To deliver a world class customer experience, companies must monitor customer service.
“Providing an outstanding customer service is a competitive superpower.”
Not only can hard won reputations be destroyed in an instant, a consistently fantastic offering will help convert one time customers into repeat buyers and long term brand advocates.
But how to make sure your service is better than the competition?
How to ensure you stand out as a retailer who truly cares and new and existing customers alike?
Here are 6 easy tips to introduce as you monitor customer service across your own operation.
How To Monitor Customer Service
Identify Customer Priorities
You can’t effectively monitor customer service without knowing exactly what your clients deem important or what they believe constitutes a positive experience.
Only when you have this knowledge can you fully understand how to evaluate and improve their experience.
“90% of customers would make repeat purchases or positive referrals with a company that offers great customer service.”
Therefore, a crucial first step is to engage with customers, find out what they value and implement a process that caters for their needs. All whilst balancing internal energy and efficiency.
Establish Goals & Targets
Before you begin monitoring customer service, you’ll need to establish what the end goal is.
After all, how can you be sure you’re providing the best support offering to your clients if you aren’t tracking key customer service metrics?
“Tracking the essential customer service metrics, at the very minimum, will allow you to make better informed business decisions.”
By monitoring the right data points, across both the operational and organisational aspects of a customer service function, you can ensure that the service you provide is of the highest calibre.
Likewise, pre-determining desired levels will allow you to showcase both progress toward and attainment of your ultimate customer service goals and targets.
To help get the ball rolling, Anthill identified 15 essential customer service metrics for you to track.
Isolate Root Causes
To fully assess performance, companies need to be gathering data across every level of the customer experience.
It’s one thing to gather the data but another level entirely to interrogate, analyse and evaluate the results.
This is where root cause analysis can help turn a good business into a great business.
Instead of firefighting issues when they arise, or tackling the same problems time and time again, root cause analysis allows a customer service team to understand what happened, why it happened and how to prevent it from ever happening again.
Ultimately, it helps people go beyond the issue itself and answer the question of why the problem occurred.
Supplemented through external benchmarking, getting to the bottom of an outcome, whether positive or negative, is essential to effectively monitor customer service.
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Diversify Your Channels
Customer expectations continue to grow; with the example set by industry leading retailers contributing to a rise in demand for seamless experiences.
Yet as organisations expand, it places greater pressure on the resources at their disposal.
And businesses can’t afford to let standards slip in a world where customer experience is so highly valued.
Moving to a customer first approach is why it’s important to know the level of service provided, irrespective of the channel.
No matter how you engage with new or existing customers, service levels must remain outstanding. Likewise, channels should be chosen in line with customer preferences.
You need to occupy the same spaces.
Adopting such an omnichannel approach can help organisations to monitor customer service and have a complete bird’s-eye view of delivery.
Utilise Customer Feedback
Knowing how customers perceive your business is key to your success. But it’s not always as simple as asking for a 1-10 score then abandoning the results.
The value of customer feedback is unending.
No other source of information enables you to unearth otherwise unknown issues or serve your customers quite like hearing directly from those who engage with your business.
Feedback is the window to understanding what it is about your products or services your customers most like.
A veritable gold mine of how to level up internally and improve your offering to maximise external enjoyment.
“If companies can successfully identify what their customers find important, they can react faster, more flexibly, and more effectively to both changes in the market, and customer expectations and needs.”
You should engage with your customers that regularly take the time to tell you how you’re doing, and be quick to respond to valuable insights – both positive and negative.
Only then can you monitor current levels and mould your future offering in line with demands and expectations.
Standardise Quality
The success of a customer service function is ultimately reliant on delivering an outstanding experience, 100% of the time.
By implementing your researched, data validated, customer approved best practice processes, you can ensure that no matter who, where or why a customer interacts with your business, there is a positive outcome.
By having everyone pulling in this same direction, growth opportunities begin to be taken advantage of as your whole team are focussed entirely on following the steps required to hit target.
As a result, your customers are happy beneficiaries of an ever improving customer service operation.
Interested to explore how Anthill can help your customer journey mapping capabilities? Schedule a demo today.
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- January 26th, 2023