Cutbacks and customer service are two concepts that do not go well together. The importance of a stellar customer experience (CX) in today’s market cannot be overstated. According to Amazon surveys, a positive CX can influence 90% of your customers to do repeat business with you.
Flip that experience to negative, and you could end up losing a large percentage of your customers to a rival. However, when a single call from a customer can cost your business $1 per minute on average, it is only logical to seek out ways to reduce costs, especially in a challenging economy.
But cutbacks to service costs don’t necessarily have to come at the expense of CX. In fact, with recent breakthroughs in automation technology, there is even a possibility that you can improve support while lowering costs. Here are three ways in which you can make it happen:
1. Relegate Calls to the Background
This is the age of omnichannel branding and marketing. The phone is just one among the many avenues your customers can use to connect to your organization. It is also the most labor-intensive, requiring large teams of agents and in-house infrastructure (or outsourcing costs).
Both millennials and Gen Z tend to prefer text chat and social media over phone calls. If your organization is still relying primarily on phone support, you are doing it wrong from both a cost and CX perspective. Younger consumers are more likely to do a Google search before calling customer support, reports Zendesk.
This is called ‘first contact‘, and their experience here can make or break their impression regarding your support system. Focusing more on phone calls instead of building up your multichannel systems can cost you in terms of both resources and customer satisfaction.
2. Pay More Attention to Self Service
The clamor for more self-service options has been growing among customers since the dawn of digital commerce. With the challenges imposed by the coronavirus, it seems to have finally reached a crescendo. With an overwhelming 81% asking for more self-service options in a 2022 survey report sponsored by customer experience software company NICE.
While 95% of companies also reported a spike in self-service requests in 2021, only half believe they are fulfilling this demand from their clients. And yet, a meager 15% of consumers are satisfied with the present state of self-service, according to the same report.
When executed properly, accompanied by a comprehensive knowledge base made of FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and how-to videos, a self-service system can drastically reduce the burden on your support staff, bringing both cost savings and improved CX.
3. Up-skill Your Staff with AI Solutions
With the rise of Large Language Models, we are finally witnessing the revolutionary potential AI can have on everything from art and culture to everyday life and, of course, business as well.
Customer service stands to benefit more than most other fields from new AI-based solutions. And it is not just about switching from support teams to an AI chatbot. Instead, you can leverage AI to upskill your teams and make them more efficient.
For instance, take the AI-powered translation service from Unbabel — the platform provides language solutions that can deliver real-time translations across over 130 language pairs from around the globe.
With this service, you can instantly convert your support agents into supercharged multi-lingual chat specialists. Say goodbye to the need to hire multiple native teams across all your international markets. The potential for cost savings without any compromise on CX is what makes this so exciting.
Provide Excellent Customer Service
In an increasingly interconnected global market, the scope for rapid growth is often held back by limitations in scaling vital ancillaries like localized customer support. But with modern digital tools, things that were once considered formidable barriers — local language support chief among them — can be relegated to a minor trifle.