Leadership Talk: The Modern State of Customer Support

The customer service industry has undergone a revolution these last few years—teams have embraced remote and hybrid operations as standard, and sophisticated contact center technology has enabled businesses to push beyond the established limits of customer support.

We sat down with Renu Yadav, the head of customer support of the #1-rated cloud communications platform on the market, for a candid discussion about the modern state of customer support and the evolution of technology trends within the industry.​

Contacto: How has the landscape of the Customer Support industry evolved in the past few years, and what key factors were most impactful?

Renu: Significantly.

Ten years ago, phone support was the only option because businesses just wanted to have people that customers can talk to. Now there are so many choices that if a business makes it hard to get help, customers will take their business elsewhere.

Support is not limited to just phone or email support. Customers are now using multiple channels to interact with businesses, including live chat, and social media. Social media is no longer just a marketing platform, it has become a major channel for customers to interact with businesses.

There is also a need to have a global approach to support, and they need to be able to provide support in multiple languages and time zones.

AI and automation are being used to automate tasks, such as answering FAQs and answering routine questions. This frees up support agents to focus on resolving more complex issues.

There is a shift from transactional, reactive support to proactive, personalized, and experience-driven support. It is no longer seen as a cost center, but rather as an opportunity to differentiate from competitors and build customer loyalty.

Support is moving to a strategic department, capable of driving improvements across the business.

What are the biggest challenges that Customer Support reps face today, and how can they be overcome?

Renu: The responsibilities of a support agent look very different compared to a few years ago. Support teams are not required to just follow processes and perform routine tasks. Those can be achieved via automation. They need to come up with customized and tailored solutions to resolve issues faster.

• Keeping up with product changes: Companies and products are rapidly innovating and updating their offerings. Support agents need to stay current with the latest product features and changes. Regular product training, refreshers, and product assessments can help support teams stay updated with product changes. At Plivo, we also review ticket trends to plan out refreshers on a biweekly basis.
• Meeting rising customer expectations: Today’s customers expect fast, personalized support. Customers value getting their issues resolved in their first interaction with the support team. However, this can be a challenge if the issue is complex or if the representative doesn’t have the right information or authority to resolve it. To address this, companies can empower their representatives with the right resources, enable them with decision-making tools, and streamline their escalation processes. Cultivating a customer-centric culture across the organization can help align all departments toward meeting and exceeding customer expectations.
• Working remotely: While remote work has impacted everyone, the impact is more on teams that need to work in groups. It was way easier to train, identify ticket trends, outages, coordinate with other stakeholders, manage escalations, and even get help on any issues in real-time. The shift to remote work has brought new challenges for customer support representatives, such as isolation, burnout, and communication difficulties. This can be mitigated by promoting a strong remote work culture, encouraging regular communication and team-building activities like off-work catchups so that the teams get to build a rapport and not all discussions are work-related.

Overcoming these challenges often requires a combined approach of people, process, and technology.

In your opinion, what are the most important qualities or skills that a customer support rep should possess to excel in their role?

Renu: That’s a great question, one that when I am interviewing candidates for my team I always like to ask. From my perspective, the most important skills vary by customer and situation:

• Resilience, empathy, and patience: Dealing with customer complaints and issues can be stressful, and not every interaction is positive. Resilience and the ability to handle stress are key to maintaining a positive attitude and a high level of service. So is the ability to understand and share the feelings of customers. Customers often reach out when they are frustrated or upset, and an empathetic response can help calm them down and assure them that their concerns are being taken seriously.
• Time management skills: Unlike other teams, Support work is not project/timeline based. It’s the number of calls/tickets they can handle in a day. This number is not stable and keeps changing on a day-to-day basis. They need to be able to prioritize and juggle multiple tasks at the same time. So time management is a crucial skill.
• Business communication: Representatives need the ability to explain complex solutions in simple terms, as well as deep attention to detail to ensure they don’t miss any critical points while debugging an issue.
• Teamwork: Support is often a team effort, and representatives need to work well with their colleagues to solve customer issues, share knowledge, and improve service processes.
• Problem-solving & decision-making skills: Support teams also need to be able to think critically and come up with effective solutions to customer problems. This is becoming more and more critical in today’s fast-paced world. Agents are expected to be quick on their feet and able to come up with innovative solutions.

With that said, how can the right tool elevate a customer support representative’s ability to properly address a customer’s needs?

Renu: Without the right tool, a support rep would have to do way more work than necessary. In the right hands, an effective tool can:

• Streamline routine tasks: Things such as ticket assignment to representatives, tracking the status of tickets, and adding options to have views on which tickets need to be prioritized. This frees up representatives’ time so that they can focus on resolving issues.
• Provide a comprehensive view of the customer: Tools that integrate with various channels and systems can provide a comprehensive view of the customer. This includes the customer’s history, preferences, and previous interactions. This information can help representatives provide personalized and informed support.
• Collect feedback from customers: Tools that allow customers to provide feedback can help organizations understand how their customers are experiencing their support. This feedback can be used to improve the support process and make it more customer-centric.
• Provide a knowledge base or FAQ section: An detailed knowledge base or FAQ section can help customers find answers to their questions without having to contact a support representative.
• Enable collaboration and escalation: Tools should also enable collaboration and escalation. This can help ensure that issues are escalated to the appropriate people when necessary.
• Offer in-depth reporting and analytics: A support tool should not only be able to generate basic reports but also have the ability to create custom reports that can help organizations analyze customer interactions and identify trends. This data can be used in so many powerful ways.

With the rise of self-service options and automation, how do you see the role of Customer Support representatives evolving in the near and distant future?

Renu: It will have both positive and negative impacts, right?

The size of the teams will become smaller and smaller. AI and automation will be expected to handle routing queries. So the agents will be required to work on complex problems that require a human touch.

