Carpenters need hammers, fishers need hooks and lines, farmers need hoes and other farm tools; we could go on and on.
We’ve always depended on tools. From simple tools like the examples above to the highly sophisticated ones like the device you’re using to read this. We will always need the help of tools in our different endeavours, and customer service is no exception.
In an era where customers are bombarded with options, and their customer service expectations continue to rise, it has become pertinent for every business to get all the help they can get to improve customer service. For instance, Microsoft found that 76% of customers expect customer service representatives to know their product, contact and service history.
We spoke to professionals in the industry and did some other independent research and the result of all that is this list of tools you almost can’t do without if you intend to keep retaining your customers. But first, you need to understand how to choose a customer service tool that fits your need.
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These are the three key factors to consider when selecting a customer service tool for your business:
We looked at the solutions that are easy to use, both for the business and the customers. From a customer’s point of view, the tools should be intuitive and smart. From your point of view as a business or customer service manager, it should be easy to set up.
These tools are supposed to solve specific problems, so we only selected the tools that do just that. Another question to ask is whether it’s a stand-alone solution or you will need to supplement it with another tool.
For instance, why pay for a tool that supports email services alone, then pay extra for a ticketing system when you can have the two and more in a CRM solution such as NotchCX?
Every investment should bring ROI (return on investment), and paying for a tool is a form of investment in your business. Hence, these customer service tools should give you some value that is commensurate with or exceed the value of whatever you are paying for it.
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
— Jeff Bezos
So, what are these tools you should involve in your effort to improve customer service in 2022? Here is a list of 6 customer service tools that is bound to help you retain more customers. Let’s get into it.
Live chat tools allow your support team to provide solutions to customers’ issues and complaints direct from your website, landing page or mobile app.
This makes life very easy for a lot of customers whose favourite word nowadays is convenience. Rather than leaving your website to send a mail or call, they can simply send a message there and then, and instantly have someone responding to them.
Aside from doing its core job of helping customers with their experience, live chat can also be harnessed as the hub for additional information that could convince a prospect to convert.
Another great advantage of live chat is it allows you to offer 24/7 support to your customers using automated chatbots. In a situation where a business needs to optimize the number of people responding to customers, a chatbot can fill in with automated responses to preempted questions. It’s also helpful as your agents get busy with other parts of their job that don’t involve responding to customers. Chatbots will resume the duty of responding to customers on their behalf.
This is a scenario almost anyone who has ever purchased anything has experienced:
This is a rather too familiar situation with most customers, but it can be resolved by a CRM with an Omnichannel ticketing system. With a ticketing system, every customer who reaches out gets a ticket ID which can always be used to track their conversation.
Again, just as customers these days have different options in competitors, they also have different communication options and they are not afraid to use whichever they like whenever. This is where the Omnichannel ticketing solution comes in really handy again.
With applications that support Omnichannel ticketing system such as NotchCX, customers can conveniently move from one channel to another with their conversation history, maintaining the same seamless experience across board.
Learn more about Omnichannel and benefits to your business
For most customers, the best way they can express themselves is via a telephone conversation. It’s a relatively old, yet arguably the most effective way of communication between businesses and their customers because it conveys a bit of nonverbal communication as well.
Calls also make it easier to manage a tense or frustrating situation compared to exchanging emails or chats.
Findings show that 65.7% of customers consider email to be the easiest communication channel to use. Email is not only great for managing customer communications, but also an effective marketing and sales tool.
Email can come in handy even for internal communications between different team members in handling customer complaints. You can simply say email ticks all the boxes.
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A knowledge base is a collection of useful, relevant, self-service information for your customers to access. Examples are video demos, FAQs, troubleshooting manuals, in-depth explanations and so on.
You can not overemphasise the need for a knowledge base tool for customers these days. Before customers speak to you, they go through different stages of what we refer to as the buyer journey. For some, it begins with recognising that they have a problem, before getting to trying to solve the problem. 81% of customers say they’d rather attempt to figure out an issue on their own before reaching out.
This customer service tool allows you to track and follow conversations about you on social media, such that you can improve your product and address common complaints.
Customers, prospects and the general public these days are quick to share their praise or criticism on social media, especially. While some of them may tag you such posts, most won’t so the onus is on you to find these conversations and respond accordingly.
To keep track of conversations like this, you could have your social media team constantly comb through social media to see what people are saying about your products and services. This approach however is rather costly and still not very effective.
Alternatively, you could use a product like NotchCX that has social media monitoring integration. With this, you could just set a couple of relevant hashtags or keywords, and whenever they are mentioned on social media, you get notified.
While some of these tools exist as an application which you can get and pay for, there are some softwares that combine most of these tools into one application that helps get virtually everything done. One of such softwares is NotchCX.
NotchCX is a CRM that simplifies and automates customer service with some of the best integrations you can find. NotchCX supports email, phone, live chat, ticketing system, social media listening and so on.
Therefore, rather than paying for each of the tools listed, you could just get NotchCX and have it all integrated with one software.
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