Every business owner understands just how crucial great customer service is to attracting and retaining clients. However, many still miss out on the opportunity to provide round-the-clock customer support. It’s never too late (or too early) to offer your patrons an excellent, 24/7 service – here are three top tips to get you started.
Allocate resources
It’s important to work out if a 24/7 customer support service is both necessary and feasible for your business. After all, you don’t want to pour your resources into a service that isn’t going to be right for your company – particularly if it means having to scale back or hire new employees.
Luckily, focusing on improving customer experience tends to prove fruitful, and is hugely beneficial for most businesses. In fact, most find that they’re able to successfully implement their new service without having to forfeit a large amount of time or money. Usually, this is achieved by hiring virtual receptionists to act as the point of contact for customers looking to engage out-of-hours – a more affordable and convenient alternative to hiring in-house customer support assistants.
Utilise social media
Once you’ve allocated your dedicated 24/7 customer service workforce, you’ll need to consider the modes of contact that will be most viable for your business.
Depending on your product, social media can be hugely effective as a channel of communication, as customers are free to reach out at all hours, and then receive a response as and when one of your customer service advisors next becomes available. Online channels such as these allow for a certain ease of communication, both for the customer and the business. Plus, the added marketing benefits mean that the setting up your social media profiles will be advantageous in more ways than one.
Automate processes
Along with all your other business tasks that can be performed at the click of a button, excellent customer service can now be delivered via automated software technologies. There are a couple different strategies that you can use, and usually, this will be a combination of an automated ticketing system and a virtual chatbot.
By opting to automate your customer service processes, you can more conveniently keep track of customer queries, and respond in a timely fashion. Not to mention, by incorporating a chat bot onto your company website, you can effectively screen queries that can be solved without human assistance, as the software works to direct your customers to the appropriate information on your website.
Why offer 24/7 customer support?
While you can provide a great level of service to your customers during company opening hours, nothing quite beats a round-the-clock system that allows your customers to engage with your service continuously and without interruption. By employing 24/7 customer support, you’re proving to your customers that you are a reliable and trustworthy business, willing to go the extra mile to provide excellent support and guidance.
