Inc. May/June 2020 pp20 L|Tip Sheet “Is Your Customer Service Human Enough? “Fighting it out on price is difficult. Making a genuine connection with customers will bond them to you” By Jill Krasny
Nice brief on current thinking.
Some facts presented.
33% of customers ditched a brand in 2017 “because the service lacked personalization”.
67% of “churn…can be prevented by fixing issues the first time”.
25% of “additional profit that can result from boosting customer retention by five percentage points”.
90% of customers … “want service issues to be resolved online”.
A few examples.
Rahul Vohr of Superhuman gave one-on-one calls to new customers orienting them to their service. He noticed that “retention was high, churn was low and they were making a lot of referrals”.
Atoms, an online shoe company, includes with each delivery a collapsible box and pre-paid label making it easy should a customer wish to return an item.
Bloomscape, offers 24/7 access to “Flower Mom” staffed by individuals that “talk you and your orchids through a crisis”.
A Quote.
“In the age of chatbots, humanizing customer relationships is a differentiator”.
Tips for constructing your website and making your customer service accessible.
1. Make your site, their site. It pays to get customer input about features they would value.
2. Make it personal. Verb Energy’s, Bennett Byerley created a customer experience team “we insist on having authentic human interaction”.
3. Empower your reps. Artifact Uprising’s, Brad Kopitz comments “understanding that there’s a human at the other end of the line is where you should start”. Brad gives each agent freedom to operate and a budget for “helping customers” and notes “there’s no official handbook at all”.