At the same time, the work is becoming more challenging so the focus going forward will be on the quality of teams and not the size of the teams.

Support is evolving from transactional to consultative support, from handling simple issues to resolving complex problems, and from being order takers to being customer advocates. They are now expected to be product experts who can help customers solve problems and help differentiate between competition.

Representatives are now tasked with resolving more complex issues which require them to think critically and creatively to solve problems. The insights gained from support interactions with customers influence product development, marketing, and other areas of the business.

These changes will free representatives from routine tasks and enable them to focus on the complex, challenging aspects of customer support that require a human touch but this also means that support agents will need to be committed to continual learning and adaptation.

So the overall contributions of the support teams will become increasingly valuable.

How do you think the increasing importance of customer experience and satisfaction has shaped the Customer Support industry, and what steps should companies take to prioritize these areas?

Renu: From a business perspective, it is not just important to get a customer on contract, it is more critical to retain the customer. That is where customer experience and satisfaction play a huge role. Companies can use customer support to differentiate themselves in a crowded market, and foster customer loyalty, and positive word-of-mouth.

Any company looking to prioritize customer experience and satisfaction within their business should:

• Understand customer expectations: Regularly survey customers, monitor feedback, and stay abreast of market trends to understand what customers expect from their support experience.
• Implement the right technology: Leverage technology to automate routine tasks, provide omnichannel support, personalize customer interactions, and gain insights from customer data.
• Measure the right metrics: Look beyond traditional efficiency metrics (like average handle time) and measure metrics that reflect the quality of the customer experience, such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES).
• Foster a customer-centric culture: Make customer satisfaction a company-wide goal. All departments, not just customer support, should understand their role in contributing to the customer experience.
• Review and improve: Regularly review your customer support operations and use customer feedback and data to identify areas for improvement. This process of continuous improvement is crucial in maintaining a high-quality customer experience.

With more options available to customers than ever before, how have customer expectations changed over the past few years?

Renu: Customers today expect businesses to provide instant, 24/7, multi-channel support with self-service options and transparency.

• Customers expect more convenience: Customers today are accustomed to getting what they want when they want it, and how they want it. This means that businesses need to offer convenient customer support options, such as 24/7 support, live chat, and self-service options.
• Customers expect more personalization: Customers today expect a personalized experience, and this is no different in customer support. Businesses are using data and analytics to personalize their customer support interactions, tailoring them to the individual customer’s needs and preferences. This can help to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Customers expect more transparency: Customers today want to be kept informed about the status of their issue and what is being done to resolve it. Businesses need to be transparent with their customers and communicate with them throughout the customer support process.
• Customers expect more empathy: Customers today want to feel like they are being heard and understood. Businesses need to be empathetic to their customers and understand their frustration. This will help to build trust and rapport with customers.
• Customers expect more speed: Customers today expect their issues to be resolved quickly. Businesses need to be responsive and resolve customer issues as quickly as possible.

Can you share any insight on the use of data and analytics in customer support? How can data-driven approaches enhance the overall customer experience?

Renu: Data is huge right now. And I am not talking about customer data. I am talking about issue data and ticket data. If used the right way, there is so much key information to be pulled:

• What kind of issues do we receive on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?
• What product are we facing the most issues on?
• Are there any enhancements required in the product?
• Which support channel do customers find most convenient?
• To track escalations.
• To find which customers are raising the most queries.
• What are our response and resolution times?
• What training do we need to create for our teams?
• How satisfied are our customers?

By using data, support can move from a reactive function to a strategic one, capable of driving improvements across the business.

What channels do you personally find to be the most effective for resolving the support needs of your customers?

Renu: The effectiveness of different customer support channels depends on the nature of the customer’s issue and the customer’s preferences. Phone support is not a great tool for customers if they need to be put on hold for a long time. On the other hand, though, email support won’t necessarily be the best tool for customers who have an urgent issue that needs to be looked into immediately.

In my opinion, using a combination of tools can ensure that businesses are able to provide support that meets the needs of all of their customers.

Self-service options are a great way to reduce the number of queries coming to support agents and allow them to focus on more complex problems. I also think that it is important to build an extensive FAQ section so that customers can easily find answers to common questions.

I also think that chatbots and AI can be valuable tools for customer support. They can provide instant, 24/7 support for simple inquiries or issues, and they can also gather initial information before escalating more complex issues to human agents.

I have one final question for you before I let you go. If you had one feature on your customer support tool wishlist, what would that be and why?

Renu: It would be the ability to integrate with other tools and systems. This would allow customer support representatives to have a single view of the customer, which would make it easier to resolve issues and provide better support.

For example, if a customer has a problem with their order, the customer support representative could see the customer’s order history, shipping information, and payment information. This would allow the representative to quickly identify the issue and resolve it.

The ability to create custom reports is a close second. It is not enough to only work on issues and meet KPIs. It is also essential to find trends and patterns. This can help in so many ways, such as improving product offerings, streamlining processes, reducing response and resolution times, collaborating with internal teams, and so on.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with us—it sounds like you and your team are doing some amazing things at Plivo with the tools available to you. I look forward to speaking with you again soon!

Renu: Of course, my pleasure!

What is Call Quality? How to Monitor it in Your Contact Center

These days, contact center managers can find answers to questions about call strategy with a much more analytically rigorous approach than a reflection on their personal experience.  

Thanks to the proliferation of cloud contact center solutions, collecting and analyzing conversational data from calls between customers and agents has never been easier.

With call recordings and call metrics, contact center managers can routinely identify low-quality calls, listen to them, spot weaknesses, and help the agent and team address these shortcomings through personalized training plans and alterations to call processes and scripts.  

