Customer service is a powerful engine for growth, but not everyone has got it right. How can businesses deliver best-in-class experiences and achieve their growth goals in 2022?
Increasingly, organisations are embracing new technologies and making strategic investments in both people and processes to drive bottom-line growth and create exceptional experiences. Some companies are doing this better than others, adopting a best-in-class mindset and collecting, tracking, and implementing feedback that improves the overall experience and continues to grow the business. How? By drawing clear links between service teams and the rest of their business.
High performers understand the inherent value of their customer service teams, and are 7.6 times more likely to strongly agree that they view customer service primarily as a revenue driver. By prioritising funding for customer service initiatives, and keeping a close eye on the business impact (they’re 6.7 times more likely to track profit and loss for their customer service team), the businesses doing customer service best are doubling down on service as an engine for growth.
Strategic buy-in
The companies that lead the way in customer service have buy-in at every level of the business, with leadership taking an active role in monitoring performance and impact. In many cases, compensation of senior executives is directly tied to customer satisfaction – meaning these businesses are 7.7 times more likely to strongly agree they have senior leaders who immerse themselves in customer service, and 9.2 times more likely to report their senior leaders view customer service metrics on a daily basis.
Empowered agents
Businesses driving growth through their service know better than to underestimate the role an agent plays in continued success. These organisations are 6.4 times more likely to have plans to greatly extend education and training opportunities, understanding that boosting training, empathy and investment in agent wellbeing will reduce churn and empower their people.
As agents have adapted to new tools, channels and processes over the last few years – whilst managing rising expectations and inquiries from customers – the businesses that recognise how important service agents are to the customer service function are those most likely to tap into their full potential. Indeed, high-performers are 9.9 times more likely to strongly agree that their agents are of the highest caliber.
Integrate emerging capabilities across the business
The companies ahead of the customer service curve have their fingers on the pulse when it comes to the latest trends and technologies. High performers are 6.8 times more likely to have already implemented conversational customer service capabilities, including adding messaging channels or making it possible to switch between channels for a single ticket, and will prioritise providing their customers with more channel options, fewer headaches, and better overall experiences.
The businesses performing best will already be thinking about verifying customer identity and commerce history without the involvement of an agent, and will be extremely interested in giving agents a full view of customer data.
Investing across three key areas:
- Acting on customer feedback to improve products and services
- Providing training to customer service staff
- Measuring customer service performance
can help organisations to build a best-in-class mindset and align their service teams with the wider growth targets.
You can learn more about the characteristics of high-performing businesses in the Zendesk 2022 CX Trends Report.
If you’d like to discuss your growth targets and explore how you could optimise your service team to boost revenue, drive efficiency, and improve the overall customer experience, contact us to book a consultation call.
