For example, B2B customer service is vastly different from B2C customer service in many ways.

You might assume that, because you’re dealing with business people rather than the general public, the customer service would be less daunting. However, it is just as testing, but for different reasons.

In this article, we’ll go over how B2B customer service is different from B2C and then explain how you can effectively succeed in the field, making money and connections along the way.

What Makes B2B Customer Service Different?

• Niche market

One thing that differentiates B2C from B2B customer service is that B2B is usually a very niche market with few potential customers. This is due to its inherent nature; you’re not selling to everyone and their dog. Instead, you’re selling to businesses, of which there are fewer than there are individuals.

This affects customer service because it makes the number of opportunities much smaller. Customer service will need to be highly targeted, and employees need to be trained to help clients with these highly specialized products.

This may also mean scaling back or even outsourcing your operations if you’ve been serving a B2C audience. Certain software packages can be significantly cut, and if you use them, check out some B2B SaaS pricing models to see if you can economize.

Less PR required

B2C requires a constantly shrewd public-facing identity, with customer service agents trained to embody the values and message of the company when working in an ecommerce customer service call center, for example. 

Brands have to be very careful about how they come across, from their advertising to their customer service. For example, in a February 2022 study, 55% of companies stated that consistency across channels was the most important attribute of the customer experience.

However, unlike with B2C, because your audience is so small with B2B, you don’t need this steely veneer.

Your customer service can be more casual and personality-led, rather than restricted and conservative. You can be more free and easy, tailoring your customer service style to each client.

Stronger relationships

In B2B situations, one of the bosses of the operation or office will make all the decisions about which company to go with. All your communications will be with this person, and they’ll get the final say for the whole deal, which will likely be a large-volume order. 

Because so much time is spent communicating with this person and convincing them to buy, you’re more likely to get close to them and form stronger relationships. This differs from B2C, in which you usually help customers on a short-term basis.

The below graph shows how long a B2B sales cycle, i.e., closing the deal and getting a client to buy, can take. It is all part of sales prospecting. It can require a lot of work, usually taking longer than a month and sometimes taking up to 12 months, so effort and time must be invested in this.

Logical purchases rather than emotional

A key difference is that B2B decision-makers think with logic rather than emotions when they’re choosing products. B2C clients, meanwhile, are driven by their needs and desires; it’s more of an emotional response.

This means that your customer service will need to be straightforward and appeal to the client’s desire to get something sorted and get it right the first time. Remember that the purchase is a part of their job, so they probably just want to get it out the way! A streamlined process, including frictionless digital payment, will appeal to them. If they pay for an ongoing service, you can automate regular payments through a recurring payment provider.

There’s, therefore, no need for a great number of flourishes and formalities with the client as you might do with B2C. Just ask them what they want, and provide them with something that fits.

Larger volumes of products sold

As you’re providing products to a large number of people, there will be a wholesale-style operation required. You’ll need to keep in close communication with the client about the products and the logistics of delivering them. This means being alert to any possible barriers to distribution.

It also means that a higher level of organization is required when it comes to customer service. Some days, you may feel overloaded by the sheer volume of stock and the need to get it out there. 

Find a way to organize your operations effectively and avoid becoming overwhelmed, as this may lead to customer service faux pas if you’re not careful. The massive amount of stock may also mean that you need to have contingencies in place, such as a business continuity plan.

How to Effectively Succeed at B2B Customer Service

Research how to meet their needs

Conduct research on your customers. It will help you understand their needs. This is critical to delivering effective customer service to your B2B clients. You’ll need to understand what their motives are for buying the product and what specialized information they’ll require when they call.

You can carry this out by providing surveys to potential or current customers and asking them about what they’re looking for in their business operations, possibly via a voice call. What kind of service or extras would they like to see from you when you deliver your service?

With this information in mind, you should be able to hit the nail on the head with your customer service.

Use your charisma

Due to the nature of these close, tight-knit relationships, you’ll need to have a warm personality to build a rapport. Although it’s a product that you’re selling, your client will also buy based on your relationship with them, as it’s likely that you’ll have things to discuss in the future. The client will be more interested in a business relationship with someone who they genuinely like and who they feel that they can count on in the future, or if anything goes wrong.

You need to tap into the heart of the individual and meet their rational business needs. Try and work on your skills gap to improve your interaction and communication skills.

