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When running a business in a highly competitive city like New York, you need to bring your A game. Apart from offering a good product or service, you have to make sure that your customer service is on point. It helps to provide adequate support to your customers and shape their experience with your business. 

Good customer service allows customers to see your business in a more favorable light. It helps to attract and retain a large customer base without stress. They would purchase more and also recommend your products to others. Now, let’s discuss the 5 key levers of customer service to keep customers coming back. 

1. Customer Segmentation. 

More customers want marketing and customer service to become more personalized. You need to understand that every customer is different so you need to apply a unique set of approaches when dealing with them. 

Customer segmentation is the process of splitting your customers according to common demographics such as age, location, income, relationship status, etc. You need to be able to know who your ideal customers are. 

Then, you’ll proceed to create target personas for each of these customer segments. It helps to identify those potential customers that belong to each segment and  how you should approach or respond to their needs. 

2. Customer Service Infrastructure. 

Many companies know how crucial customer service is to the growth and success of their businesses. But they refuse to update their support tools and software. Many also feel it’s enough to hire a couple of qualified agents and leave them to resolve issues without any software.

You need to know that modern customer service tools help to optimize workflows, automate some tasks, and prevent agent burnout. For example, customer service apps contain a ticketing system that can receive requests, create tickets, and track from start to finish.

It’s a good idea to set up your website or ecommerce platform with a live chat. You can also get VoIP and IVR (interactive voice response) systems. Self-service options such as chatbots and help center are useful. They help to improve the customer service experience.

3. Customer Journey. 

Knowing how your customers engage with your brand, service, or products is very important. You need a map that clearly shows all touchpoints that customers might have with your business. The mapping process helps to visualize everything from a customer’s perspective. 

First off, a customer finds your business through social media, blog posts, or paid advertising. Next, they may interact with your website or check out your products. If interested, they may proceed to order or might contact your support team to ask questions or seek assistance. 

It’s necessary for companies to visually represent their customer’s journey. You can determine whether some parts of your marketing, sales, and customer service strategy need improvement. It shows you exactly what the customer sees, feels, and perceives on the journey. 

4. Customer Touchpoints. 

A customer touchpoint refers to every point of contact with your brand. This includes everything from before, during, and after a purchase. You need to identify your touchpoints when creating a customer journey map and ensure that every step is perfect and organized. 

You can identify them by making a list of all the places and times when a customer would come in contact with your brand. Before purchase, it may include online ads, social media, or your walk-in store. During purchase, it would likely be customer reviews and point of sale. 

After purchase, a customer comes in contact through email lists, feedback surveys, and online communities. Knowing all the touchpoints allows you to optimize the customer journey and provide satisfaction at all times. It helps to boost customer loyalty and reduce issues. 

5. Customer Metrics.

At every point in the customer’s journey, you should be able to track and measure your effectiveness. Metrics help to determine customer satisfaction, retention, and overall experience with your company. They allow you to provide better products, services, and experiences. 

There are so many customer metrics that you need to track in your business. Some include: customer churn rate, customer retention rate, first contact resolution rate, customer acquisition cost, abandonment rate, customer lifetime value, customer satisfaction, etc. 

You need to track customer and product data in order to get accurate analytics. The best way to manage all these is through the help of software. For example, a customer service platform can integrate with your other applications and streamline data management. 

Conclusion 

It doesn’t matter if you’re offering the best products or services on the market. Your ability to solve customer problems would help you stand out and gain trust. The process of improving customer satisfaction is lengthy and requires tweaks from time to time. The key levers of customer service are necessary to getting it right.