This guest post was written by our friends over at helphouse, a valued Ultimate partner.
Even in times of uncertainty, one thing is clear: Customer service is crucial for businesses to succeed — and will remain so. Excellent CX makes customers return to your business and keeps them from the arms of your competitors, even if they can find similar products or services elsewhere.
Here's how to make sure your customer service is ready for the demands of tomorrow.
Invest in your customer service
If you work in support, you already know that customer expectations keep on growing. In fact, 90% of support leaders are reporting higher customer expectations than ever before. And when 50% of consumers will switch to a competitor after one bad experience, this leaves little room for mistakes. That’s why successful brands are investing in their customer service to ensure they can provide outstanding CX and keep meeting their customers’ demands for better support.
Prep your CS for tomorrow with these brand new CS stats for 2023
Investing in CS used to mean hiring more agents or buying new phones. But today, investments are largely in tools that enable your support team to work smarter — freeing up time and resources for more high-value tasks. Companies who invest in tools and tech that make it easier for agents to support customers will see both CSAT and employee satisfaction rise.
With great tools come great possibilities
One such tool (or rather suite of tools) is Zendesk. Zendesk is an advanced customer service platform that is flexible, scalable, and adaptable — in relation to business needs, customer expectations, and future development. With its second-to-none ticketing system, omnichannel functionality, and general ease of use, Zendesk empowers agents to help your customers in smarter, faster, more intuitive ways.
As customers keep expecting more, you should demand more of your support tools. With a bit of help, Zendesk can be customized to your exact needs. This might include requesting information from customers via pre-chat forms or categorizing conversations with pre-set tags and custom triggers. You can also use Zendesk to automatically pull a customer’s data: like their location, IP address, email address, and the type of device they’re using. This allows you to deliver support experiences that are truly personalized to each individual.
If you want to know more about Zendesk and how you can adapt this versatile helpdesk system to your business needs, get in touch with our partners (and leading Zendesk experts) at helphouse.
Streamline your support with Ultimate and Zendesk
Future-proof your support with automation
AI and automation are transforming the way we interact with each other — and how brands interact with their customers. Take chatbots, for example. These intelligent bots are available 24/7 in your customers’ native language to answer all those questions your agents have solved hundreds of times and more.
And the benefits of automation go far beyond answering repetitive customer questions. You can use AI to organize, prioritize, monitor, route and fill incoming tickets. Automating these manual processes and workflows enables your agents to work more efficiently. AI can also analyze your customers’ behavior and turn this data into insights that upgrade your customer service.
Find out how automation benefits your bottom line
AI is no longer the future of CX, it’s here now. The most customer-obsessed brands have already adopted automation — and companies that don’t adapt, won’t keep up. In the next two years, 79% of support leaders plan on investing in greater AI and automation capabilities to keep pace with this change.
It can seem daunting, but Ultimate’s Automation Explorer helps you get started with automation in no time.
Get started with automation
Based on your historical support data, the free AI-powered Automation Explorer finds your potential automation rate. Use it to see how many hours of agent time you could save by automating your customer service. This tool will even tell you where to start as it identifies your team’s most common requests.
We could go on about the advantages of AI and automation, but you probably just want that report now, don’t you? Go get it here.
If you want to make sure you’re using your tools to their fullest potential and find out how to optimize your digital customer service, contact helphouse — their experts will help you find the best solution for your business.