How to reduce customer service costs

Customer experience can make or break your business, especially if dealing with an urgent enquiry or problem. 

With the pandemic accelerating companies' digital communications strategy by six years, customers have grown used to, and expect, instant gratification from their customer experience. It will be easy to get left behind if you don't adapt your customer service to the modern demands of consumers [source].

The good news is that by investing in your customer service wisely, the effects will be felt across the business. Happier customers mean increased retention rates, brand affinity and more sales. But this can easily swing the other way if corners are cut. It's reported that 60% of customers have ceased doing business with a brand due to poor customer service, and that's a cost you can't afford.

1. Get the right tools to facilitate an omnichannel strategy
2. Share the load with Chatbots
3. Embrace a self-service AI knowledge base
4. Get smarter with training your team
5. Focus on employee retention
6. Reduce customer support costs by being proactive
7. The power of Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
8. Focus on the right metrics for success

8 tips to reduce customer service costs, without sacrificing quality

When it comes to offering a brilliant customer experience, there can be a lot of pressure to reduce customer service costs without sacrificing satisfaction. It's a tricky balance, but the secret lies in investing your budget wisely on strategies and software that deliver efficiency, strengthen productivity and streamline cost. 

1. Get the right tools to facilitate an omnichannel strategy

As social media and various other digital platforms are commonly utilised by consumers as customer service routes, having a digital-first omnichannel strategy is paramount for a fantastic customer experience. 

Millenials and Gen Z now expect speedy and concise customer service on all digital channels. You cannot afford to drop the ball when it comes to communication between your brand and customers, as missed messages or having customers endlessly repeat their issues will ultimately lead to an unhappy, frustrated and impatient customer. If this happens, you risk negative brand sentiment or even losing your customers to another brand. No one can afford the cost of bad customer experience. 

An truly omnichannel experience reduces your customer service costs by:

• Centralising interactions to avoid messy, time-consuming handovers. If you try to handle interactions across multiple platforms, apps, forums and rating sites without the right tools, the inefficiency will cost your business.

• Tracking interactions from start to finish with omnichannel solutions, such as NICE CXone. This keeps conversations flowing across all channels and keeps them connected through a centralised hub accessible by agents. Agents will have complete visibility of the customer's interactions at their fingertips should a human touch be required.

• Agents who can access this full view of interactions will have problem-solving speed and efficiency, saving time and money for your business. This will increase first call resolution (FCR) - a valuable metric when it comes to measuring the success of your customer service.

2. Share the load with Chatbots

Humans are expensive, so any opportunity to automate customer service without sacrificing the experience can reduce customer service costs. Response speed is also of the essence, with 56.14% of consumers still viewing slow response time as the biggest problem in their customer experience. Customers want answers, and they want them NOW.

Enter the ultimate customer service team's wingman: Chatbots. 

The benefits of using a chatbot when you wish to reduce customer service costs:

• Intelligent chatbots are the perfect meld of data, content and in-house talent wrapped in AI technology. It works alongside your agents to save costs of hiring and training further human agents and reduce AHT (average handling time) by fast-tracking customers to the answers they need. 

• Chatbots can remove the workload of repetitive, basic enquiries so agents can focus on the customers who require deeper assistance. 

• AI technology is convenient in facilitating minimal disruption to the customer's first call resolution and, if a human agent is required, seamlessly transfers the intel gathered. 

• Instant, real-time 24/7 support access for your customers can give your business the upper hand over your competitors. Your customers won't be left twiddling their thumbs outside your customer service office hours.

3. Embrace an AI knowledge base for effortless self-service

When you have all the answers, make the knowledge accessible and convenient to your customers and your workforce. Intelligent knowledge management will empower customers to find their own solutions quickly whilst also allowing agents to personalise their service accordingly when required. 

Why use customer self-service options?

• Eight out of ten consumers are more willing to do business with companies that offer self-service options. But only 61% of companies provide these easy and convenient communication routes, despite self-service reducing customer support volume by at least 20%.

• Customers want faster resolutions with minimal wait time, and not all want to talk directly to an agent - 81% of customers across industries attempt to take care of themselves before reaching out to an agent. Leveraging a self-service AI knowledge base can tick all these boxes and improve first contact resolution rates. Making your customers feel like experts can eliminate frustration and increase customer retention.

• Knowledge bases can also take customer service one step further when a human agent is needed. With smart software, such as NICE CXone, the customer data is collected from their knowledge base searches and is passed over to an agent when required. This delivers the best service as the customer won’t need to reiterate their issues. 

• It's a long term investment that will pay off. The AI knowledge base can be developed as your business grows and encounters more customers, enquiries and pain points. The plumper the knowledge base, the less time agents need to spend on inbound calls and support tickets.

