The customer is your best advertisement
Even if the customer only uses your product once but is satisfied with the service, there is a chance that they will tell their friends about it, providing you with more potential buyers.
Surveys show that as many as 72% of well-served customers are happy to share information about a reliable brand with at least 6 people. However, if the service is unsatisfactory, it may make the whole company suffer — even 13% of anxious customers will tell at least 15 friends about the unpleasant experiences associated with the brand.
The number seems small, but the statistics are inexorable — it turns out that only one in 26 customers will loudly express their dissatisfaction. The rest will leave you without a word — up to 66% of disappointed customers without showing a sign of sentiment goes to the competition which provides a similar product or service.
That’s why it’s so important to constantly analyze and improve the service standards in order to reduce not only the costs but also the number of leaving customers. There is definitely something worth fighting for — winning a new business partner costs about 6-7 times more than maintaining a current one.
According to Gartner, as many as 89% of companies compete with each other not so much with the product as with the quality of service. Especially that new technologies are offering a growing number of contact opportunities. More and more often customers expect a multi-channel service — regardless of how they contact the company, they want the salesperson to know their full history and help them choose the best solution.
Maintaining good customer relations is a key issue and a challenge for any business owner. The whole process seems to be quite complicated and time-consuming, but if you use a CRM system, you are able to master most of the requirements for professional service.
Find out what problems customers point out most often in terms of customer service and how to solve them
1. Long waiting time
You surely know it — sometimes you “hung” on the hotline or sent an e-mail to customer service and did not receive an answer. It is a frustrating experience for a customer who cannot obtain a solution to their problem in a short time. Therefore, if possible, you should shorten the response time as much as possible and systematize the way you contact the customer.
You can certainly use the CRM system for this purpose. If you have Salesforce, the best solution is the Service Cloud product. It will give you all the necessary customer data in one place, which significantly reduces the time it takes to serve the customer. In addition, you can integrate it with your CTI system, so that the salesperson can make calls without even touching the phone.
2. Lack of knowledge about products and services
The worst thing you can say to a customer during a sales call is “I don’t know”. During a conversation with a salesperson, the customer expects full knowledge about the product or service you offer. Ignorance of the subject suggests that you are incompetent. Additionally, it arouses distrust towards the company — if it employs such employees, can you be sure that the product will meet your expectations and address your needs?
It is worth ensuring that each salesman has access to a source from which they can draw knowledge on an ongoing basis — upon entering the right phrase in the search engine. You can create such a “knowledge base” in your CRM system, using the Service Cloud module, which is Knowledge Base. Together with a well-built knowledge base, the system itself will tell the salesperson how to solve the problem. As a result, the salesperson will quickly provide the customer with the necessary information, and you will avoid an image slip-up.
3. Schematic treatment of the customer
Every customer wants to be treated exceptionally, and their matter is always the most urgent. However, if the customer realizes that he was treated “automatically”, he may feel offended. So it’s worth creating such response patterns which, after subtle personalization, will make the customer feel special and help you save time and money, at the same time strengthening the bond between the customer and the company.
Salesforce Service Cloud, which gives you the ability to automate and personalize customer contact through various channels, and access to the 360 view will also allow you to tailor the message to your customer.
4. No after-sale contact
If you want to have a loyal customer, you should continue the relationship after the transaction is completed. Many customers complain that immediately after purchasing a product, the contact with the brand stops. It’s worth ensuring a good follow-up (which we also wrote about in this article – link), and it’s very likely that this short acquaintance will turn into a business friendship.
This is where Salesforce Sales Cloud will prove useful, offering you the entire history of correspondence with the customer in one place. In addition, the right applications from Salesforce AppExchange will not let you forget to send a follow-up e-mail to the customer.
5. No customer history
“Good morning, I’m calling you about X, I’ve already reported it, you should have it in the system…. but how come you don’t? You must be joking?” This is how many conversations with the customer can end if you don’t have the customer’s history. You should know where he came from and how, what he has bought so far, what reports he has made, what e-mails he has written. This information will not only be useful to ensure professional service, but it is also a great source of knowledge about the needs and possibilities of selling other products.
In this case, Salesforce Service Cloud will also prove helpful — thanks to the 360 view you have full insight into the history of the customer so that the consultant will not miss any information about the customer. There’s no need to search for different folders and drives — just one click and everything is in one place.
6. No interest in the customer’s needs
It is important not to put all customers in one bag and treat their needs equally. A long-time customer will have a completely different need than a new one. That’s why you have to be able to recognize and meet it — if you treat the customer according to general standards, trying to “squeeze in” a product that is not adjusted to his needs, you can be sure that he will leave you.
The Service Cloud product gives you a 360-degree view of the customer. You know exactly what he needs, as all the information about the customer is combined and Salesforce Einstein’s artificial intelligence, based on the data collected, will help you to choose the right offer.
7. No contact-enabling tools
One customer prefers chatting, another writes an inquiry on Facebook, and still another will send you a long e-mail asking for detailed information. You know that you can’t have all the channels open at the same time, but if you don’t have support in one of them, you may lose a potential chance to sell. How can you avoid this?
Thanks to the CRM system you can control several communication channels at the same time. In Service Cloud, in one place, you have full access to social media, SMS messages or chat on the website. In this module, you can set appropriate messages, which will be automatically sent to the customer when he starts a conversation. You can also use the support of artificial intelligence – Einstein Sentiment, which identifies the subject matter and tone of the messages coming from different channels. Einstein can divide the messages by context, for example, all requests for changing passwords can be identified as such and directed to the automatic response path.
8. Self-service
There is also the kind of customer who wants to do everything on his own and by himself. Offer him this possibility through the so-called self-service. Many companies do not have this option, so the customer has no other choice but to contact customer service, and this may cause his unnecessary irritation. Provide such customers with the appropriate tools and information about the product, in which they will find answers to the most pressing questions.
In the Salesforce CRM system, you can also set up self-service by simply using the Community Cloud, a great tool offered by Salesforce dedicated to your brand’s customers. Thanks to the service, which you can create in a few days, your customers can check the statuses of their cases, obtain access to the agent through the chat or send an online request. They can even carry out simple customer service processes step-by-step on their own, using the knowledge base built for your agents. And you gain extra time for the salesperson whilst the customer is satisfied with his small success.
9. Organization of the service office work
Frequent mistakes in customer service result from poor work organization. Sloppy procedures, information clutter, and human errors are the reasons why more and more problems arise in connection with customer service. That is why it is so important to observe the principles of cooperation and clarity of information transmitted between departments.
The CRM system is invaluable when planning and controlling this type of work. Thanks to Service Cloud you can create any process in customer service using the point-and-click system. Setting up every step is very simple, and the transparency of the design allows you to quickly implement it into the everyday work of the service department.
Moreover, thanks to Salesforce Field Service, you can eliminate the need for customer contact with the service department. Field Service is a tool dedicated to fieldwork (e.g. fitters or service technicians). It provides the customers with an opportunity to choose the dates of your specialists’ visits, thus helping to organize schedules and collaborating with field workers in general.
Summary
There’s one thing we know for sure — there are no problem-free service departments. The most important thing, however, is to keep problems down to a minimum, and this will be facilitated by the analysis, regularity, and automation of processes. Many of them will be solved through the CRM system, ensuring that you have all the necessary information in one place, and the customer will feel satisfied with your attentive and personalized approach.
