You may wonder what the secret is to the high customer satisfaction stats companies like Zappos and many of the world’s most player betting sites. One of the key reasons these businesses are so successful is because they have opened all channels of communications possible and putting the power of communication in the hands of their customers.
In this guide, we will give all the options available. Your business can easily implement every one of these options. It takes a little bit of time and effort, and at the end of this guide will let you in on a little secret which is exactly how even small one-man businesses are able to communicate over multiple communication channels.
In end, the consumer gets to choose the communication he or she prefers to get in touch with your business.
This will help to:
a) Close more sales
b) Encourage repeat sales
c) Foster customer satisfaction
Social Media Support
We all know which social media channels are available, but one of the issues that most people find is that they do not receive an answer when they send a Twitter or Facebook message. If your business has any kind of social media platform that can be used for messaging, then use it. There are numerous people out there that are too lazy to send an email, do not feel like picking up the telephone, or they just do not use live chats for whatever reason.
These people are usually those that prefer to get in touch via social media, and so by opening social media as a channel of communication alone, you will find that you start to get more sales.
Live Chat and Chatbot Support
When people do find your website, giving them the option to use live chat will connect them with your business immediately. The chat option is right there in front of them, so the chances of a sale are almost immediate.
You can also use a chatbot for times when there is no one available to answer your live chat. Start with a message that tells the site visitor what your normal opening times are and then offer them the chance to type in their question to see if the chatbox has the answer. It is almost as if you have an automatic FAQ immediately available to answer questions.
Live chats and chat boxes are needed especially for websites on which items being sold are not everyday products. For example, if your business sells gadgets or gives tech reviews, then the faster you can solve people’s questions, the quicker your company will make sales.
Email Support
Having an email form or an email address is one thing, but actually letting your customers know that have received their email is another. That is to say that if you have an email support option, make sure there is an auto-responder letting the person sending the email know that you have received their message and that you will get back to them. Nearly every business has email support, and there are still plenty of people that like to send bullet-pointed questions about products and prefer to receive a reply via email for later reading.
Telephone Support
Telephone support can be difficult to set up and implement if you are an online business selling tons of products using an automated eCommerce sales system. There are plenty of options out there like VOIP and some of the solutions can be quite inexpensive. For example, Skype allows you to make worldwide international calls as well as have multiple local telephone numbers that will divert to your main office or mobile phone.
All the being said, this still does not make telephone support a viable option if you are going to receive 100s of calls per day. This can defeat the object of having an automated e-comm website. You could set up an SMS call back service. Plus, if you have all the other communications listed above set up, then you will reduce the number of telephone calls you receive.
If you have the employees, and if you can viably implement telephone support services for your clients, then you should include it as one of your communication options.
How Do You Implement All of These Communication Channels?
Setting up how you answer your customers depends on quite a few variables.
· How many support staff do you have available?
· How many people visit your website and try to contact a support agent?
· What is your customer services support budget?
Once you have designed your customer services strategy, you will need a way to know when you receive messages on each of them without having to continuously log in a check all every comms channel. There are two ways that you can do this.
Set up one central email – this email is used for notifications to say when you have received a message from one of the communication channels above. You can even read the message directly on email to decide how important a reply is and the timeframe you should reply.
Set up notifications on your mobile device – when a message from twitter, Facebook, or email comes through, then your mobile will notify you so you can check the message to see if it needs replying to immediately,
What other alternatives do you have?
Hire a support team, or hire a support service such as Zendesk. This is one of the most affordable ways to hire a customer support team. The prices are super cheap for basic support services and the service is scalable so when you grow, you just add more agents or additional comms channels.
In the end, what we hope to have achieved in this guide is to give you guidance to what options are available to you to increase your sales by improving your customer support. Every business is different, the variables between each are huge, but if you have the basics and understand that the more comms channels you have open, the better your business will perform, then you are already on your way to running a successful business that keeps its customers happy and closes sales at the first opportunity so the business can maximize profits.