Customer Retention: How SMBs can Know its Time to Amp Up their Customer Service

Customers now expect more meaningful engagement with businesses beyond just transactions and toll-free support. They look to buy from companies that value customer time and preference at every touchpoint in the customer journey. And this has made the role of customer service pivotal in business growth and brand building.

As a result, customer service is no longer an afterthought to product development and sales. Now, it is the core of all business processes. For SMBs, customer satisfaction is even more critical as they work with limited resources and chase ambitious growth plans. So, prudent allocation of resources and making financially viable business decisions are always top-of-mind for SMB business leaders.

SMBs need a customer service strategy enhanced with the right tools and technologies to build lasting impressions and customer relationships in the fastest time possible. Not to mention the need to extend always-on service even with a small service team.

How can technology help you upgrade SMB customer service?

Customers have moved way ahead from the era when service meant visiting a physical store and dealing with a familiar sales rep there. Now, customers want a personalised, 24×7 available answer to their questions and immediate solutions to their problems. Such massive elevation of customer service is only possible when you introduce technology into the experience you deliver. The right service solutions will amplify your service team’s efforts and empower them with valuable insights that make customers fall in love with your brand.

While upgrading the SMB customer service experience is a strategic business decision that requires deep thinking, certain key areas may require immediate, tactical attention. As you refresh customer service plans, support your service representatives with the right tools for quick results in managing:

Increased workload

If your service agents spend too much of their time on manual and repetitive chores, it is time for an automated service solution to come onboard. Such a solution deploys intelligent workflows that automate and streamline repetitive and time-consuming tasks like – creation and updation of records, call logging, sending emails, etc.

Another effective way to handle increased workload and request for information is by using a comprehensive knowledge database. Embedded right into the agent’s console, it enables instant access to knowledge articles so agents can deliver the right answers fast and with ease. The knowledge base can also be embedded into the service website or customer portal to enable customer self-service.

Omnichannel support

Earlier, email handles were more than enough to checkmark your customer support endeavours. But not anymore. Not only do customers lack the time and patience to write you an email explaining their concerns, but reading and replying to each email is not the best use of the service team’s time and skills.

SMBs today leverage other contemporary channels such as WhatsApp, live chat, social media messengers, SMS, etc. An integrated service platform that offers in-built support for all such popular digital channels is the need of the hour. With it, agents can get an in-context view of all customer engagements across channels directly in their console.

Such an omnichannel service approach will help a company:

• build a hassle-free experience for the customers as they can contact service agents over any of their preferred channels
• offer speedy turnaround in responding or resolving customer queries
• get free and positive visibility as it supports customers on public platforms such as social media and community forums in real-time
• leverage its service agents to cross-sell and upsell across channels

Rising customer issues

Sometimes, despite the most dedicated service team, customer issues continue to spike. This could happen because agents and managers are missing some critical insights. The team needs a 360-degree customer view and real-time service analytics to uncover the underlying reasons for customer dissatisfaction and identify the next best actions. A service solution that offers in-built analytics, predictive insights, and end-to-end customer visibility right within the agent dashboard can help agents to efficiently streamline service requests, respond with the right customer context, reduce turnaround times, and ultimately, boost customer delight.

Automated and intelligent triaging and routing of cases can also offer data that helps service managers discover patterns – tickets raised by several users or on recurring issues can be collated for a complete picture to understand the root cause and arrive at aa proactive solution to these.

Choosing the right service solution

As an SMB, you would do well to choose a customer service platform that serves as a one-stop solution for your service priorities, and can scale to accommodate your evolving business needs.

Powered by Einstein, Salesforce Service Cloud is an out of the box solution that can help revamp the entire approach to SMB customer service. Service Cloud is built to offer perfect support to service teams working on-site or remotely. A cloud-based, intuitive service platform with pre-built integration apps, these capabilities make it super easy for your service reps to interact with the solution and for you to integrate in your existing infrastructure.