How to identify contemporary customer service software

Imagine walking into a store and struggling to find assistance when you need it. Would you walk out of that store immediately? 

Effective customer support is essential. It indicates that your business is a reliable place to be and ensures that your customers feel acknowledged. Today, most businesses maintain a virtual presence to attend to a larger customer base. But many businesses fail to prioritize digital customer service the same way they prioritize in-person service. If you'd like to give your online help desk a stronger presence, and provide your customers with an ideal shopping experience, it's not too late. In this article, we'll help you find ways to meet your ever-evolving customer support needs in contemporary times.

Over the last two years, employers have had to adjust their traditional work styles to accommodate the work-from-home model. Likewise, the customer care industry has felt a major impact. Customer care is at an inflection point with an increase in call volumes (especially for complex questions), expectations of good customer experiences, and scarcity of customer support talent. According to the state of customer care study, many companies are looking to improve the customer experience (CX) with a mix of the human touch and technology.

Data credits: Mckinsey Company survey.

5 Essentials for delivering top-notch customer service today: 

1. Establish operations that are truly omnichannel: 

Loyal customers are the best allies in building a successful business. In order to earn loyalty, brands must be able to connect with their customers and effectively cater to their needs. Nowadays, connecting with a customer is no longer restricted to your website and live conversations. With customer behaviour continually changing, it becomes even more challenging to determine one channel that is best for all customers.  Modern support agents receive tickets from various channels, from email to chat, to calls, to social media platforms, and many more. This means active and efficient tracking of all communication platforms is essential. 

Zoho Desk helps your agents keep track of all their tickets in a single window. A wide range of ticket views and work modes, like status mode, priority mode and many other work modes by Zoho Desk help your agents to organize tickets according to their preferences. 

2. Make the most of your social media accounts:

According to a recent study, people age 25 and younger expect a brand to have a social media presence and consider social accounts to be a reliable primary source of contact with a brand. This means a brand needs to be available on social media beyond its marketing/promotional activities. A rule of thumb of customer service is that a brand can provide better CX through quick and efficient responses. Customers often express their grievances on social media platforms. According to a survey by Convince and Convert, 42% of customers expect a response within 60 minutes of raising a request. This expectation has made it necessary for support agents to be present on a wide range of platforms to provide their expertise. 

Many help desk solutions offer to help you aggregate all your tickets from different channels on one platform. And with Zoho Desk's Instant Messaging feature, you can respond to your customers on the same channel they used to approach you.

3. Provide real-time assistance:

Most businesses are investing in options for providing real time assistance to their customers. Around 71% of companies agree that automation has helped them stay strong during the pandemic. With increased investment in automation trending, chatbots have become extremely popular. The chatbot market has increased manifoldly over recent years. As artificial intelligence technology becomes more capable and accessible, it's becoming easier to provide timely and accurate customer service. With Zia, an AI. chatbot by Zoho Desk, you can provide support to your customers at the earliest.

4. Invest in quality self-service options:

To provide faster resolutions, customers are turning to self-service options. They prefer to find their answers through resources on a company's website, in the company's knowledge base/community forums, or through automated chatbots rather than having to connect with an agent. The rising popularity of good self-service options has not eliminated the need for agents, but has made it easier for customers to find answers to simple questions, while saving their more complex concerns for live support. 

Zoho Desk has always aligned with self-service. With the latest addition to the self-service platform, Guided Conversations feature provides your customers with instant support and also empowers. It helps you build workflows to resolve simple and more frequent questions raised by a customer without involving a support agent in the process.

5. Empower customer support agents: 

It is now more essential than ever to ensure that your business is delivering prompt, effective customer service. While self-service has helped tremendously in decreasing call volumes, agents continue to be responsible for addressing more complex questions. This requires companies to invest in attracting and training talent that can handle in-depth questions efficiently to improve customer experience (CX) metrics. With the rise of features like knowledge bases and automation enhancing self-service platforms, many support agents feel empowered and less burdened. Those in managerial roles also find their jobs simplified. Plus, support teams can be self-managed while detailed analytics help facilitate a clear understanding of support team activities. 

Your customers are a part of your journey, and the customer experience plays an important role in determining the success of your business. Zoho Desk provides features, like multi-channel integration, the Radar app, custom functions, Guided Conversations, and Instant Messaging, that make it a reliable, secure, and efficient solution for your customer support desk. Zoho Desk helps you achieve better relationships with your customers by catering to their constantly-evolving needs and demands. 

To learn more about Zoho Desk's functionalities, and how they can help you build a stronger customer base in the fast-paced digital world, click here.