The importance of being likable and helpful should not be underestimated. It could make the difference between securing a contract and losing out to the competition.

Be proactive and contract-driven

You’ll need to go out of your way to secure new clients. They won’t come to you. Generate more leads and follow up quickly. If a business is looking for a product or service, or they aren’t happy with what they’re currently getting, they’ll be more open to an offer, so you need to be constantly ready for that moment.

Being proactive in this way is a great way to show potential clients what level of customer service they can expect should they decide to buy from you. You’ll be able to show that you’re someone passionate about the product and good at communication, which are two key factors that may swing a potential deal.

Beat the competition

Because decision-makers in businesses think so rationally and logically, without too much emotion, they’ll constantly be trying to find the best, most appropriate deal. This means that you’ll have to keep up with the competition to keep those contracts going and not lose out.

Specific things will need to be perfected to attract business people to your company over another. This can include things like improving your website traction using conversion rate optimization services or improving the targeting of your adverts. Equally, make sure your customer service is top-notch, and you’ve got great relationships with your clients to differentiate yourself from the competition. 

Ask clients about the competition, too. A friendly client might be willing to share what competitors are offering or if anyone has approached them. However, make sure to do this appropriately and politely.

Nurture your reputation

In the B2B world, reputation is everything. Businesses often communicate with each other, and within businesses, people talk. You need to ensure that they’re saying good things. Although PR isn’t important in B2B in the traditional sense, giving off a good impression in your industry via excellent customer service will stand you in good stead and allow you to increase your scope.

Part of consistently great customer service is feedback, and you can communicate with clients to ask them about your reputation in the field. Would they recommend you to a friend, for example? As with the last point, it’s best to approach only those clients you feel comfortable with.

The below image reveals how important reputation is when going against the competition.

The Product Comes First!

As the above shows, providing high-quality customer service to B2B clients involves cultivating different kinds of relationships and working to foster customer trust, as well as improving your straightforward, logical service to meet client needs.

Having said this, there’s no point in spending all this time working on your customer service if your product doesn’t fit the bill.

The main focus of any company should be what it’s selling, and B2B is no different in this respect. If you have an inferior product, you simply won’t be able to compete, and it’ll all be for nothing.

You should only really put all your energy into customer service once you know that you’ve got the fundamentals of the business right – something that takes a lot of work.

The post What Makes B2B Customer Service Different and How to Effectively Succeed at It appeared first on deskmoz.

Are you the one who is suffering from losing your customers continuously? Then do not worry as you are not alone in the race. Today many companies are considering lead generation, customer satisfaction, and their retention as difficult jobs. Customer churn or attrition is a significant aspect that affects the overall success graph of your business. 

Because when the struggle associated with customer churn increases, the path to get things back into control also gets blurry. But the good news is that by making some sort of effort to reduce the customer churn, you can get many benefits. How? In the form of profit. According to Bain & Company, if you increase customer retention by only 5%, in return, you can get an increase of 25% to 95% in profits. 

Isn’t this very appreciative news? Surely it is, and to take its advantage here, we’ll walk through a few potent strategies at all the stages in their entire journey to reduce customer attrition.

Let’s dig into it!        

What Does Customer Churn Mean?

Customer churn or customer attrition is defined as the percentage of clients that discontinue the use of your company’s product or services within a time period and stop bringing revenue for you. In a simplified way, this term represents the loss of customers for your company.  

The typical formula for calculating customer churn rate-

Customer churn rate =  Number of clients lost (in a time period)   x 100 

                                      Total number of clients (in a time period) 

Most Common Causes Of Customer Churn

There can be several aspects that affect the clients while they use your product or services. Let’s go through the most frequent reasons that open the exit path for them from your firm in the following points-

• Lack in getting proper and valuable experience
• Experience amateurish and unengaging communication environment
• Poor customer support
• Face difficulties in using your product or services
• Do not find it beneficial to use your product
• Weaker relationship with customers
• Poor onboarding experience
• Customers got negative perception about your company
• Not delivering what was promised and delivered to them
• Problems with the product or services offered by you

And many more pain points could be the reason for the customers to leave your firm that increases the churn rate. 

Let’s better tackle this situation by understanding the possible and effective ways to retain clients in the subsequent point.     

