbot that helps customers find their way through is from JoyOrganics.
When scrolling down on their conversational AI, you can find guides about their products, answers to the most common questions, see the news in their market and other information.
What is also remarkable is that you have the feeling that you are not talking to a robot but real persons thanks to the pictures added.
Instead of bogging down service reps with lower-level inquiries, you solve it with content.
Then, that content can be continually updated by user feedback. Plus, your content can also build authority on your site, brand awareness, and improve search engine optimization.
Take Preply for example. They have an entire page dedicated to providing customers with information about how to contact support:
But you can also access their entire content library in the help centre to solve issues on topics like money & payments, registering accounts, and more.
And when you engage in live chat with them, they let you know how long it will take to receive a response!
That’s a winning customer service strategy.
At the end of the day, consumers want answers fast, and they want them to be accurate to their needs.
Along with helpful content on your site, chatbots and live chat allow you to do just that, providing a customer service experience that is sure to keep them coming back for more.
Conclusion
Chatbots and ticketing systems are solving some of the biggest pain points in the customer service space: lack of personalisation, time to response, and accuracy of solutions.
Have you started to implement ticketing systems, chatbots, and live chat? If so, how has it changed your service abilities? Let us know!