What is Customer Service?
What is Customer Service?
Customer service is gaining more importance every day. In a digital-first and highly competitive world, providing timely and helpful service to customers has become more critical than ever. In the past, companies competed based on price and product quality. However, Gartner's data shows that "89% of businesses expect to compete primarily based on customer experience."
Customer service plays a vital role in creating extraordinary customer experiences and increasing revenues. Whether through email, SMS, social media, or telephone; being everywhere your customers are and helping them solve their problems should be the primary priority of every organization. But what exactly is customer service? What does the term "customer service" mean?
Here are the basic topics you need to know to get started:
Definition of customer service
What is the difference between customer service and customer support?
Why is customer service essential for your business?
What are some tips for providing good customer service?
About Us: FCS builds 24/7 communication bridges between your brand and your customers by providing customized and cost-effective call center services to businesses in different sectors.
What is Customer Service?
Customer service is the assistance you provide to your customers before and after purchasing your products or services to make their interactions with your business easy and enjoyable.
However, today, customer service represents much more than just solving a customer's problems and fulfilling their requests. Today, customer service means helping them instantly and proactively through their preferred method, such as telephone, email, SMS, live chat, and similar channels.
Due to this great importance, customer service is now seen as a critical role for businesses in every sector. The vast majority of retailers consider this direct interaction as the most important way to satisfy customers and encourage them to shop again. Three-quarters of customer representatives state that their employers see them not just as employees, but also as "brand ambassadors."
Although automated self-service platforms handle a large portion of customer service requests today, most firms still see the opportunity to communicate with a real person as an indispensable element.
Customer Service and Customer Support: What is the Difference?
Some businesses use the terms "customer service" and "customer support" similarly. So, what exactly is the difference between these two concepts?
Customer support is only a part of customer service, covering multi-channel communication between representatives and customers.
Customer service is a way to build strong relationships and gain loyalty throughout the customers' entire lifecycle. This holistic approach offers helpful solutions and guidance throughout the customer's buying journey.
In contrast, customer support focuses on directly improving the customer experience by offering direct technical/practical help and follow-up processes, rather than just completing a transaction.
Let's look more closely at why customer service is so important for your business.
Why is Customer Service Important?
To summarize in one word: Loyalty. Customers with high satisfaction are more inclined to continue doing business with you, which directly increases your net profitability. Retaining an existing customer is always much less costly than acquiring a new one.
Customer service is the biggest differentiator that sets your brand apart from competitors offering similar products or services. Service personnel not only answer questions but also personalize every interaction for that customer. 80% of customers think that how a company makes them feel is as important as the products or services it offers.
On the other hand, negative customer experiences directly accelerate customer loss. For example, 80% of buyers will stop working with that brand after only three negative experiences. The quality of your customer service is decisive for your brand's reputation, and today customers are ready at any moment to share their bad experiences with the whole world via the internet.
Tips for Providing Good Customer Service
If you are wondering how you can increase your company's customer service quality, we have gathered 5 effective methods for your business to offer better support to its customers:
1. Exceed Your Customers' Expectations
Customers prefer self-service options that allow them to solve their problems quickly and easily. However, when this is not an option or the problem is too complex, they want to speak with a customer representative who is an expert in their field and knowledgeable. This sounds very obvious, but many businesses fail to meet this basic expectation and disappoint their customers.
2. Make it Easy to Get Feedback and Take Action
An overwhelming majority of customers (90%) want to provide feedback to brands. However, almost half of those surveyed (48%) believe that companies do not take their suggestions seriously. To prevent this quite concerning trend, it is critically important to simplify feedback channels and take action based on these returns.
3. Respond Timely
You should set ideal response times specific to the communication channel you use. While a live chat system on your website requires an almost instant response, responding to an email can take up to two days. Research shows that 53% of customers expect a response to a tweet they sent to a company within one hour at the latest. When it comes to customer complaints, 73% of people hope to get a response at the same speed.
4. Be Proactive
Stop waiting for customers to reach out to you with their problems or questions. On the contrary, you take the first step; reach out to them to ask how processes are going and offer guidance on issues they might need.
5. Offer Self-Service and Contactless Solutions
In fact, 66% of consumers try to solve the problem on their own (self-service) before contacting a customer representative. Yet, they often cannot reach a solution due to insufficient information provided or a massive pile of information without an effective search engine. Offer your customers organized self-service portals where they can easily find what they are looking for.
Provide Extraordinary Customer Service with First Contact Service
Nowadays, in their interactions with companies providing customer service, all control and power are in the customer's hands. Therefore, ensuring their success and satisfaction is entirely the responsibility of customer representatives. Remember, increasing the success of your customers will directly contribute to the growth and profitability of your business. You can accelerate your business's growth by outsourcing your call and communication services to professionals.
First Contact Service (FCS) is here to help you!
First Contact Service builds a solid bridge of trust between you and your customers on behalf of your brand. With FCS’s professional corporate call center services, you can both satisfy your customers at all times and save on operational costs.
Thanks to our expert solutions, we collect, monitor, and analyze customer service data, turning it into new market opportunities for your business. We analyze customer behavior and offer innovative strategies that will help your company grow.
To make a difference in customer experience, contact us immediately!