Ways To Reduce Customer Churn In Your Company

To save your organization from high customer churn and its negative impact, it is high time to know and employ the best strategies to lessen it. They are as shown below-

1. Collect Feedback From Customers

It is pretty essential to maintain healthy and open lines of communication with the clients to know their experience with the product or services. And the best approachable way you can opt is – acquire their thoughts in the form of feedback. 

The more customers connect and begin to use your product, the importance of knowing about their reviews for it increases. This helps you from losing the client and solve the issues they encounter at the prior stage. 

Due to such efforts, the possibilities to convert their complaints and issues into appreciating words increases. You can use such reviews, frame testimonials, and share with the clients to let them know the value of remaining connected with your organization. HubSpot offers a pretty good example of the same as shown in the following image- 

The usage and presentation of such client testimonials are not only limited to HubSpot as factoHR, and many other companies follow the same tactic where several clients acknowledge their efforts and begin to form a better and long-term relationship with them instead of leaving them. 

To do the same for your company, you can create a feedback loop and conduct surveys to get their responses timely, depending on your firm’s needs. Another way to get insight into your client’s feedback is by the Live Chatting feature. 

If your website is enabled with this feature, you can conduct and monitor conversations with them and give solutions to the roadblocks coming in their path for using your product or service.

2. Give Away Incentives

To make sure that the customers do not leave you, develop a magnetic force that keeps them attracted to your company. But, how to do that? By offering varieties of incentives to them. This is one of the potent tactics that force clients to consider you instead of going to other competitors.

You can use this concept and give incentives to the customers at different stages to ensure that they remain with your company. For example, you can do so when the customers are about to complete the contract period, or you realize that the client is not gaining much interest in your product. In both situations, you can offer something special to them like discounts, rewards, loyalty programs, promo codes, and anything else that you feel will keep the customers connected with you.

3. Form and Maintain Personalized Relationship

Sales representatives are the ones that remain in continuous contact with the clients. They come to know new customers, their requirements, issues, and concerns with your product or services. This makes the beginning phase of the clients more personalized and happy with the company.  

Customers desire to continue such personal touch in their further journey, but it often happens that it gets lost in the subsequent stage. To ensure that this could not be the reason for the clients to say a forever goodbye to your firm, give the best and most appealing customer services.

You can rightly form a personal and more connected relationship with your customers without much resource spendings. A simple way to do so is by developing the habit of taking follow-up from the clients on a decided time frame. You can even send a casual hi, good morning message to keep the communication lines more open and connected with the customers.      

By considering clients as a part of your professional family and making efforts to develop personal relationships with them, you can surely find a drop in the churn rate over a period of time. 

4. Set A Predetermined Roadmap For Your New Clients

Hurray! You got a new client, but how are you welcoming them to navigate through your product or services? If you have not decided on it, the possibility of such a loophole becoming a potent reason for leaving your company increases, as shown in the figure below-

That’s why the majority of the firms emphasize the “user onboarding” concept to give a better experience to the new clients.

Customers who feel that your product or service benefits them are less likely to go away from your company. You have to cultivate such a perception in their mind from the very beginning phase, and onboarding is the best approach to accomplish it. 

By providing details and guiding clients about your product or service’s features, working, and functionalities, you can better understand their expectations, issues and accordingly look into them. 

5. Thoroughly Perform Churn Analysis

The thought about leaving your company is not an instant decision taken by the customers. They take a certain specific span to decide whether they want to continue or just say goodbye to you. In that time frame, if you cannot determine that the clients are thinking about leaving your company and realize only when they left, then you are already too late to do something to retain them. 

That’s why, from the next time, develop the habit of analyzing the available data to better handle and stop customer churn cases. This practice will help you to determine the aspects that make clients either happy and dissatisfied with your product or services. By knowing about it, you can develop various tactics to engage and protect the relationship with your customers before it gets churned. 

6. Provide Informative Content Consistently

The customer retention tactics extend by the product or service you provide to them. Sometimes “content” also becomes a great supporter in reducing customer attrition. Blogs, newsletters, Press Releases (PR), etc., can work as an extra engagement factor for the clients to know and get updates about your products and, eventually, your organization.