In this article, we’ll explain what call quality is, why monitoring it is so essential for contact centers, and how busy managers can do it efficiently and intelligently with the help of technology.

What is Call Quality?

Call quality is a measure of the effectiveness of phone call conversations between a business’s contact center agents and its customers.

Each contact center has its own set of standards that determine call quality. But, in general, high-quality conversations are those in which the contact center agent is polite and helpful and leaves the customer satisfied with a clear solution to their problem.

Call quality monitoring, on the other hand, is the ongoing process of gathering data about customer service phone calls and analyzing that data to find ways to improve a contact center’s performance.

Importance of Call Quality Monitoring in a Contact Center

When customer service has such a large effect on customer experience, sales, and customer retention, contact center managers have to work towards optimizing their team’s performance on the phones, and call quality monitoring is the most effective way to do that. The following analogy will explain why.

A top-tier sports coach adjusts their training regiment based on the weaknesses they perceive through closely observing players in action. They know that assigning dribbling practice to a forward with already dizzying foot skills is a failure to use training time as efficiently as possible.

The contact center manager must follow the same coaching strategy in order to consistently improve agent performance. They have to uncover the various weaknesses of each agent, as well as the overall team, through effective call quality monitoring.

By identifying shortcomings in how agents handle calls, the manager can give personalized training assignments or reference material to agents, such as a specific technical white paper or objection handling script.

Managers can also change their contact center processes to eliminate the shortcoming across the entire team.

For example, after diving into contact center analytics, you might find that calls tend to fail when customers ask about “technical issue X”. You could then educate their agents on that product problem and update the call script with language they can easily reference mid-call.

How Contact/Call Center Teams can Monitor Call Quality

The ultimate aim of call quality monitoring is to increase agent performance by identifying weaknesses in call handling and then implementing corrective action.

To monitor call quality, contact center managers set up systems to collect and analyze information about customer interactions to uncover insights about how to improve customer service.

They may use the following to collect information about customer calls:

• Call recordings
• Customer surveys
• Social media mentions
• Data from other channels — live chat, email, etc.

To visualize this in practice, imagine that you record all of the agents’ phone calls, along with the customer survey results about those conversations, in a contact center platform.

Whenever a customer leaves a poor review, you listen to the phone call with the agent, pinpoint the reasons why the call failed, and then instruct the agent on how to improve next time around.

If the issue is common enough, you may also update your team’s standard operating procedures or script to prevent it from happening again. You might also share the advice you gave the individual agent to the entire team in a team meeting.

As you can imagine, call quality monitoring gets tricky when there is a large number of calls to track. It’s impossible to listen to all of them, and difficult to tease out the most common flaws in agent call handling.  With that in mind, here are some best practices to follow to ensure you monitor call quality efficiently:

Automate Call Data Collection & Analysis

Call data consists of call recordings, live metrics, historical reporting, and other call-related metrics like average handle time (AHT).

Many companies use a cloud contact center solution to capture this data automatically during conversations. The software also helps them analyze that data, making it easier to identify calls that failed, as well as why they failed.

In sum, automating data collection and analysis with the right software is an essential step in creating a systematic approach to call quality monitoring.

Listen Critically to the Recordings

On their own, the metrics you collect through automation won’t give you the entire picture of how the agent, or your process, is falling short.

To truly understand the nature of the problem, you need to listen to call recordings, asking questions like the following:

• Is the agent following the script?
• What causes customer friction? Are there certain talking points that come before it?
• What types of questions is the agent asking?
• When does the call seem to fall apart?
• Were there any missed opportunities to provide clarity?
• Is it evident that the agent is lacking some fundamental knowledge about the product?

A close, critical listen to an agent’s conversation with a customer can uncover subtle issues with the agent’s technique that you can help them overcome to unlock their true potential.

Track the Impact of New Processes

Whenever you implement a new call handling process or make changes to your script, it’s crucial that you track the impact of that shift. That way, you’ll come to know if your plan is actually paying off, or if you need to go back to the drawing board.

To track the impact, compare team-wide metrics like average handle time or average CSAT from before and after the implementation. Ask yourself whether there is a significant bump in these numbers. If it’s succeeding, great job. If not, you may have misdiagnosed the issue.

Conclusion

Monitoring call quality with an eye toward improvement in agent performance is an essential practice for leaders in contact centers. Only through ongoing call quality measurement and analysis can true progress occur.

If you’re looking for a tool that will help you monitor call quality and bolster agent performance with features like call whispering and agent dashboards, check out how PlivoCX can help.

Call Queuing: Benefits, Best Practices, and How It Works

If people get frustrated waiting in lines for something as fun as a roller coaster ride at an amusement park, imagine their agitation while waiting to speak with a vendor about technical issues and billing errors. Yikes.

As humans, patience is not our strong suit, especially when it comes to things we don’t necessarily enjoy in the first place. But, fortunately, we have tools and technologies at our disposal to alleviate the challenges or frustrations associated with customer service experiences.

These days, businesses have access to call queuing technology that ensures their customers can quickly reach an agent and have a satisfactory experience.

We’re here to offer you the basics of call queuing—how it works, why it’s so effective, and best practices for managing it.

What is call queuing?

Call queuing allows callers to virtually wait in line for their turn to speak with a customer service representative. This call queuing system allows contact centers to follow the social rule of first come, first served, mimicking what would occur in a physical place of business.

Implemented correctly with the right technology, call queuing leads to happier customers, more satisfied agents, and lower call-abandonment rates.

How does call queuing work in a contact center?

When a customer calls into a contact center, the call-queue feature assigns them a spot in line where they wait on hold, often listening to music, until it’s their turn to speak with an agent. This process is mostly consistent across systems—the specifics of the call-queue process, however, depend on which technologies the business uses.

