Customer service is as relevant in 2021 as it was in 1921: the customer is always right. That maxim remains the same in business today. It’s the guiding principle for companies everywhere, even with the business world constantly changing. And, it’s not difficult to see why it’s a priority. In a world of increasing uncertainty and constantly fluctuating markets, maintaining a top-quality customer experience is absolutely critical.
That being said, connecting with customers through customer service is more difficult than ever before. COVID-19 put a huge gap in between businesses and their patrons, one that will not be fully bridged anytime soon. All the same, the onus is on business leaders to maintain and maximize those connections. Here are five tools to help them do so:
1. Dolby.io
If you’re prevented from meeting customers in person, digital conferencing is the next best thing. Of course, this is probably not new news to you. Zoom meetups have been the way to go for over a year now. What’s important to remember is the importance of audio and video quality during these meetings, and Dolby.io can help ensure them.
The point of video conferencing is to imitate real life communication as closely as possible, but most major platforms just can’t pull it off. Dolby.io improves the experience by reducing background noise, prioritizing speaking voices, and maintaining resilience in the face of network connectivity issues. Customers will notice the difference between well-run virtual meetings and poorly-run ones — tools like Dolby.io ensure that yours are in the former category.
2. Qualtrics XM
No company wants to create a patchwork customer service experience — crafting the CX bit-by-bit, implementing minor fixes without contributing to a larger vision. The ideal CX is more than just a collection of features; it’s the culmination of a larger vision. For that, you need an experience management platform.
There are no shortage of such tools to choose from, but one of the strongest candidates to opt for is Qualtrics XM. Qualtrics centralizes all of the crucial components of the customer experience — design, outreach, analytics, and so on — into one, highly accessible digital portal. Each of its capabilities may not be fully refined, but Qualtrics XM remains a great way to oversee all aspects of your CX operations.
3. SurveyMonkey
The customer service experience will never be a fully top-down process. In order to provide top levels of customer service, you’ll need to know precisely what your customers want and how your company can provide that. There are a number of different ways to get to the bottom of what your clients are thinking, but one of the most time and cost-efficient is through surveys.
If you think of surveys in the business world, SurveyMonkey likely jumps straight to the front of your mind. The software itself is nearly ubiquitous thanks to its large number of free features and high overall ease of use. Market research is an expensive and time-intensive process — one that often requires outside consultants in order to pull off properly. SurveyMonkey makes crucial data-gathering easy and easy to pay for, allowing you to reincorporate what you learn back into your customer service experience with great speed.
4. WotNot
It’s widely acknowledged that the next big frontier of customer service is chatbots. Businesses need to be able to connect with visitors to their website at any time over any issue. Thankfully, chatbots make that fully feasible for the first time. There are more chatbot providers out there than any one person could reasonably keep up with, but one of the most accessible picks is WotNot.
Chatbots almost always function quite well, but incorporating them into your site can be a challenge without a dedicated team. The big selling point of WotNot’s bots is their “no-code” approach. This means that the chatbots themselves can be added to a site without any technical expertise on your part. For companies looking to quickly beef up their customer service experience, the ability to deploy a powerful chatbot on your site in a matter of minutes is invaluable.
5. KissMetrics
Though KissMetrics was not specifically designed with the customer experience in mind, it’s a great tool for refining the customer experience all the same. Tracking CX-specific analytics can be difficult to do in a meaningful way given just how far-reaching customer service can be. In one moment they’re messaging a chatbot, and the next they’re talking to a human. After that, they’re filling in a digital form. How can you analyze trends between so many different formats?
KissMetrics gets around this by compiling marketing, product, and sales analytics all into one place. This way, relevant figures from all corners of your business can be held up against one another. This reveals crucial trends that could impact how you view the customer service experience. True data-based insights are hard to come by in this field. But, doing so successfully is too valuable an opportunity to pass up.
Customer service is constantly changing, but so too are the tools that facilitate it. If businesses want to keep up with the latest, they’ll need some powerful software to help them to do so.
