Customer service goes beyond addressing your customers’ short-term requests in record time. It involves more than the surface-level idea of customer service that relies on lightning-fast replies, modern chatbots, and getting feedback from customer interactions in due time––whether that’s via email, phone calls, or text messages.
The ultimate goal of providing better service will always be improved customer experience (CX) and subsequent higher customer satisfaction levels. Yet, you won’t achieve great results without looking at the complete picture. Think of it this way: your business is buttressed by customer needs and whether the products you sell can solve those needs.
“Of course they can”, you might say. “I’ve been selling my product for years.”
Now imagine how much more you’d be selling if you grasped––and solved––the objections that have kept potential customers from buying.
To do that, however, you must rethink the way you handle your customer service. In this article, you’ll learn how to approach customer service on a deeper level to get valuable insights, drive conversions, reduce churn, and increase customer retention.
Create a Customer-Centric Business With Voice of the Customer (VoC) Research
A lot of marketers make the mistake of developing their customer personas (or ideal buyers) in a vacuum and expect to get results. That’s the equivalent of trying to solve a problem…without knowing what the problem is.
Enter Voice of the Customer (VoC) research.
Voice of the customer far exceeds shallow analytics. Primarily, VoC is about learning what customers expect your solution to do for them, and whether they’re getting what they need. It’s about mining for the exact words they use in order to ask the right questions and so get to the right answers. That means your customers will be doing a lot of the work, which is a great thing.
The first step towards catering to customer needs is knowing what makes them tick. Keep in mind that potential customers will think differently from new customers, who will also think differently from someone who’s no longer a customer. Discovering what each customer segment expects from your business is key to filling gaps that hinder your messaging, addressing recurring pain points, and removing objections that create friction throughout the customer journey.
Still, VoC is a whole study field in itself. If you need results as soon as possible, how should you proceed?
Luckily, you can use a VOC data-driven software to create smarter voice of customer programs. It will help you pinpoint what you’re doing right and help you improve what’s not quite there yet. The benefits? High customer retention, a laser-targeted audience, and messaging that resonates.
Invest in Qualified Virtual Call Center Solutions
If you choose to approach customer service efficiently while delivering a personalized CX, a robust virtual call center will give your support team a seamless tool to directly address customer objections and collect actionable insights from them. Modern cloud-based virtual call center solutions can streamline your workflow while steering clear from traditional call center hiccups.
But how are they different?
These solutions specialize in efficient call routing, meaning every customer will be connected to the right agent for their particular issue. The agent will then answer questions according to their area of expertise. The routing method cuts through the waiting and actually gets problems solved without delay. This way, not only will customers receive prompt answers from the right people, but customer service representatives can gather customer feedback that will be useful later on. A call center solution is the right tool if you’re aiming for increased agent performance and better CX at every touchpoint.
Use Your Newfound Information Wisely
Want to know what’s both frustrating and rewarding? Needing to refocus your entire marketing strategy after learning that your messaging was unclear.
That might teach you a lesson or two about customer research, including that simply listening to your customers isn’t enough. You’ve got to turn your customers’ own words into the solutions they seek. That’s easy to do with the proper contact center and voice of customer solutions in place.
Finally, once you recognize your customer’s voice, you know you’ve found a great way to improve product development and deliver an overall better customer experience. Without the hassle, of course. Regardless of whether you’ve got happy or unhappy customers, listen to them. Take note. You’d be amazed at how much crucial information you could be overlooking without proper customer service.