This will improve the chances of getting noticed by the clients and reduce the churn rate. Content is always a great source that helps to attract and retain customers with the best and most approachable content. Figure out the top-performing piece of content and deliver them to the clients using different platforms to enhance your brand’s identity.                                         

Final Thoughts

For the successful growth of your business, it is pretty essential to keep a tap on the customer churn and make all the possible efforts to reduce it. Once you find out and begin the use of the most practical strategies that assist you in happily retaining the customers, you can win the race and give tough competition in the market.

The tips mentioned herewith can work adequately and guide you to reduce client attrition by doing the best for the customers in their entire journey with your organization. This will help to bring back the dissatisfied clients and keep the active clients happy. So do not wait much and get ready to focus on this aspect to achieve all the possible heights for your business.

Author Bio: 

Sweta Sharma is a dynamic content creator with a vast observant mindset. Her vivid interests in modern technologies and marketing strategies help her in crafting novel content that readers acknowledge. Her readiness towards various subjects makes her articles more distinct and attractive.

The post The Key Tactics To Curtail Customer Churn Right Now appeared first on deskmoz.

As a result, businesses that fail to prioritize their customer service strategy could have a lot to lose. Time and time again, studies have shown that U.S. companies lose $75 billion annually due to poor customer service. What’s more, each interaction a customer has with your business could go a long way towards building up – or tearing down – their loyalty to your brand. However you look at it, consistently providing great customer service could be the gateway to the success of your business.

What is Great Customer Service

Great customer service means meeting and possibly exceeding the customer’s expectations. This can range from providing experience at the point of interaction with customers over messaging channels to investing in your knowledge base. Simply put, it is consistently exceeding customer expectations and going above and beyond to help them solve their problems.

Consistently delivering great customer service can help you create brand integrity, maintain customer loyalty, as well as increase your profits in the long haul. That said, here are 8 ways to help you deliver great customer service.

1. Know Your Product/Service

Expansive knowledge of your product/service is an essential custom service skill. If you really want to up your customer service game, you need to be well-informed on what you’re offering. Insufficient knowledge of your product/service may lead to loss of customers as they might lose confidence in your brand.

Since customer support agents are often the first point of interaction with customers, they need to know about the FAQs, key elements of the product/service and help the customer resolve any product/service-related issues. Ideally, the goal should be to handle all customers queries without having to redirect them.

2. Be Responsive

Resolving customer queries can be the cornerstone of delivering great customer service. It can be measured by both speed and accuracy. Improving your contact center’s first call resolution rates will help improve customer satisfaction, boost agent efficiency and keep a positive reputation for the business. While quick response times can ensure that your customers feel heard and prioritized, efficient responses signal that you’re keen on solving their problems. Whether you quickly reply to a common question or fully resolve a customer’s problem, remember that every response matters.

To deliver great customer service, try to always respond to customers so that they don’t feel ignored. Make it your goal to respond to all phone calls and emails within 24hours, or let customers know how long it may take to assist them.

3. Hire The Right People

Your customer service team is often the face of your company, and customers’ experiences can be defined by the skill and quality of support they receive. No amount of mission statements or PR can make up for agents who can deliver excellent customer support. Hiring a great team can be essential in providing high-quality, reliable customer service. So how do you do this? Some key questions you can ask when hiring team members include:

• What is the ideal customer service personality?
• What skills does your support staff need?
• Can you integrate them into your team?

However, if the prospect of going through resumes seems overwhelming, you can result in employing people with the help of technology. This has the advantage of fast-tracking the recruitment process. Your staff represents the face of your business, therefore selecting the right team can have a huge impact on your brand image.

4. Listen To Your Customers

Successful digital transformation companies understand the importance of actively listening to their customers to create effective strategies that meet their evolving needs. Behind every customer, service call is a human being with concerns that need to be addressed. Listening can increase the chances of effectively solving your customers’ problems. It involves hearing what they communicate, both verbally and non-verbally.

For instance, if a customer has questions about Black Friday software deals on your website, your customer support agents should be always there to help them with any queries customers might have.

Luckily, active listening is a skill that can be improved over time. It starts by ensuring for every interaction, the customer has been heard, understood and served to their satisfaction. It’s Vital to remain customer-focused when dealing with complaints, having the ability to listen and be empathetic to the situation can take your customer service a long way.