4. Get smarter with training your team

Agents are the customer's first point of contact, and they wield the power to transform an unhappy customer into a brand advocate. A well-trained agent is (almost) priceless, so make sure you're utilising the best tools to maximise the efficiency of your agents… without sacrificing the CX.

• Staying on top of training can take up a lot of time and money, but agents must upskill and develop alongside the business to consistently deliver customer satisfaction. When you have a good agent, happy, satisfied customers will keep coming back, and this means so much to your bottom line. 

• Coaching and strategic training plans can absorb large amounts of your customer service budget. The average manager spends 35% of their time looking for coaching opportunities and only 7% of their time coaching, which is not an efficient use of resources. With the right software, like NICE CXone, businesses can capitalise on training opportunities based on the quality of the calls. The right tools, guidance and training can be relayed directly to the agent while they're on a call. Valuable tips and feedback can help retain a high quality of service and develop the agents' soft skills in the moment, fixing issues before they've occurred.

• Management can assess the customer service training cost and train accordingly by having a clear view of individual agent performance. They can provide seminars to address issues that affect large areas of the workforce or one-to-one training for individual circumstances and skillsets.

5. Focus on employee retention

Employee wellbeing is an important factor when looking to reduce customer service costs. Turnover can be a considerable cost for customer service departments, but it can be improved by empowering employees with knowledge and nurturing their development.

• Provide perks, tangible training opportunities, feedback loops and incentivised milestones to create a happier workforce with less turnover. And this also means less time and money wasted on hiring and training new staff. 

• Having a centralised knowledge base, tailored training, and omnichannel accessibility can help make the agent's job faster, more efficient, less stressful, and generally build a more meaningful, satisfying career.

• Consider the long term effects as well. The longer agents stay within the team, the more experience they accumulate. These agents have fantastic insights into the customers, and their feedback can be integral in improving customer experience and processes.

The right software and processes can help agents produce top customer experiences without causing unnecessary stress from scrambling for answers and delaying the customer experience. And with more customer service teams working from home post-pandemic, the need to have the knowledge readily available in a centralised space becomes a priority.

6. Reduce customer support costs by being proactive

Being proactive in customer support is always more cost-effective than being reactive. Collating feedback across agents and customers can identify opportunities for improvements, especially when customers are repeatedly reporting the same common issues. 

• Look upstream at the customer journey to identify problems causing these redundant calls. Tackling the common issues and addressing them at the source can reduce incoming inquiries and related costs, such as call centre cost per call.

• Explore other automated comms to keep your customers updated about ongoing support tickets or enquiries. From SMS to email, there are simple ways to report customer ticket progress without requiring a customer interaction.

• Be proactive on social media and email.  Consumers run straight to social media channels when they have a problem, so preempt these comms by keeping these platforms up-to-date on developments, internal issues, scheduled maintenance, outages and other important announcements.

   

  

7. The power of Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Interactive Voice Response or IVR can be a powerful piece of technology in streamlining the customer experience. It is cost-effective as it enables customers to perform actions to solve their basic enquiries, cutting out the need for a human middleman.

NICE CXone helps businesses enhance their customer journeys with such AI-powered IVR in a few ways:

• These IVR systems can interact with customers and allow them to self-identify using keypad selections or voice responses to perform actions.

• Customers can utilise IVR to access information that doesn't require the help of a human agent, i.e. information on appointments, bookings, refund status etc.

• IVR can also be used to help connect a customer to the correct department or agent who has the relevant skills to deal with their issue.

8. Focus on the right metrics for success

Many businesses focus on faster average handling time (AHT) to report on the success of their customer service. Pushing through shorter calls at a higher volume may show a low call centre cost per call, but it doesn't necessarily translate into a good customer experience.

Agents encouraged to embrace their interpersonal skills and react according to the individual customer's situation saw a 50% increase in performance according to productivity and CX indicators. And this tactic didn't cause a spike in costs.

Focusing on the wrong metric to merely keep costs down could disrupt customer satisfaction and risk poor brand sentiment. In this era of instant gratification, brand loyalty rests on a knife-edge. If a company doesn't actively anticipate or support customer needs, 45% of consumers say they would switch brands. 

Reducing customer service costs without compromising on quality is tricky. An FCR improvement action plan that focuses on resolving a customer's enquiry within the first contact (with minimal frustration) will help reduce cost and produce a positive CX. Focus on fixing the customer's issue in the first contact rather than spreading multiple interactions out over a shorter period.

When it comes to reducing your customer service costs, automation can be an absolute time and money saver, but be strategic. Combining the human element of customer service alongside smart technology, self-service tools, and helpful automated customer service can help minimise the friction of 'redundant' support tickets and consequently reduce customer service costs. 

And don't forget, empowering your customers and your workforce with convenient and accessible knowledge can work wonders in providing a happy, efficient and cost-effective business.