Customer service Workshop

customer service: Overview

Here are some hard hitting stats about customer service: 78% of customers purchase from the first responder and according to Hubspot 94% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase if they experience good customer service. This is how important response times and quality of service matter to your business. Conversion rates are also 8x higher in the first 5 minutes so the longer you wait to respond to a lead the less likely they are to buy.

I’m sure you already understood the importance of customer service and response times but perhaps not just how quickly you can lose a potential customer. This presents a challenge as it’s unlikely you or a member of staff can constantly monitor emails and social media and reply within a few minutes. Luckily using AI and software you can automate 80% of the work and give customers an almost instant response that can be followed up by a sales or customer service rep if required.

Acquiring new customers if often expensive and a lot of effort so why would you let them slip through the net when you worked so hard to get them to you in the first place. Let’s work on some quick wins you can implement in your business today and lay the foundation for compounding growth over time. 

Now we have addressed the initital contact with a customer service / sales enquiry the work doesn’t stop there but if done right the work pays dividends. Once you have happy customers that keep coming back the next step is to turn them into loyal ambassadors for your business so refer you to their friends, family, colleagues and network. There are several ways to do this as detailed below, the holy grail of customer service is to go above an beyond for your customers by completley blowing them away. An example of this is surprising your customers on their birthday with a free gift or other kind of token of appreciation. This has to be something that is completelty out of the blue and unexpected, it doesn’t have to be expensive but they are likely to share their experience with others and maybe even on social media. 

WTF should I do?

 The first thing you should do is calculate your average response time. If a new potential customer or existing customer reaches out via email, phone, text or social media how long does it take to respond? Then consider following the below steps cut your response down to a minimum and make sure you have a robust workflow in place to process and monitor you enquiries. 

why should I do it?

– Massively increase your conversion rate
– Increase your customer retention
– Gather impressive stats and testimonials to boast about
– Turn your customers into raving fans and lead generating machines

How to do it?

Step 1: Ensure you have a good CRM system for managing customer interactions and leads. 

Step 2: Have a good FAQ / Knowledge base easy to find on your website

Step 3: Have an AI powered live chat on your website – Here’s how.

Step 4. Track your average response time before and after you make improvements

Step 5: Ensure your staff are suffiently trained and have access to the right resources to provide good customer support. You could consider and internal chatbot trained on your own internal processes and information for your staff to use. Here’s how.

Step 6. Segment your customer data so you know how your best customers are, create a VIP list and think of ways you can delight them out of the blue. 

Step 7. Create a loyality and refferal scheme where customers are rewarded each time the order with you and are incentivised to refer you to people they know. Check out the customer loyality playbook here.

How I have done it

The result

The results will be instant and dramatic and can transform a business, this is so often overlooked. Imagine if you could convert double the amount of leads you turn into customers and then those customers not only keep coming back then bring their friends too. Suddenly the cost to acquire (CAC) comes down and the lifetime value multiplies (LTV) and those customers bring a stream of referrals on their own!