5. Personalize Your Service

This could go a long way in keeping your customer retention high. If during an interaction, a customer leaves feeling dissatisfied at worst or indifferent at best, you may have wasted an opportunity to win their loyalty. Personalizing customer service is about treating people as individuals.

Each customer is unique and needs to be treated similarly.  In order to personalize the customer service experience, agents can use the customer’s name and build their profiles. This can go a long way in understanding their unique needs. By adding a personal touch to the customer service experience, you can show your customers you know them and you care.

6. Be Proactive

In any situation, waiting until something goes wrong is never a good idea. It’s best to be proactive and catch a problem before it arises. While being proactive requires more effort at the start, it essentially saves you the trouble of having to undo whatever could have been fixed beforehand.

Being customer service-oriented means always searching for ways to create better experiences for customers. That entails looking out for possible situations that customers might need help with so that they can be fixed early on.

7. Seek And Analyze Customer Feedback

You may be surprised by what you learn about your customers and their needs when you ask them what they think of your service. Whether it’s a phone survey at the end of a service call, an email survey, “a survey about your branding elements and logo design”, or a form on the “Contact Us” page of your website, creating a means for customers to give feedback can make it easier for you to learn what needs improvement. You may be able to create a distinctive brand image with a logo maker based on the user’s opinions and wishes. You can use the results to gauge if the current processes are working.

8. Create A Culture Of Greatness

Your customer service culture is the set of beliefs held by your employees about your company.

To build a winning team and a successful business, you need to inculcate a culture of greatness. When your employee experience and your customer experience goals are aligned to achieve greatness, you can begin to consistently deliver great customer service.

Final Thoughts

Even if your customer service reviews are good, there’s no such thing as over-delivering in customer service – there is always room for improvement. If you are not constantly on the lookout for opportunities to improve it, your business can stagnate.

All the elements above combine to consistently produce great customer service, which could make a huge difference in the highly competitive business world.

The post 8 Ways To Deliver Consistently Great Customer Service appeared first on deskmoz.

But as for any paid search, the generation of leads is only as good as the targeting methods that you use to identify and allure potential customers. Even the quality of lead is highly dependent on the mechanics of the targeting strategy that you use. These strategies generally include the ability to target through keywords, filter an audience by using various filters, and, more importantly, delivering a relevant landing page. In a perfect world, all these components of SEM are expected to work together in order to single out the highest value traffic and lead them to your online assets.

Because these components are supposed to work together, it is essential to optimise the marketing process. In this article, there are some general tips & SEO tips that can help you generate more leads through search engine marketing, but before we get into that, let’s understand how SEM is better than SEO for lead generation

SEM Over SEO for Lead Generation

Most people think that SEO is the essential factor for attracting customers to your website. However, the primary goal of SEO is to convince the algorithm of search engines to index your webpage as the most relevant for a particular keyword. SEM, on the other hand, is about placing ads to appear even before the top search results. This is more accountable because sites like Google provide an ample amount of in-depth data about the performance of your ad.

If you don’t have SEM included in your business’ marketing strategy, you should include it as soon as you get an opportunity. Here’s how it is even better than SEO for lead generation.

Unpredictability of SEO

Search engine optimisation should not be considered for lead generation because it is not its primary function. Its main function is to increase your site’s ranking on the search engine result page (SERP). Using SEO can be unreliable because the ranking of your site is largely out of your control. None of the SEO addons out there can provide you with full control over the rankings. Despite the claim of many hosting services that offer so-called marketing tools that can boost your SEO in a short amount of time, the reality is none of those SEO tools will magically rank your site overnight. For more details, you can find out more about those marketing add-ons in this post. You can work on SEO for months and still not appear on the top three listings. Moreover, Google is constantly upgrading its algorithms so that savvy marketers cannot manipulate SEO.

On one side, SEO is like a game of cat and mouse where a win is not certain. SEM, on the other hand, can be relied upon because you are choosing the keywords and paying for the ads to appear for that keyword.

A Second-Place Winner

In search engine marketing, it doesn’t matter whether you finish first, second or third. Ranking in the second or third position can be as beneficial as ranking first.

Suppose you’re running an ad on Google, and after a few days, it has started ranking consistently on the second and third spot for the keyword you’ve selected. Now, you might feel a temptation to pay a little more to appear higher. But the fact is that users click on the second or third position ads with the same seriousness they click the first ad.

