3 Simple Innovations That Have Revolutionised Customer Service Practices

In order to stay ahead in customer service, innovation and adaptability must be at the forefront of any coherent business plan. The companies with the most successful, effective customer service teams are those that are constantly seeking perfection through new technologies, consumer behaviour and the practices of their competitors.

The relationship between a company and the consumer can be the easiest thing to get right, but it can also be the hardest – knowing what steps to take in order to achieve and maintain the highest of standards can be a testing process and one that is crucial to get right from an organisation of any size. Innovation in customer service is a different process to simply chasing the latest trends, however, and it is important to analyse each route carefully to see what will be best for the way your company operates.

Below, we look at a few of the innovations that have changed the landscape of customer service in recent years.

Live Chat

The ability to provide direct, relevant responses to customer service disputes in real time is what sets many companies apart from their competitors in the modern era. A new technique, accelerated due to the development of super-fast internet connections, live chat facilities are now an integral feature of company customer service policy for the biggest multinationals right through to the smallest end of the SME spectrum.

Light technological support, online sales assistance, difficulties with logistics – these are all areas that can be tackled swiftly and successfully with a live chat feature, and as a result it has helped many companies streamline their services. It removes the chance of customers being bounced from department to department in the hope of finding a member of a customer service team that specialises in a certain area, providing a succinct and liberating form of dispute resolution in the process.

Once dismissed as an impractical, impersonal way of communicating with customers, Live Chat features are now part and parcel of the customer service landscape and have helped change consumer relations for the better.

Voice Recording and E-Learning Courses

We have written many blogs on the challenges and benefits of e-learning here at ILX, but through utilising the successful use of e-learning programmes to refresh staff on developments within your company’s customer service policy you are ensuring that your service does not get the opportunity to stagnate.

The ease through which phone calls can be stored, recorded and accessed has also revolutionised the way staff can be trained – examples of habits they may have picked up unknowingly are able to be aired and altered accordingly. Good and bad examples of your employees’ pros and cons can also be factored into e-learning programmes to consolidate your approach.

Follow-Up Surveys

While customer satisfaction surveys are hardly a new development, the way they can now be distributed and completed has evolved considerably in recent years. Staff can now follow up every single order or dispute in order to constantly analyse and refine their processes, and giving customers a greater sense of care and consideration at the same time.

Through what is essentially an extremely simply gesture, satisfaction surveys are known to inspire brand loyalty as well as collecting invaluable data for your company. The constantly changing nature of consumer habits and buying trends may be difficult to ascertain, but through careful reading of results these can be harnessed successfully and the results used to your advantage.

At ILX, our team are always looking for perfect solutions when it comes to the management of customer service systems, working out what elements suit what sort of company best in order to ensure our own services are running at their optimum level. For more information on how best to make your customer service systems work for your client base, contact us today.