In the battle for customers, often the company with the best customer service wins, even if their prices are a little higher. One thing that technology has done is cause consumers expect more when it comes to communication and service from the businesses they buy from.
The #1 reason that customers choose to move to a different brand is because they don’t feel appreciated. Good customer service is vital to both gaining new customers and retaining them. 17% of consumers are willing to spend more with a company that has outstanding customer support.
Technology has both had an advantage and disadvantage in the customer support department of small businesses. The downside is that because technology enables multiple forms of instant communication, customers expect a fast response. On the plus side, there are many excellent cloud services out there that can help you keep up with customer expectations and that are also very affordable for small businesses.
Tools to Help You Give Your Customers a Great Experience
Streamlining your customer experience is what great customer support is all about. 75% of consumers want to have a consistent experience with a company regardless of how they’ve contacted them (phone, website, social media). This puts more pressure on your customer support team to meet a customer’s needs in real-time, but given the right tools, they can successfully gain a client’s trust and give them an experience that keeps them loyal. Here are some of the best applications we’ve seen that help our small business clients provide great customer support.
Zendesk
The customer support tool Zendesk is an all-in-one that allows you to handle website requests, chats, and phone calls all within a single interface. The application also allows you to choose which components you want and leave out those you don’t. It also bridges the gap between customer support and sales, by integrating the two interfaces so any client tickets in the CRM side are synced with the sales side. Modules offered:
- Zendesk help desk
- Chat
- Sell
- Talk (VoIP system)
- Guide (Self-help FAQ)
Spout Social
78% of customers that complain to a company on Twitter expect a response within an hour. Spout Social helps your team stay on top of all your social media channels. From pre-scheduling your social media posts to engaging with your followers, this social media dashboard allows you to see all your channels in one place. It also helps you improve responsiveness by puting all incoming tweets, direct messages, and comments in a unified inbox.
Groove
This business support program does a little bit of everything. It’s designed to facilitate communications by keeping them all in one place. Whether you’re speaking with customers by phone, email, social media or chat, their dashboard keeps everything centralized. Groove is also a powerful team messaging application, made to help you and your team stay on the same page about who is working on what. It also makes it easy to manage a client throughout different team members and give them a consistent experience.
Skype for Business
Why only communicate in text when you can easily have a video call that works across all devices? Skype for Business integrates fluidly with Microsoft Teams and allows you to easily schedule virtual face-to-face meetings to assist a client with a question or walk them through a proposal. The application also gives you the flexibility to communicate by chat, voice, or video, and offers additional features like screensharing and interactive white board.
HappyFox
HappyFox is another integrated tool that offers both live chat and an easy-to-use customer helpdesk. Their chat is one of the most customizable that you’ll find, and you can use it to trigger page-appropriate messages, such as “Have a question before you buy?” if someone’s lingering on your shopping cart page. On the help desk side of the software, they’ve been named as Best Help Desk Software 4 years in a row. Their tool also offers multiple integrations with a variety of other cloud-based applications.
Sparkcentral
Many customers like the instant feedback that messaging allows. Sparkcentral is designed to facilitate messaging through multiple channels including chat, social media, and SMS texts, making it easy for your team to keep them all centrally located Get a step ahead of your competition by offering customers multiple instant ways to interact with your company. Some of the interfaces Sparkcentral supports are:
- Facebook Messenger
- Twitter DM
- Website and mobile app chat
- SMS
Get Help Doing Small Business IT Right!
Every day there seems to be more new apps to choose from for running your business. How do you know which have staying power and will actually boost your efficiency? Managed IT Asia can help you streamline your business with the right cloud technology and ensure it’s optimized for your needs. Contact us today for a free consultation at +65 6748 8776 or reach out online.
MANAGED IT ASIA, we are an IT Support, IT Solutioning and Managed IT Service Provider specializing in serving Small Businesses across Asia. Call us at +65 6748 8776 and let us manage your Small Business IT today!