5 Customer Service Best Practices Every Successful Team Follows

To improve customer service, there’s only one place every company should start – meeting customers’ expectations. Today’s consumers have ever-changing and ever-rising customer service expectations, and organizations must meet these expectations if they are to continue growing their business. 

With this in mind, we will look at some customer service best practices that help teams and agents provide this consumer experience. These are the best customer service practices that the most successful teams all follow. For a more in-depth exploration of the customer service landscape, read this complete guide on how to improve customer service in your organization. 

1. Digital prioritization 

Nearly 80% of customers rank convenience among the most important elements of a positive customer experience. To meet the needs of these customers, organizations must be available when and where their customers are. In today’s technology landscape, this means introducing new digital channels for support. 

Compared to traditional channels like phone support, digital channels like live chat, social media, and SMS create less barriers for today’s customers. This shouldn’t be surprising given that, on average, 72% of an organization’s customer interactions have already gone digital. 

Digital channels like Comm100 Live Chat facilitate fast responses for customers. Chat concurrency also means that less support agents are required to handle a comparable number of requests compared to phone. Introducing new digital channels also creates opportunity to explore the other customer service best practices on our list. 

2. Agent assistance 

With digital tools creating new opportunities for customer engagement, the next of our best customer service practices benefits both customers and agents. You may be familiar with chatbots already, but what’s less well known are the many ways that automation in customer service can work alongside agents to provide the best possible customer experience. 

Tools like Agent Assist allow agents to take advantage of automation to speed up responses and cut down on time spent searching for answers. As questions come in, Agent Assist monitors the conversation and provides suggestions for agents. 

Agent Assist benefits both new and experienced agents. The bot guides new agents to accurately answer common requests as they learn a new product. AI tools also provide a quick response to repetitive questions so that experienced agents can spend more time handling complex requests and other duties. All customers see is a fast and accurate response. 

3. SLA policies 

One of the ways that digital channels create new opportunities for support teams is through access to improved team metrics. Customer service software like Comm100 Live Chat can help facilitate the tracking and reporting of agent responses through tools like Service Level Agreement (SLA) policies. 

SLA policies allow organizations to set standards for response and resolution times that can be monitored and communicated to customers. Visual cues for agents help to easily highlight support requests that need immediate attention so that customers aren’t missed, and service standards are maintained. 

With detailed reports available from digital channels around support resolutions, organizations can work toward continuous improvement. 

4. Self-serve options 

Research shows that before reaching out for support, 81% of customers will try to solve matters themselves. This is an opportunity for organizations to produce great self-serve materials that not only satisfy customer needs, but also take load off agents. 

A well developed knowledge base provides a multitude of benefits for support teams. Agent assist can provide agents with recommendations, but automation can also be used to point customers directly to the best articles for their needs. 

Knowledge bases also perform double duty in supporting customers while also training new staff on key support topics and documenting processes. 

5. Personalization 

Customers want to feel that the businesses they frequent both understand and cater to their needs. Thanks to technology today that provides companies with customer insights, customers have come to expect that organizations will anticipate their needs. 76% of customers say that they’re more likely to be loyal to companies that understand them at a personal level. 

To meet this need for personalization, one of the customer service best practices involves using digital customer service tools to provide a truly personalized experience. With live chat and routing, agents are provided with a wealth of information, and customers are directed to the best agent for the job so that they can feel their needs are understood. 

With digital tools available to them, agents can even take advantage of auto chat translation to speak to customers in their preferred language. With the information provided by digital tools, the possibilities for personalization are enough to satisfy even the most demanding customers. 

Further reading 

For more ways to improve customer service in your organization, we’ve collected all our best customer service practices, top tips, and best technology in this complete guide. 

How to Improve Customer Service

Check out this complete guide to improve your customer service operations, exploring the top tips, technology and tools you need for success.

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