Customer Support Technology: Help Build Customer Trust
Customer relationships are a delicate thing. Good and long-standing relationships built on trust and respect with key customers are the backbone of any business. However, this type of relationship isn’t made overnight or in a single meeting. Creating trust with a customer takes time and the relationship must always be maintained to make sure that the bond isn’t weakened.
One of the best ways of managing these relationships is directly through a customer support department, but even the best employees are only as good as the tools you provide them. Proactive businesses are establishing support solutions that up their game with a wide array of modern capabilities.
Here are 3 ways customer support technology can help in building customer trust:
1) Technology enables you to measure satisfaction in real-time – It’s no secret that customer support technology truly shines in this area. Leading support software features such as the Customer Distress Index (CDI) show the overall well-being of a customer account through a scoring algorithm. This information lets you know exactly which customers are at risk and allows you to compare their happiness to other customers. A comparison like this helps in your decision-making process by pinpointing where to focus your time and efforts. Knowing when to escalate a customer to an executive-to-executive conversation about their happiness is crucial in building and maintaining trust.
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2) It lets you serve customers on a more personal level – With customer support technology, it’s never been easier to have so much customer information at your fingertips. Leverage these insights so customers believe in and respect your capabilities as a business. Whether it’s keeping track of a customer’s inventory or launching a new communication channel such as live chat, these actions show you care and understand their needs. Customer support technology is also used to intelligently keep track of and enforce service level agreements (SLAs) with customers. Trust can deteriorate quickly if business agreements are not met, so utilize support software to display notifications when a specific customer ticket needs a response. Making sure customers get their issue acknowledged and/or resolved in the agreed upon timeframe is crucial.
3) A better customer experience and impression can be achieved – Customer experience matters more than you think and employees may not be available 24/7, but technology can be. A great customer support strategy is to create an online self-service solution so customers can answer their own questions whenever they want to. Make sure contact information is readily available on each self-service page so it’s easy for customers to reach out if they can’t find the answer they need. Emphasizing chat and email support is also a good tactic to avoid phone wait times as much as possible. Should a customer contact you after a self-service experience, always make sure agents are honest, authentic, and transparent. Conducting business with dignity will go a long way in your customers maintaining a positive perception of your company.
*BONUS*
Use technology to identify current customers to connect with new ones – Signing on new customers is crucial for company growth but unfortunately you need to build trust with them from the ground up. Don't go at it alone, when appropriate use technology to determine what current customers would be a good fit for a “mentorship” role of a new customer. Filter by company size, industry, location and more to find the right mentor. This experience can be as simple as connecting the two customers for a brief discussion about your company. Having a current customer in a similar industry vouch for you is valuable as they are a relatable third-party. With this said, make sure you treat customers who are mentors well and offer perks such as a free testing opportunity for new customer support software features.
In conclusion, customer support technology can help in building customer trust via several methods. Technology such as support software is great at measuring customer satisfaction in real-time so you know when and how to reach out to at-risk customers. Technology also enables more personal interactions with customers by putting critical information in a single place. This lets agents make sure their responses are both accurate and timely. Tying it all together, encouraging employees to be honest in complex conversations is important to ensure the favorable perception of your company. Building customer trust isn’t easy, but utilizing technology does make the process simpler and less prone to failure.
