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Businesses that offer better experiences to their customers earn between 4% and 8% above their competitors, research shows. While it isn’t wrong to add more technology, bots and automated chat functions into your customer service mix, it’s a better investment to place your focus on your teams and processes. If every team member is equipped to provide context, speed and accuracy at every customer touchpoint, that’s how you improve service levels and reduce churn rates.

It’s an interesting service landscape right now

The competition to win customers and gain their loyalty has never been so fierce. Customers are willing to look around if they feel they can get better prices and service elsewhere. In their search for speed and efficiency, many customers will pay more to get professional and personalised service – and avoid the time and frustration of poor, disorganised service.

This is placing even more emphasis on the role of customer service teams within companies, and the customer experience that these teams create and oversee.

Consistent customer service excellence

Business longevity has become about consistently providing an excellent customer experience. It’s all about  going on a journey with a business in which they feel heard, valued, and ultimately get the outcome they initially wanted (or a better one!). When the experience or journey is consistently poor or unsatisfactory, this is when businesses will experience high churn rates, and lose customers to more efficient and equipped competitors.

So, with this in mind, how does a business ensure that its customer experience is world-class?

1. Focus on your people 

Your people are your most critical resource when it comes to enhancing customer experience. When recruiting and managing your customer experience teams, the emphasis here should be on upskilling and helping each team to work together more effectively (as opposed to sitting in isolated silos or departments).

The more established and confident these team members are, the more likely they will work together to deliver excellent customer service and have confidence in their individual roles. A high churn rate amongst your customer experience teams will inhibit the company’s efforts, so protecting and growing your own teams is imperative!

2. Encourage empathy with customers

As with any relationship, getting closer to your customers (in order to better serve them) requires gaining insight and understanding. This requires empathy, and a very human ability to listen and have sympathy for the frustrations a customer may be feeling – while also knowing which questions to ask to really understand the issue from a technical perspective.

3. Train and upskill your teams

Training and upskilling your teams is critical, so that each team member is able to capture and understand the context of an inquiry, and action it in such a way that both speed and accuracy is achieved from a technical and resolution perspective. While technology plays an important role here, it is your team members and their ability to demonstrate empathy and understanding that ultimately becomes the cornerstone of excellent customer experience.

4. Use technology to enhance experiences

Once this cornerstone has been built (and is actively nurtured), then employees become empowered to harness technology to have quality conversations with customers – and gain detailed insight into their context by capturing and sharing key data across teams. Technology becomes the vehicle through which skilled teams can ensure that context, speed and accuracy is achieved at every customer touchpoint.

Within any business or sector, sustainability comes down to strong customer relationships, which in turn are shaped by your own people and customer-facing teams. This is why it’s vital to build a culture of trust and empathy from within while always looking to upskill and retain your employees for the long term, and empowering them with world-class technology tools.

Find out how you can create 5-star customer experiences with Telviva’s choice of contact centre solutions. Our experienced professional services team will help you evaluate the best fit for your team.