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The emotions customers experience during the support journey can make or break the customer relationship.
People are driven by emotion. We may think of ourselves as highly logical beings, and we can be. But the truth is that our impression of a business is often based on how the company has made us feel – in other words, the emotions we experience when interacting with it.
For example, did buying a specific product make you feel happy? Then you’d likely see your purchase as the right one, even though it might have been more logical to opt for a cheaper competing product.
Businesses typically spare no expense providing customers with a superior buying experience. However, their efforts may need to improve when facilitating a pleasant post-purchase support experience. This sets the stage for negative customer emotions to arise and fester.
Customers prefer to avoid contacting customer service if they can help it
While customers can contact a customer service representative when they run into an issue, doing so isn’t their preferred first course of action.
That’s because customer service is often perceived as a slow method of getting help. As our recent customer service research discovered, perhaps the only people whom customers enjoy calling less than customer service are their in-laws.
Instead, customers may try DIY-ing a solution. They may try going through your knowledge base or Googling for answers. They’ll try to find a solution as soon as possible because the problem wastes their precious time.
More than two thirds of the customers we surveyed – 77 per cent – will contact customer service only if there is no other way of getting answers.
And when customers do contact customer service, they often have a less-than-stellar experience
When customers contact customer service after having exhausted all other means of getting help, they’re likely to feel frustrated.
Unfortunately, some customer service teams fail to smoothen things over. For example, they may take days or weeks to reply, which is simply too slow in 2023. Shortcomings such as these only worsen the situation.
As a result, most customers we surveyed did not describe their contact with customer service as positive: only 33 per cent of respondents reported feeling grateful after receiving help from customer service. Instead, impatience is the most-felt emotion (42 per cent), followed by frustration (36 per cent).
All these negative emotions can sour a customer’s impression of a business – your business if your customer service standards have been subpar – and turn them off patronising your business or recommending it to others.
Customer loyalty isn’t quickly gained, but it can be easily lost.
Providing customers with the help they need – fast
With all that could go wrong along the way, what can businesses do to facilitate a positive customer service experience when customers need help?
The answer is simple. Give customers the assistance they need as quickly as possible to get on with their day.
Such help doesn’t have to kick in only when customers finally contact customer service. You can also provide it at the “DIY stage” when they look for self-help solutions.
For example, a Conversational AI chatbot can receive a customer’s query, process its underlying context, and then deliver an intelligent response personalised to their situation.
The always-online nature of Conversational AI chatbots can assist customers 24/7. Imagine how your customers’ moods will transition from frustrated to delighted when they receive an instant and helpful response, no matter the time of day.
Maintaining a support presence on your customers’ preferred channels is more important than ever
While calling remains the traditional method of contacting customer service, 80 per cent of the customers we surveyed shared that they wouldn’t pick up the phone unless the situation was urgent. Instead, they’d prefer to get in touch using their preferred social channels.
It’s no longer enough to set up a support hotline and website contact form for receiving customer service queries. You’ll also need to establish a presence on your customers’ favored channels and invest in a solution for managing support conversations on all of them.
For example, CM.com’s Mobile Service Cloud integrates with multiple channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, enabling customers to contact customer service via their preferred channel and get the help they seek. Mobile Service Cloud also integrates with CM.com’s conversational AI solution to assist customers in exploring AI-recommended solutions before they chat with a support rep.
The result is quick, convenient customer service that lifts your customers’ moods and puts a smile on their faces.
What keeps customers coming back isn’t the size of your deals, it’s how you make them feel
Businesses pull out all the stops to make customers feel like kings as they decide where to spend their hard-earned money. But after the company has made the sale, whether customers have a pleasant post-purchase support experience is often given less thought.
This is a mistake, as customers’ emotions during the support journey influence whether they’ll remain loyal shoppers and brand advocates or patronise a competitor in the future.
Your task is to equip your customer service team with the resources to deliver a support experience that evokes positive emotions when customers reach out for help. Think satisfaction, gratitude and possibly joy over such exceptional service.
Over the past 24 years, we’ve developed deep expertise in helping businesses worldwide delight their customers with phenomenal customer service and a customer experience strategy. We’d love to help you too.
Originally published on Business Reporter
