If you want a leaner business, you may be looking to cut your customer service team down a bit. But this is a delicate balancing act. Having too many customer service reps means you’re wasting money and resources – but if your team is too small, this could result in overburdened reps, high employee turnover, and unhappy customers.
So, how can you maintain quality customer service while keeping costs low? Here are a few suggestions from the team at Incept. Read on, and get all the details.
1. Check, Update, And/Or Rewrite Information Self-Service Portals
Most people prefer to help themselves first. If you have clear, updated, and transparent policies, FAQs, technical support information, and other such resources on your self-service portals, you can help most of your customers resolve their issues on their own.
This helps reduce the overall burden on your customer support team, and helps you keep your customers satisfied, too. Your customers will be able to resolve minor issues on their own, and your customer service team will have more time to handle more important tasks and issues.
2. Invest In AI-Powered Chatbots To Help With Simple Customer Service Problems
Chatbots have been around for a while, but thanks to new AI models, they're smarter and more versatile than ever. Not only that, but chatbots can help with minor issues 24/7, whereas your customer support team may not be available at every hour of the day.
Today’s chatbots can also easily be customized to fit into your company’s workflow and to integrate with your current software systems. Along with your self-service portals, AI-powered chatbots are another great way to help customers resolve issues on their own.
3. Collect Data And Use Customer Insights To Your Advantage
“Big Data” has been a buzzword for a while. But data is always important, and taking a data-driven approach to customer support can help you gain valuable insights. By analyzing calls, post-call feedback, social sentiment, and other factors, you can assess what your team is doing well – and where you could use some improvement.
For example, what if your data shows that customers have short hold times, but their calls take a long time to be resolved or require them to be transferred to multiple different reps? This could indicate that you have plenty of customer service reps, but they need more training and supervision to make sure they know how to resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently.
4. Take A More Proactive Approach To Customer Service
Reaching out to customers first with an email or a call to ask them about their experience with your products or services can be a good way to build loyalty and brand advocacy. It also gives customers a chance to ask questions or get help for things that they may otherwise have left until there was a bigger issue.
Implementing this approach is fairly simple, too. With modern email or SMS marketing tools, it’s easy to send automated emails and texts to customers and ask if they have any questions or need any help with their purchase or product. In some cases, this can completely eliminate the need for a customer to call your customer support team.
5. Focus On Keeping Your Existing Customer Service Team Happy
We probably don’t need to remind you of this, but turnover is a huge problem in customer service, with annual turnover rates of 30% to 45% at most call centers. If you want to maintain quality customer service at a lower cost, you need to focus on keeping your customer service team happy, satisfied, and engaged.
That’s because turnover is expensive. If you’re constantly losing high-quality employees, you have to constantly train new workers. This costs time and money, and can take a toll on the overall quality of the support your team offers.
So take steps to keep your existing team members happy. Get feedback from them during performance reviews, and issue company-wide surveys asking how you can improve. Offer competitive salaries and benefits. Make sure your team isn’t overworked, and always be looking for ways to support them and keep them satisfied.
Follow These Steps To Streamline Customer Support – Without Sacrificing Quality!
We hope these tips have been helpful. It’s definitely possible to trim down your customer service costs without affecting quality. And another good option is to contact Incept. Our outsourced customer service team can augment your own, providing extra support during busy seasons, help outside of business hours, or even replacing your own internal team. Contact us for more info, and to see how we can help businesses grow with outsourced customer service.