For example, some cloud-based contact centers have a feature called automated callback, which enables the customer the option to hang up without losing their spot in the queue. When the customer reaches the front of the line, the phone software automatically calls them back and connects them with an agent.

Many call-queue software tools utilize an automated voice message to greet callers and tell them their spot in the line or the expected wait time. This gives customers a sense of control and helps to manage expectations—without this feature, 60% of customers are likely to abandon the call within the 2-5 minute range.

Five ways call queuing benefits your business

There are many benefits to using call queuing in your contact center, all of which lead to greater revenue numbers and lower customer churn for your business.

• Reduce customer wait time: IVR technology, a necessity for effective call queueing, routes customers to agents based on factors such as: availability, skill or specialty, region or time zone, language, and others. This distributes calls evenly and appropriately among agents and can significantly reduce average handle time.
• Keep customers engaged: Call-queuing software enables you to upload music files, greetings, and other messages to entertain or educate the customer during the wait.
• Improve brand loyalty: Customers are grateful to businesses that prioritize their time. They take it as a gesture of respect and value.
• Lower call abandonment: When customers can visualize how long the line is in front of them, they can more easily handle the wait. The automated callback feature makes it so they don’t even have to stay on the line.
• Increase customer satisfaction: Aside from shortening the wait, call-queueing software also often uses intelligent call routing to send customers to agents best equipped to answer their inquiry, which leads to faster resolution.

Call queuing isn’t just about keeping current customers happy—it’s also effective for securing new ones. If a new customer calls your business and then abandons the call because they cannot reach a service agent, it’s unlikely they’ll ever call back. They’ll take their business to a competitor instead.

Software for call queuing can reduce call abandonment rates via various features and therefore ensure that you avoid losing new, interested leads who call your business.

4 best practices of call queue management

Call queueing needs to be set up appropriately using the right software to effectively reduce the wait for your customers. Let’s go over four best practices for call queue management.  

Provide self-service options to reduce the queue

The fewer people there are in line, the faster the queue moves. Find an omnichannel contact center solution that enables you to offer self-service options to your customers, such as chatbots and interactive voice response (IVR).

That way, customers with simple questions can get their answers quickly without calling your contact center and taking up a spot in the line that could go to a customer with a more complex issue.

Always use an IVR system

Most contact center solutions with call queuing offer an IVR system, which automatically greets inbound calls with an automated voice message and, based on caller input, routes them to the right department, team, or skill group.  

You’ve likely been on the customer end of an IVR system before. The system begins by prompting you to select from a list of options (“dial 1 for customer service, 2 for sales”, etc.). Then, based on your response, it routes the call to the right department, where you may have to wait in a queue.

Or, if the question is a simple one like “what are the business hours,” the IVR can provide the caller with an answer, thereby eliminating their need to wait in line and shortening the queue for other customers.

Set up automated callbacks

Automated callback is a feature that allows customers to maintain their place in line without staying on the phone call. Depending on how costs are structured for outbound calling, businesses may opt to only use this feature during peak call volume periods.

If the customer opts into an automated callback, the phone system software will keep track of their spot, and when an agent becomes available, automatically place the outbound call.

Minimize customers’ hold time

According to HubSpot, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response to a customer service question as being extremely important to their experience.  One of the best ways to reduce hold time and get customers the fast service they want is to improve agent productivity.

Alongside call queuing, a cloud contact center solution will give your agents tools that enable them to more effectively handle customer calls, from call whispering to a unified agent dashboard - where they can review the customer’s details and past conversations, call scripting, and conversation analytics.

Conclusion

Customers just can’t stand waiting in line, so it’s essential that your business uses call queuing in your contact center to shorten the wait time or at least make it less painful.

If you’re looking for a tool that offers not only call queuing but also IVR, automated callbacks, and other features that help you improve your call handle time, check out PlivoCX, a cloud contact center platform that’s easy to use.

Why do businesses need ticketing software?

In today’s hyper-personalized market, customers are seeking to be understood. Quick resolution, regardless of the issue, and emotionally intelligent service staff are paramount to small and medium business success. Investing in tools that facilitate an efficient agent experience and a frictionless customer experience will elevate your business.

To accomplish this, consider your ticketing or customer relationship management (CRM) software and how well (if at all) it can integrate with your customer service software. In the short term, your customer service staff need to solve customer issues fast. Looking at the midterm, you need to track customer interactions with your brand and derive insights from those interactions. Monitoring patterns of customer behavior and agent “hacks” or workarounds to overcome points of friction in your systems and workflows can make a huge difference in customer experience. From a long-term strategy viewpoint, the insights from one quarter can inform forecasting to scale staffing, product, or support activities in the next.

In any case, a ticketing system coupled with a customer service solution will help enable you to find where customer relationships can improve and to position your business for continued growth.

Benefits of integrating your ticketing system and contact center

Consider critical tools used in other areas of your business: accounting software, inventory management, point of sale, and so on, each to manage a certain function of your business and give you insight as to what is happening. A ticketing system helps you manage internal or external issues that need resolution. For external customer interactions, that ticketing system coupled with an integrated contact center platform or customer service workspace will enable you to receive, process, and resolve customer inquiries. With robust integration between these two systems, the following are just a few examples of the benefits:

• Single source of truth and synchronized data across systems
• Efficient and effective business processes
• Improved agent experience and satisfaction
• Reduced duplication and errors
• Insights for agent coaching
• Historical data to inform forward-looking strategy

Who would benefit from integrating ticketing system and contact center

In general, any business that interfaces with customers would benefit from a ticketing system. Some signs or symptoms indicating you might need to make the investment could be:

• You frequently apologize for not getting back to customers
• Email is your customer service system
• Currently you have no way to calculate average issue-resolution time

If you currently have dedicated staff or agents for customer service inquiries and you do not have a ticketing system, your business is a prime candidate.

