How long does it take for your team member to respond to your customer? Do you feel that your customers wait too long, so they go elsewhere? It’s time to re-evaluate your customer responsiveness.
Research shows that 88% of customers expect a response from your business within 60 minutes, while 30% expect a response within 15 minutes or less. The average customer service response time is 12 hours and 10 minutes, but you obviously don’t want to drop into this range.
Before you start with recapping your customer responsiveness, keep in mind that when you push your agents to work as fast as possible, they will start to focus on speed over quality.
The best thing you can do when it comes to customer responsiveness is to manage the expectations of both your clients and agents. If they know how long they have to wait before they can expect an answer, customers will feel like they're treated fairly.
- Use SMART Objectives To Measure The Performance Of Teams and Individuals
Focus your team members by setting measurable objectives and reviewing their progress on a regular basis. It's best to align these objectives to your overall customer service strategy.
An example of a SMART standard in a customer contact setting is:
- Specific – Customers know exactly what to expect from the agents. All the agents follow set out objectives and know what the organization expects from them.
- Measurable – All call handling time is monitored.
- Achievable – Enough team members on phone lines per shift to accommodate projected call volume data.
- Relevant – Customers get a warm first impression when they call.
- Time-Bound – Provides team members with a way to self-evaluate their performance.
- Adopt Automation To Speed Up The Process
Power your support software with automation to respond to your customers. With automation, you can easily assign messages, chats, tickets, and phone calls to the right agent. It also scans and sorts the customer inquiry according to issues and updates customers on the progress.
Consider using AI-driven chatbots in your support software to bring down your average first response time. With chatbots, the agents don’t have to spend time sorting the incoming tickets or answering the common queries that arise every day.
- Learn To Listen Before You Talk
Building customer relationships is all about delivering value to your followers. Yet many brands still take the “what’s in it for me” approach to social. According to a study into call-out culture, 55% of people who call out brands on social just want to be heard. Make sure you’re listening.
Remember that behind every service call is a real human who has a question or concerns. Make sure your customer feels heard and served. First, you should focus on the speaker, after the customer is done talking ask clarifying questions to ensure you understand what they are saying. Finally, finish with a quick summary to ensure everyone is on the same page.
- Mine the data for trends and opportunities
Responding to individual customers can only bring you halfway. Next, you should use the opportunity to collect all the data and identify trends. Companies often used surveys to measure customer satisfaction, but now we're moving into a contactless world. Now customers shop online and can directly talk to the company via social media.
The bottom line is to keep the “social” in social media. Value your customers, and you might pick up more than just followers. 64% of customers believe customer experience is more important than price when deciding to make a purchase with a brand. You might cultivate a brand loyalty that converts once-off buyers into lifelong promoters.
- Provide self-service resources.
Implementing self-service options like a customer portal or FAQ is a perfect resource for the customers to solve issues on their own. This helps the agents since customers won't call them to solve common issues. This will free up agents' time to address customers with bigger issues that they can't solve by themselves.
Summary
While offering faster responses to customers, try to keep a human element in your customer responsiveness. While bots have a great response time they don't have the ability to understand and connect with customers.
Ensure that you listen to your customers to not only respond quickly but also provide the right responses and solutions. Improving your customer responsiveness puts you on the right track to win customers for life.