Great customer service leads to happy customers, and happy customers lead to repeat business.
However, creating the best possible service takes more than hiring friendly people to speak to customers. It takes processes, efficiency, and data to ensure customers are heard and helped quickly and effectively. That’s where technology comes in to help.
Here’s Bizik, the UK’s leading telephone answering and live chat service, to show you six ways tech tools can dramatically improve customer satisfaction.
1. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
Examples: Salesforce, HubSpot
A CRM system helps businesses store customer information and track customer interactions, preferences, and purchase history.
Having all these details in one place can help your team deliver consistent and personalised service. Customer service agents will have all the necessary context easily accessible from the moment the customer reaches out.
This means customers don’t get frustrated when they have to repeat their story if they contact your business more than once.
2. Live chat tools and automated responses
Examples: Bizik, Zendesk
A live chat widget on your business website is the best way for customers to get quick answers to their questions.
Customers appreciate instant responses. When businesses can quickly jump on an opportunity to interact with a customer and give them the information they need, the more likely it is the customer will complete their purchase.
For even faster service, you can install automated responses using chatbots. This technology interprets messages based on keywords and handles routine queries like frequently asked questions or shipping status updates. This helps customers get answers without waiting for a customer service agent to become available.
This also allows your business to run an always-available 24/7 service, so customers can reach out and get answers as soon as an issue arises, at any time that suits them.
By reducing manual effort, these tools free up time for customer service agents to focus on delivering more urgent or complex issues.
3. Feedback and survey tools
Examples: SurveyMonkey, Typeform
Collecting feedback is essential for understanding what’s working and what you need to improve in your customer service.
Survey tools make it easy to create and distribute questionnaires to customers. Some platforms will analyse the feedback on your behalf and visualise the data to help you identify common trends and pain points to help you create a priority list of what needs fixing.
Furthermore, engaging with customers and showing their feedback matters fosters trust and loyalty.
4. Social media management platforms
Examples: Hootsuite, Buffer
Social media is one of the first places customers go to express their opinions of a company’s customer service, both positive and negative. So, successfully managing these interactions is crucial for maintaining a positive brand image.
Social media management tools help you respond to customer queries and address complaints as soon as they appear. Because these interactions are public, this will show the world that your brand is proactive and caring about addressing customer concerns.
These platforms can also help you keep track of customers who tag your business in photos, videos, or social posts they share. By resharing this content, your brand can demonstrate customers’ positive experiences with your service, which is great for marketing.
5. Virtual telephone answering
Examples: Bizik, Aircall
Many customers prefer to address their issues by speaking to somebody on the phone, as it helps them provide more context and ask more questions than is possible over a live chat interaction. Virtual call centres help businesses offer this service without paying for a whole in-house telephone answering team.
These services often include tools such as call routing, voicemail transcription, call recording, and customer surveys, which help make the service as efficient and satisfying as possible.
They may also integrate with your CRM system, allowing agents to access customer information during calls. This enables more personalised interactions and faster issue resolution.
6. Workflow and productivity tools
Examples: Trello, monday.com
How efficiently your team operates has a direct knock-on effect on customer satisfaction. The quicker your team can handle tickets, the quicker your customers’ issues are resolved, and the more likely they will have a positive experience with your business.
Workflow tools can help assign tasks to the correct people and give the whole team greater transparency on each task’s status, increasing accountability. This helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks and each complaint gets dealt with effectively.
These tools also automate processes, such as moving tickets from one person to another once actions are taken, reducing the likelihood of human error and ensuring accurate and up-to-date information.
Final thoughts
Investing in the right tech can help you improve the customer experience and boost your business’s overall operational efficiency.
If you’re looking for a way to offer exceptional customer service without the hefty price tag of hiring more people, try Bizik. As the UK’s most trusted live chat and telephone answering provider, they know how to run an expert, knowledgeable service. Plus, you only pay per second of incoming calls, making it the best value available on the market.
Get in touch to book your seven-day free trial and discover how Bizik can help you.