The Best Ads Win

More than anything, SEM ads work on the basis of how well they are written, how alluring is the CTA, and how good the offer is for potential customers. If your ad is perfectly written and you are providing great offers as well, you can surely get great output and can save some money too.

SEM is one of the most scalable, flexible, and cost-effective tactics for lead generation. Yes, you can use SEO for lead gen, but if you want to get quality leads at a quicker pace then you can rely more on search engine marketing.

SEM Tips To Generate More Leads

From a distance, search engine marketing seems to be a very straightforward process. But as we take a closer look at the ever-evolving journey of digital marketing, we get to know how crucial it is to keep reviewing the current strategies. Let’s take a look at some of the tips you can incorporate in your SEM strategy to generate more leads.

Develop Accurate Customer Persona

Knowing your target audience is one of the most obvious things your marketing team should do in order to taste success. But there are still countless companies who waste their effort and budget in creating ads for products and services without having a clear picture of who their customers are.

It is essential to know and completely understand who your target audience is for developing accurate personas of your customer. This persona that you develop about your customers can be further served as a reference point for all your messaging and advertising. You can create an effective customer persona using five steps:

1. Understand the sales cycle of your company and know all the people that are involved in the process of decision-making
2. Fractionate your attention to 3-6 stakeholders who are generally involved in your buyer’s journey
3. Determine buckets for your stakeholders- Technology, Finance, Project Management, Executive, etc.
4. Find a customer who is willing to talk to you and exists in one of these departments
5. Do adequate research for each bucket using various sites to understand their key roles.

When you have a clear persona of your target audience, it becomes easier for you to create accurate and effective ads. But it is also essential to keep in mind that the buyer’s personas change as your products and services evolve.

Build Relevant Landing Pages

A generic landing page only sabotages the SEM performance and becomes a roadblock by bringing users to a destination that doesn’t synchronise or seem relevant to the original ad. If you do not have good landing page pairing, you can witness a huge spike in the bounce rates, and it can also lower the ad quality score. When the quality score of your ad decreases, the cost-per-click that a company has to pay for an SEM campaign increases.

In the majority of cases, the ad quality score can be improved by routing the ad to a relevant page on your site that speaks directly for that specific ad only. Altering your web pages for every campaign might look like a waste of time, but because consistency and relevance are so crucial for the success of the campaign, it’s better to do it than have an unsuccessful business.

Besides synchronising the landing page with the ad, you should also try to rank it higher on the SERP for the particular keywords. You should first check website ranking, and how it is performing for various metrics, then you should gather the insights and make the necessary changes for the page to appear higher. This will ensure that you use the landing page to its full potential.

Integrate Long-Tail Keywords

When it comes to local search marketing, long-tail keywords can help accomplish a lot. The traffic that comes to your site through long-tail keywords is better qualified since the keyword is more precise and specific, and hence more relevant to the customer.

Long-tail keywords increase the chances of conversion because of the high-quality traffic it generates. It is crucial to note here that you should always test new long-tail keyword alternatives to ensure that you work on the best information possible.

A/B Testing is Essential

A/B testing is one of the most effective ways to fine-tune your ads based on real-time feedback from the relevant audience. In simple terms, A/B testing is putting two or more variants of your ad and gathering and analysing viewers data to make that ad and campaign more impactful.

To start with, dissect your ad into basic elements and identify the ones that can be easily changed, such as special offers, imagery, or CTA. Make adjustments in only one element at a time, analyse the results, and use that information in your next iterations or campaign.

Final Words

Optimising your search engine marketing strategy is one of the key steps for developing a great lead generation campaign. It is more reliable and cost-effective if done properly. More importantly, the leads generated by SEM are more likely to convert. In this article, we talked about why SEM is better than SEO for lead generation, and we also mentioned some tips that could be incorporated into your SEM strategy for better performance.

The post 4 Tips To Generate More Leads Through Search Engine Marketing appeared first on deskmoz.

Trust is the critical factor that business people need to curate as it can be a block in their road to success. Especially when you are running a business online, people will have more trust issues which you need to foster as soon as possible; otherwise, it will affect your business growth. 

Customer trust is a win-win situation for any business model. 

Let’s know why customer trust is very important for your online venture in brief. 

