How Technology Can Help Businesses to Increase Customer Satisfaction
Customer service is important to businesses of all sizes. Its quality will either enhance or degrade customer loyalty to your brand and business. Today, customers have more choices than ever so it’s vital for you to be responsive to their questions, complaints, and needs if you want to obtain a clear competitive advantage. Fortunately, there are technologies you can use that will help you anticipate your customers’ needs so you can tailor your business processes to best serve them and ultimately improve its efficiency, which will help you keep costs down.
Giving Customers What They Want, When They Want It
Inc. says when it comes to customer interaction your goal should be to generate loyalty. The best way to do this is to offer high-quality products and services and be responsive to your customers. Today there are new technologies available that make it easier for you to do this. At the same time, these technologies are also increasing the number of channels through which your business can interact with your customers, making such interactions increasingly more complex. Some of the ways this technology can help you serve your customers better include:
- Collecting data and analytics from your customers helps you understand their preferences so you can more effectively market your products or services to them
- Streamlining and automating your business processes makes them more efficient while keeping costs low
- Finding ways for customers to interact with your business when they want allows you to deliver better service.
- Include a feedback form so customers can get in touch with you right away.
A lot of this has to do with getting to know your customer so you can provide them with the best service possible. You don’t want to run around tapping various databases to get the full picture. Instead, you should use a configuration management database (CMDB) so you quickly get an aggregated, data-rich view. This will quickly tell you what your customers do and how they do it.
Replace Your Traditional Phone System
Replacing your traditional phone system with a VOIP business phone system is a great way to make sure that your customers are immediately answered when they call. This is an important part of leaving a good opinion of your business in your customers’ minds. Things like the quality of service, hold times, and being transferred to the correct department right away all play a vital role here. Failure to do any of these things will frustrate your customer, making them seek their products or services elsewhere. However, with a VOIP phone system you’ll offer them many great benefits. That some of these benefits include:
- Improved response times that give you a major advantage over your competition because now your sales team has more time to forge relationships with current clients while also working to create new leads.
- Open lines of communication make your clients feel more comfortable. This is easier for your sales team to do when you integrate your VOIP with your CRM solution because now they have immediate access to your client’s information – including previous call records. Additionally, this serves to shorten your customers’ hold times, which they’ll also appreciate.
- Your sales team will appreciate the additional flexibility they receive from using a VOIP phone service. Now they can work from home or anywhere else without any interruptions because most VOIP phone services contain an app they can use to make calls from their cell phones. These apps mask your employees’ personal phone number while also being integrated with your CRM and email. Your customers will benefit here because now they can always rely on receiving consistent, personalized attention from your employees when they need to reach them throughout the business day. They won’t be delayed so their satisfaction and loyalty will increase as you work to build better relationships in this way.
- Making sales calls is easier because now your employees’ can simply click on a link within their email and quickly dial a client’s phone number. They don’t need to take a second step like opening their contacts, CRM or phone directory to find the number before dialing it.
These benefits grow in number as you integrate your VOIP and CRM systems – providing you with a whole new range of workforce solutions. They’ll grow even further when you start using cloud-based productivity suite solutions (e.g. G Suite) and productivity management software (e.g. Prodoscore) too. One thing you’ll notice is that your employees will become much more productive. This is because they have a lot of tools available for them to use in developing a better understandingof their customers. In doing so they can also develop more meaningful relationships with each customer they interact with, while still being able to give them the attention they deserve so they feel like they’re valuable. Your procedures also become streamlined in such a way that your employees can make, answer, and log calls; send and receive emails; and manage social media channels all from one integrated workplace solution. This goes a long way towards customer satisfaction too.
Clearly, the point can be made that VoIP telephone systems are one of the best ways to improve customer service and satisfaction. They increaseyour sales team’s response times because they can now contact customers faster and more efficiently since they no longer must wait until they return to their office to do so.
Don’t Forget About Social Media
You can’t afford to forget about social media. This is a great way to reach out to your customers 24/7 without being overbearing. By sharing blog posts, webinars, infographics, and how-to videos you can connect with your customers in a way that your customers prefer. This lets your customers to come to you, which is the best way to acquire and retain new customers.
Clearly there are many things you can do to improve customer satisfaction today. Fortunately, these are easy as implement some new forms of technology. Taking the time to do so will also make your own employees happier because they can perform their jobs with greater ease.
