Customer service is one of the most important touch points for customers and prospects. There are many methods and tools to employ effective customer service at your business to make customers feel more comfortable, like toll-free calling, self-help website directories, social media and live chat software.

A customer’s experience with your customer service process can make or break your business. We have all had at least one experience with customer service being useless to our needs at that moment, and it left either a bitter taste or resulted in us going to a competitor. Frequently poor or over complicated customer service experiences can hurt your brand through poor reviews, which can lead to your business having a bad service reputation on the whole, regardless of if you’re selling products or services to domestic, commercial or industrial markets. Word of mouth is still the most effective form of advertising, and with the advent of social media, word travels faster than ever before.

When making a purchasing decision, customer service sometimes falls into the try-before-you-buy basket. Some prospects may test your customer service, since should they need assistance, they need to make sure they can reach you, and not just a page of vague frequently asked questions with a cold contact form that may get lost in an inbox, or not replied to for weeks. Prospects and consumers are people at the end of the day, and we all like knowing that should we ever need assistance, someone is on the other end, happy to help us. This is why your customer service system should be as flawless as possible from the start.

Test your system regularly

How often do you run your customer service system through a rigorous test? Is it tested every month or quarter, or is it set up and left in a dark room to collect dust of the ancients? By testing your customer service system regularly, you can find where your process' discrepancies are and rectify them as they arise. No process is truly flawless, but regular updates and improvements will make it much more pleasant for customers.

Do you know how long it takes for your staff to reply to a customer’s concerns or questions? Do you know how long it takes for a customer’s issue to be resolved on average? Do you know if your customers are happy with the service? This sort of data will help massively with keeping your customer service system healthy and provides accountability to the team. With built-in reports and surveys, Click4Assistance can provide that data in the dashboard with just a couple clicks. This can make monthly reviews a snap and can provide benchmarks, targets and milestones for your team to aim for. This is why we believe we're the best live chat provider for buiness websites.

Use tools for efficiency

After you have tested your system and reviewed your reports, you now have a good idea of what you need to increase the efficiency of the system. Customer service tools include adding the best live chat provider's software to your website, allowing you to create a one-on-one experience for customers and prospects. One of the major benefits of chat software is an out of hours form, so they can easily leave a message and provide contact information, should you not have any agents currently online. This can also provide a simple survey to rate the overall experience at the end, allowing you to measure the experience against each team member.

Predefined replies allow your customer service team to reply quickly and professionally with the software from the UK's best live chat provider. This will allow the team to dispatch key pieces of information to your customers or prospects efficiently and accurately. In turn, this will improve the customer service experience and will also improve your overall brand equity.

Integrating your live chat software with a customer relationship manager (CRM), which we do at Click4Assistance, further increases the efficiency of your record keeping and reduces the chance of human error overall. It will also improve communication tracking for all of your existing customers, greatly improving your customer service experience.

Training time!

Customer service training is an investment that always goes a very long way. This could be as simple as a one day in-house training, to reinforce how you want your customers to be treated and walk everyone through the system, or it could be as elaborate as a week-long comprehensive workshop hosted by a professional training company. Either way, it’s a really good idea to do this regardless of the size of your company.

Customer service is an important part of your business and should be treated as such. Testing your customer service system for discrepancies, employing tools for efficiency and training your team are some of the ways to make your customer service more effective. And a more effective and robust customer service system means a much healthier business.

If you have any questions about our live chat software and all it’s incredible benefits, give us a call on 08451235871 or send an email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our team experts will be with you right away.