Why Is Customer Trust Important?

Customer trust is the critical factor for any venture running in the internet world. The internet world is so massive, and people have many options to choose from, and if they find trust issues with your online business, they will shift to another business. This is why customer trust is very important as there are a lot of competitions going on in the internet world. 

Also, more than 80% of consumers believe that they cannot buy things with uncertainty. Customer trust is the key thing that allows your business to succeed and one of the important parameters to fulfill for the long-term success of the business model. 

Now the question is how to achieve customer trust and loyalty for your online business. There are crucial steps that you need to take care of, and we will discuss that furthermore. 

What Steps Should Be Taken To Foster Customer Trust And Loyalty?

We all know that customer trust is something that cannot be achieved overnight. The online business will be skyrocketing once you start building customer trust. Hence, start taking some essential steps for your online venture to build customer trust effectively. 

Transparency

Transparency is the essential thing that business people should focus on to build customer trust. People will be more likely to trust the business model that is more transparent about their products and services, policies, terms and conditions, product description, reviews, etc. These are the factors that build customer trust because people love straightforwardness and honesty when it comes to buying things. 

Authenticity

Authenticity means being valid to your customers and maintaining decorum. Being authentic is no rocket science as it is straightforward because you need to be genuine about your products. If you display a clear and concise goal, objective, brand messages, beliefs, etc., you will be authentic to your audiences, and that will allow you to build customer trust. 

Consistency

Consistency is also one of the essential factors that your online business needs to consider to build customer trust. It is important because most customers are likely to see your track records and how well you have managed your brand image and value in the business market. 

It is very important to create the initial impact and embrace the business as a brand, and you will get more recognition in stiff market conditions. Stats suggest that businesses that maintain consistency experienced more than 30% of the increase in revenues. 

Customer Consideration

Customer consideration can also be very important for building a strong relationship and trust with audiences. There is always a demand for the things that business people are supplying, and considering the demands of the audiences is very important as that will build trust and create a good impact on customers’ minds. When customers feel that there is someone to take care of their consideration, they will start trusting you. Moreover, another powerful tactic to increase customers’ trust is building a customer referral program because customers trust your business, and their friends or social media influencers recommend it to others.

Testimonials

Testimonials have become essential for the online business because people will be more likely to believe in the products and services that are more relevant and socially acclaimed. It is the social proof that will solve the customer trust issues for your business. People have the natural tendency to get attracted to social proof, and it is key in developing customer trust for your business. 

The following image is an example of testimonials that customers give when satisfied with the products and service. You can also create video testimonials for better engagement and gaining trust. 

Excellent Services

Customer service is essential for gaining trust. Customer support and service before and after-sales are very important, which leverages the customer’s trust. Customers are more likely to trust the brands that are good in customer support and services. Hence, improving customer service is something that fosters customer trust, and you need to take care of it. 

Leverage Social Media

Social media creates a good impact in building relationships with customers these days because of the popularity it has gained and how people get influence through it. There are several popular online businesses that utilize social media to gain customer trust. In the following image, you can see the example of how popular online business models use social media to maintain relationships with their customers.

 Here you can see how well-known grocery delivery app solution Instacart assists its customers through social media accounts; this would not only build trust but allow them to stay connected with the brand as well. 

Customer trust is the critical factor that we all know, and it becomes relevant for business people to create that image and reputation in the online market for building trust. Knowing the customers is also very important to engage and build trust, and hence, you need to be ready to put in some effort always, which is the ultimate thing you need to do for your venture.

Security

When it comes to fostering customer trust in your online business, security is paramount. Implementing robust security measures, including obtaining an SSL certificate, safeguards sensitive customer data and protects against potential cyber threats. Start by using secure and encrypted connections for all transactions, and regularly update your software and systems to patch any vulnerabilities. Communicate your commitment to security through clear privacy policies and terms of service. Additionally, consider obtaining relevant security certifications to provide your customers with an extra layer of assurance. By prioritizing security, including obtaining an SSL certificate, you can instill confidence in your customers and build lasting trust in your online business.

Conclusion

It is important to justify your business model concerning the efforts you have made for it. The justification of the business model will be done if you start building trust with your customers. Once you start getting that reputation and good response from the customers by building customer trust, your business will experience steady growth. 