For support teams utilizing a multichannel approach—meaning your contact channels (phone, email, text, WhatsApp) are distinct or siloed, or you have to “swivel chair” from system to system to manage communications on each channel—a unified omnichannel customer service platform integrated with a ticketing system can be a game-changer for your business.

Contact center features to look for when integrating with ticketing systems

For businesses that are just beginning to unify and mature their customer service—perhaps from that multichannel approach to an omnichannel approach—or for businesses that are evaluating a system upgrade or replacement for their long-standing customer service practice, there are really two primary features to consider:

• API integration: Does the ticketing system provide an application programming interface (API) that can integrate with your customer service workbench?
• Automations: Are time-saving automations possible with my customer service, e.g., callbacks, sending reminders or notifications, queues, and routing

Why Contacto’s integration with ticketing systems can help

When considering the benefits of this type of integration, those most directly impacted are undoubtedly the customer and the agent. But simply tracking issues is not enough. You need a system to interface with customers and track those interactions for internal use. Let’s take a look at how a ticketing system coupled with a contact center can not only alleviate pain points, but offer added value as well.

Customer

Above customer satisfaction and net promoter score, customer effort has the most direct impact to top line revenue. The following pain/gain approach illustrates the benefits of various customer conversation channels coupled with a ticketing system:

Agent

Streamlined agent workflow makes efficient use of precious time and resources and increases agent satisfaction as a result. There are many agent experience enhancements a business might prioritize, but we recommend the following as the top two pain points to alleviate:  

Conclusion

No matter where you are on the journey to improving, scaling, or maturing your customer service motion, a ticketing solution coupled with a contact center platform will drastically improve your business workflows, employee performance, and customer satisfaction.  

Improving the ecommerce customer experience

Why customer service is especially crucial in ecommerce

Customer service is important in almost every industry for improving the customer experience. In fact, data from Microsoft shows that 95% of consumers think customer service is important for brand loyalty.

However, customer service is especially important for ecommerce businesses. In ecommerce, the customer service agents are often the first and only people at the company with whom customers interact.

It’s not like real estate or SaaS where a buyer develops a strong relationship with a salesperson before making a purchase. Ecommerce customers often buy a product without ever talking to a representative of the brand. Only when they have a question or problem do they reach out.

And when that happens, it’s a member of the customer service team who answers. So this department holds a lot of power to hurt or improve customer relationships.

Beyond this, customers in the ecommerce space have extremely high standards. They expect fast, hassle-free resolutions to their issues, along with personalized treatment. If you don’t offer this, customers can easily find a similar product at another brand.  

For these reasons, ecommerce companies need to prioritize initiatives to bolster their customer service more so than most other business types.

Six simple ways to improve the ecommerce customer experience

There are two chief indicators of ongoing success as an ecommerce company: top-notch products and exceptional customer service. Below are six effective ways to work toward the latter.

Use data and agent context to understand customer preferences

Customers have distinct and constantly evolving preferences. Some prefer phone calls, while others want to reach out over live chat. One might desire an email to resolve a billing issue but social media to ask for a refund.

It’s important to constantly monitor your customers’ preferences and adjust your communications strategy accordingly. You can figure out these changes by sending recurring surveys, tracking channel data in your customer service software, and reading industry reports.

To ensure they satisfy all customers, many companies also use contact center as a service (CCaaS) software, which allows users to communicate with customers across multiple channels, including self-service methods like chatbots or IVR.

CCaaS companies are always monitoring customer preferences and adding new channels to their platforms as customer demand for them increases. That way their users are always on the cutting-edge of customer service.

360° coverage across support channels

Seventy-one percent of consumers experience frustration when their shopping experience is impersonal. Customers dislike it when they can’t use their favorite communication channel or when they have to repeat information to a customer service agent that they’ve already shared with another agent.

The first issue can be handled with a multichannel approach, but that doesn’t resolve the second issue given that each channel’s data is siloed. A rep on a phone call with a customer can’t easily find what that customer said previously on live chat or email.

To service customers on their favorite channels and provide a seamless experience, you need an omnichannel approach where all channels are integrated and their collected customer data is accessible to agents from one dashboard regardless of which channel the customer is currently using.

Empower your customers with self-service tools

Sometimes customers don’t want to speak with a live agent. Perhaps they feel their issue is simple to resolve — 74% of internet users prefer using chatbots when looking for answers to simple questions.

Or maybe they’re just feeling especially introverted that day. Regardless of their reasons, those customers will appreciate the self-service options your team provides.

Here are some customer self-service types to offer:

• Chatbots: These are computer programs that simulate conversations with your website visitors.
• Interactive Voice Response: IVR enables users to interact with an automated phone system through voice or dial tones.
• Knowledge Center: This is a part of your website that hosts tutorials, guides, and videos that answer commonly asked questions.

When you empower your customers to handle their own issues, you improve their experience and also reduce the pressure on your agents, which leads to shorter wait times for customers who really do need an agent’s help.  

Follow the sun—24/5 customer support

If you have trouble with a customer service tool, it indirectly impacts your customers in a negative way. For example, if your live chat system crashes, customers in the middle of a conversation will have to start all over.

That’s why it’s so critical to use high-quality customer service tools that come with support 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, so that you can get answers and assistance quickly and get back to focusing on your customers instead of technical difficulties.  

Modernized support for the mobile-first era

Statista predicts that 187.5 million people will make a purchase via their smartphone in 2024, an increase of 20 million from 2020. The trend toward mobile shopping is obvious.

Therefore, it’s critical that you give your customers the ability to easily access your ecommerce store and customer service team via their mobile devices. Consider designing your website for mobile users and offering an ecommerce mobile app for your business.

Support that evolves with your customers

Improving customer experience is an iterative process. You have to try new techniques, measure your customers’ reaction to them, and then, based on the results, take another step in the right direction.

To do this, you need to collect customer data and feedback. Many companies use surveys with specific questions to measure their customer satisfaction.

They also use some sort of customer service software to track key customer service metrics like busiest hours, communication volume by channel, and average resolution time.

Collecting and analyzing this information enables customer service teams to make data-driven decisions about their strategy.    

Picking the right ecommerce customer service software

An ecommerce customer service team looking to improve their overall customer experience should look for customer service software that allows them to enact the strategies we’ve listed above.

The right platform will have 24/5 support and empower you to use an omnichannel approach, offer self-service options, go mobile-first, and track customer service data.

Conclusion

Customer experience is essential to an ecommerce business’s success, and the customer service team has a tremendous effect on this experience.

It’s crucial that you arm your agents with the tools they need to best serve your customers. Check out how PlivoCX, a cloud-based contact center software, can help.

What is Call Routing? Types, Benefits & How it Works

From a consumer perspective, B2C companies are measured by two things:the quality of their products, and quality of customer service.

While most businesses understand the importance of providing quick support to their paying customers, modern businesses utilizing new-era omnichannel cloud contact centers like PlivoCX service have a secret weapon available to them—call routing.

What is call routing?

Call routing describes the process by which support requests are assigned to a specified customer service queue based upon the needs of the consumer.

While call routing traditionally applies to voice calls, the emergence of modern support channels like SMS messaging, chat, social media, etc. have caused the term to take on a broader meaning for the process of pairing a customer with the right agent.

Types of call routing and how does call routing work?

So, how exactly does call routing work, and how are modern contact centers pairing customer support requests with the right agent?

To answer this question, we must first understand the different types of call routing, and how you might want to employ each within your customer service operation.

Source: GetVoIP.com

A next-generation contact center like PlivoCX Service will come equipped with a robust drag-and-drop workflow builder, allowing B2C teams to establish rules that assign support requests to agents with respect to the type of call routing at play.

You can see how this works in practice with our quick 1-minute video on drag & drop queue configuration:

With a custom workflow in place, customer support voice calls will be automatically routed to an agent based on criteria provided by the customer at the time the call is placed.

What is the difference between call routing and call forwarding?

If you’ve asked yourself “what is call routing”, you may also be curious about call forwarding. While virtual call routing is a dedicated procedure by which customer support calls are directed to the best agent for the job, call forwarding is a process which forwards voice calls to multiple phone numbers for a single agent, enhancing that agent’s coverage across devices.

In practice, this means that if an agent is unable to answer their desk phone for a customer call when it rings, that call will be passed on to their mobile or home phone number automatically without any difficulty for the customer.

Call forwarding serves as a useful, complementary tool for call routing that can enhance an agent’s ability to best serve their assigned customer.

Common use cases of call routing & business impact

So now that we’ve covered the questions of “what is call routing” and “how does call routing work”, let’s talk about how a contact center with a robust call routing system can empower your customer service agents, reduce customer friction, and promote growth in your business.

Top 5 use cases of call routing

There are innumerable benefits to incorporating a virtual call routing system into your business, but here are five popular use cases to get your started, and how each can help you grow your business.

Always-on customer service operation

Customer’s feeling like nobody is listening to them is a $75 billion dollar problem. Establishing workflows designed to route voice calls to different support operations depending on agent hours ensures that your customers never feel unheard, as somebody will always be available to solve their problems.

Premium service for premium customers

Whether they earn their premium status through purchase or over a period of time, it’s important to reward customer loyalty. B2C teams can configure call routing workflows to ensure that their best customers always have a direct line to an agent.

Skills to pay the bills

Let’s say a longtime customer has a billing issue that threatens their retention—skills-based call routing can guarantee that your customer is assigned an agent equipped with the proper skill set and tools necessary for a prompt resolution.

Building a relationship

There’s nothing worse than having to explain your customer support needs five different times to five different agents—14% of customers take their business elsewhere because their complaints aren’t handled properly. Relationship-based call routing allows teams to automatically assign support requests to agents who have previously helped a given customer.

Support at light speed

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your customers is to give them somebody to talk to as quickly as possible. With round robin call routing, you can set a workflow that immediately pairs a customer with the next available agent, cutting down on wait times and reducing abandonment rates.

How PlivoCX pairs the right agents with the right customers

PlivoCX is cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with customer and agent satisfaction in mind. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experience to exceed consumer needs and create happy customers and agents alike.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.

Chat

In terms of customer satisfaction, live chat is the most meaningful and effective digital channel. With nearly 1 in 3 customers attempting to self-service by visiting a company website before placing a voice call, a robust live chat capability is a low-effort high-ROI solution to reduce customer friction, expedite issue resolution, and increase revenue - in some cases at a rate of 2.4x for cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Social

The most compelling statistic came from Facebook with a reported 100% increase in customer messages to businesses from 2019 to 2020.

Spotify begins training their agents on the email customer support channel before clearing them for the social support channel. Throughout the training agent emails are evaluated for specific quality and service metrics to ensure agent confidence before graduating them to the generally more public social channels. Word of caution: most users who reach out via social media for support expect a response within 60 minutes.

Voice

Even with post-COVID forced digital acceleration, one study reports a preference for voice as high as 71% compared to other channels. Perhaps this is a result of older customers’ preference for in-person or assisted service (whereas younger generations prefer self-service). In any case, this should be no surprise as 56% of customers surveyed reported frustration with IVRs prior to speaking with a live agent. Stay alert contact centers! The experience on your IVR/IVA is more important than you think and could make or break your voyage to a better customer experience.

Artificial Intelligence

“Roughly one third” of American companies surveyed in a study May 2021 are using some degree of AI for consumer experience initiatives. The possibilities and promises of increased self-service and customer satisfaction, reduced inquiry handle-times, trend forecasting, agent assist, next best action and many opportunities are examples of the hopes and dreams for overall customer loyalty and revenue potential. As you consider how to implement or scale an AI solution, be mindful of the differences between static analytical models, natural language understanding, robotic process automation, and true artificial intelligence.

Email

For most businesses email was a low friction, self-service channel easy to add to the multi-channel support model, but as organizations pivoted to omnichannel support models with better-integrated and more real-time digital solutions, email declined in satisfaction and popularity - and is predicted to continue to decline as mobile-first messaging adoption increases. In a survey conducted in October 2021, as few as 15% of American respondents indicated email was the preferred channel for customer support.

Messaging

With a particularly sharp uptake during the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns businesses adapted by implementing direct messaging for support and marketing motions to stay in closer contact with their customers. One study reports an increase of 62% in companies using WhatsApp for customer service inquiries from the previous year.

Selecting The Right Customer Service Channels

Regardless of the overall channel adoption statistics above, selecting the proper customer service channel mix for your specific business to deliver the best customer experience should be the primary driver. Look for friction points, add new channels, eliminate extra steps, add touch points along the customer journey to share transparently and engage with your customers in a friendly way.

Below are just a few examples and the steps you can take to see immediate improvements in your customer experience feedback:

• How would you feel? Consider how the customer feels when attempting to reach you for various reasons. Next, go and listen to every branch of your own IVR and consider whether your automation matches the customer’s need. Should you route priority customers differently than those calling for hours and location? Can you easily automate order status inquiries in your IVR to free up staff to handle higher cognitive inquiries?
• Proper channels in place? If you are only communicating by phone and email, consider adding live chat. This channel can have a direct impact on your top-line revenue as many customers - in an e-commerce setting - use chat when they are further down the sales funnel and may have a clarifying question or two prior to checkout.
• Monitor and adjust! You can’t improve what you don’t measure. What is the traffic volume on each of your support channels? Can customers (or your agents) easily pivot from chat to voice if the interaction escalates in customer frustration? Are you receiving an overwhelming number of emails because it is too difficult to reach you on the phone, or your phone system is poorly configured to handle the volume of calls?

Conclusion

Customer service trends indicate that the leading differentiator is less about unit price or product quality and more about service level experience. From a customer loyalty or NPS perspective, the emotional intelligence, tactful questions, and benefit of the doubt offered by agents to customers arrive at a sum greater than its parts. What will you be known for? The channels you offer and the quality of service delivered via those channels will set you apart from your competition!

What is contact center analytics?

A single customer service conversation can yield a seemingly infinite amount of information about both your consumers and customer service agents, and contact center analytics provide the method behind the madness to make sense of all that information.

Contact center analytics use technology to generate actionable insights from raw data—data which allows B2C teams to identify patterns in their customer service data and pinpoint potential product issues or contact center optimizations.

How to use contact center analytics to improve operations

The true power of contact center analytics lies in its ability to dramatically improve your team’s operations. This data is only as potent as it’s application, however, which begs the question: how do I put contact center analytics to work in my organization?

Get a holistic view of contact center key metrics at a glance

Just like a beautiful painting, it’s a lot easier to understand the nuance in the finer details once you’ve seen the whole picture. Sometimes, the best way to get a feel for how your agents are performing is by looking at your contact center from a bird’s eye view.

Contact center reporting and analytics offer a unique opportunity to look at the bigger picture, identifying common trends among support tickets. This could include evaluation of average handle time, first call resolution time, call / support abandonment rate, and then zooming in on individual metrics to identify outliers in each.

Monitoring performance & identifying training needs

Call center analytics can provide you the boost that you need to level up your agents and optimize agent performance by monitoring service and identifying training needs.

By analyzing your contact center data and reflecting on customer sentiments, you can keep tabs on how your customer service reps are performing and identify any areas where additional training in product or platform knowledge would benefit your service team.

Actionable customer service insights across all channels

Preferred methods of customer service can vary significantly from consumer base to consumer base. Are your customers trying to reach you via your social media channels? Is your consumer base largely made up of millennials, who on average prefer digital service channels over phone ?

From common customer demographics to volume patterns in your support requests across channels, B2C teams can leverage contact center analytics to stay ahead of the specific needs of their brand’s consumers, allowing them to better meet customers where they are.

Automate the customer feedback process

With the right tools, B2C teams are capable of automating the customer feedback process, allowing them to glean further insights into how consumers are feeling after interacting with their customer service representatives.

Frequently asking customers the right questions and analyzing their answers provides another valuable data point to include in your team’s contact center analytics. Identify common trends among customer feedback to optimize their support experience, and you just might create a lasting customer relationship.

Generate reports for customer support teams

Call center analytics and call center reports go hand-in-hand—while distinct from one another, they’re nearly inseparable in how they’re discussed by the industry at large. In the right hands, these two things work together harmoniously to provide a continuous cycle of improvement for data-driven support teams.

Essential metrics reports track relevant current and historical data, so you can identify trends over time. From customer satisfaction to agent productivity, the right contact center solution should provide reporting capabilities that enhance your ability to measure what matters most and provide a 360 degree view of a customer’s past and present needs.

Help contact center managers with resource allocation

Remember when we said it’s important to know your demographics, and how they like to be supported? Contact center reporting and analytics can act as a cheat code for your team to know where they need to be, when they need to be there, and allow you to tailor your team’s hours, channels, and skillsets to the support needs of your consumer base.

A modern contact center should provide visibility into the most demanding support needs of your organization by providing real-time data on your team’s activity and performance, allowing you to shift resources accordingly.

Using contact center analytics to improve customer experience

With more options for the consumer to choose from than ever before, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate yourself from your competition. The importance of differentiation through exceptional customer service cannot be overstated, and contact center analytics allow you to do exactly that.

Every support conversation is an opportunity to refine your customer service offering through effective customer communication, evaluation of common trends in your customer feedback, and then taking action to reduce customer friction.

Leverage built-in contact center analytics with Contacto

PlivoCX Service is a cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with customer and agent satisfaction in mind. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by powerful reporting and analytics functionality, helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experienceto exceed consumer needs and create happy customers and agents alike.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.

15 Survey Questions to Measure Customer Satisfaction

With the incredible number of products for consumers to choose from, creating customer satisfaction and customer loyalty has never been more important for B2C businesses.

One of the best ways to measure how your customers are feeling is through the use of a customer satisfaction survey, or CSAT survey for short.

What is a Customer Satisfaction Survey?

As the name implies, a customer satisfaction survey (or CSAT survey for short) is an invaluable way for businesses to measure how satisfied their users are with the products or services that have been provided, while gaining insights into any points of friction that said users may experience.

These surveys are an essential piece of the puzzle when it comes to remaining relevant and competitive in a world where the customer is king.

Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Did you know that the acquisition cost of new customers is nearly 5 times more expensive than the cost of retaining an existing customer? Or that 1 in 3 customers will leave a business they love after a single bad experience? Gathering and understanding customer feedback is an essential ingredient when it comes to growing your business and building a loyal customer base.

Customer satisfaction surveys allow businesses to do exactly that—by understanding the hurdles that your customers have faced when it comes to your product or service, you are able to reduce friction and create repeat customers.

Different Types of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys can be broken up into four main categories: Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), Product-Market Fit (PMF), and Customer Effort Score (CES). Let’s take a moment to review each of these different types of surveys, and when your organization might want to utilize them.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT surveys provide a scaled measurement of a customer’s satisfaction and/or experience with your team or product.

You should utilize CSAT surveys at different touchpoints in your customer’s journey with your business, such as after a purchase or a support request’s completion, to understand their overall satisfaction with their experience.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS surveys ask customers to provide answers to questions on a scale of 0-10 to determine a refined customer loyalty score on a scale of -100 to 100.

This is achieved by evaluating numerical responses tied to customer satisfaction and categorizing them into three groups:

• Detractors (0-6)
• Passive (7-8)
• Promoter (9-10)

From here, simply add the submitted scores to the following formula to find your NPS score:

(% of Promoter scores) – (% of Detractor scores) = Overall NPS score

This type of survey is best utilized by mature products and teams looking to collect specific feedback that can be incorporated into product or service changes intended to enhance the overall customer experience.

Product-Market Fit (PMF)

A PMF survey is a customer satisfaction survey that provides an indication of whether or not your product has achieved product-market fit or not by asking users how they would feel if they could no longer use your product on a scale of “not disappointed” to “very disappointed”.

This type of survey is commonly used by newer products that are not yet far enough along to utilize an NPS survey.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

This type of survey measures the perceived effort required from the user to accomplish an action with regards to your product or service.

You will commonly find this type of survey used to gain an understanding of how your company might reduce customer friction by removing obstacles they have experienced when utilizing your product or service.

Best Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions

Now that we’ve covered some of the different types of customer satisfaction surveys you might use, let’s talk about some of the best CSAT survey questions you might include when seeking feedback from your users, broken down by category.

Customer satisfaction questions specific to agents

The questions covered in this category can be used to measure how satisfied your customers are with the assistance they have received from your customer support team.

1. Were we able to resolve your questions or concerns with our product?
2. Were we able to resolve your questions or concerns in a timely manner?
3. How much effort were you required to put into finding a resolution for your problem?
4. How did we compare to your expectations?
5. How responsive have we been to your questions or concerns?

The responses you receive to these CSAT survey questions will allow your support team to improve upon future customer interactions.

Customer satisfaction questions specific to service channels

The CSAT survey questions included here can be used to measure how well you accommodate users requesting support via a specific service channel.

1. What is your preferred channel to receive customer support through?
2. Was this your first time receiving support via [service channel]?
3. How intuitive was your service experience through [service channel]?
4. What other channels have you enjoyed receiving support through?
5. What could we have done differently to enhance your customer experience on this channel?

By evaluating the responses you receive for the above customer satisfaction survey questions, you can determine which service channels your customers most prefer and allocate additional time, training, agents, and resources towards them.

Customer satisfaction questions specific to the product or service

The below survey questions can be used to evaluate your customer’s satisfaction with your product or service.

1. How satisfied are you with our product / service?
2. How likely are you to recommend our product / service to a friend or colleague?
3. How well does our product meet your needs?
4. If you could recommend one improvement to our product / service, what would it be?
5. How would you rate the value versus price of our product?

By evaluating the responses your customers leave about your product or service, you can evaluate which features your users care most about to gain valuable insight into your target audience’s preferences.

Best Practices: Keeping in mind the objective and length of the survey

When creating a customer satisfaction survey to share with your users, it’s important to keep in mind both the specific objective of the survey and the length of the survey.

Most people don’t enjoy filling out surveys. People do, however, respond well when they know that their contribution can make a difference. By having a clearly defined objective in mind when creating your CSAT survey, you can decide which questions are most important to ask, exclude unnecessary filler, and encourage user participation all while respecting your customer’s time.

How PlivoCX helps teams to enhance customer service

PlivoCX is cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with customer and agent satisfaction in mind. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experience to exceed consumer needs and create happy customers and agents alike.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.