The tips mentioned herewith can be proved handy for your online business if you are facing customer trust issues or want to leverage customer trust for betterment in the business. It is always important to be genuine and reliable, and customers will come to you and start trusting you. Nevertheless, don’t lose focus and keep making efforts as it is pivotal for your online business to succeed.

The post Tips to Foster Customer Trust in Your Online Business appeared first on deskmoz.

1. Speak the client’s language

It is important to be understood. And in an appropriate way. Communication with the audience invariably involves encoding and decoding the message. This cannot be avoided.

The company has some idea or thought that it wants to share with customers. It is formulated as text. During writing, certain slang, manner of presentation, tone and terminology are used. Then the text goes to the client. While reading, he interprets what is written based on his own perception. And at this point, companies need to be careful. The greatest danger is misunderstanding (decoding) of the underlying idea (message).

To avoid this, it is important to know your target audience. What are its values? What age? What is the usual language of communication? Does it contain terms? If so, which ones? All that you can use or just a part?

By answering such questions, the company understands the language of communication with clients, which is useful not only for copywriting. A good understanding of the client’s language will have a positive effect on SEO, advertising messages and business confidence. Users feel that they are communicating with a real person.

An important point is the use of terminology. Is it worth it or not? The answer depends on who the target audience of the business is. On the one hand, the user must understand what is written. On the other hand, completely excluding the use of technical terms, the company may seem like an amateur. Especially if she is selling a complex product. It is also relevant for the B2B market.

To know what terms you can use, you need to know your target audience well. So do research your customers first. The better you know them, the more high-quality and useful content you can provide, and for this it is necessary to do high-quality marketing analysis. If this is not your company’s strong point, then you can try to increase the competence of employees by attending master classes and online courses. This will help you achieve impressive results and spend less time on it.

2. Know customer behavioral psychology

It defines the interaction with customers. Owning it, the business understands what to focus on and what opportunities are of no value to users. Knowledge of behavioral psychology provides flexibility in communication. Therefore, it needs to be investigated.

Eliminate negative experiences

This recommendation is relevant for all ways of interacting with users. That is, for copywriting and support. Nobody can please everyone. It is an axiom that holds true for people, companies and products. However, according to research, 51% of consumers will never do business with a company after one negative experience. That is why, it is so important to solve the problem very quickly. Otherwise, you will permanently lose this client.

To do this, you should:

• track negative experiences;
• work with it.

For example, an angry review was left on the site. The worst solution would be to ignore it. First, the customer will have a bad experience with the company or its product. Secondly, a person can accurately share experiences with friends and acquaintances. Thirdly, other users will see the review. Consequently, the company will also notice the lack of reaction to it.

However, the problem can be fixed before it occurs. To do this, maintain a positive attitude towards the copywriting situation. In particular, when writing a response to a client, as well as through describing possible experiences in articles. Suggest a solution right away. It’s also worth keeping a friendly tone in your content. It will help to position the client and demonstrate that you are always happy to help. Even if it gets tricky, users will know who to turn to or how to change the experience to a positive one.

Give choice

By offering several options for solving the same problem, you become more flexible. It is important that the options are relevant. In such a case, the business offers choices that provide a more personalized experience.

How is it done? If we talk about communication between support representatives, then interaction scenarios should be developed. Based on them, the specialist will be able to provide a positive experience in each case of interaction.

In the context of content creation, this idea is embodied in a slightly different way. The task is to offer options and describe each. To do this, describe the benefits of each solution and the likelihood of a positive outcome in certain situations. Also provide good advice. Thus, you will not only post content, but share knowledge that helps solve customer problems.

Try to provide a choice in every purchase. Even two options are better than nothing. For example, offer multiple payment and shipping methods. If you sell services, then develop a couple of options for those. Be sure to keep customer priorities in mind. The options must meet the needs of the target audience.

End on a strong note

Human attention has its own characteristics. You can ignore them, and hope that this will not affect the perception of your content. Or you can accept the rules of the game and use them to your advantage. One of the features is that a person best remembers the beginning and the end of something. This applies to performances, films and information.

So make sure your content ends on a strong and compelling note. Calls to action work great. They can be different. The most common is a call for an order. However, this is not the only option. You can also be encouraged to continue reading, subscribe to social media accounts, or simply ask for feedback. It all depends on the type of content. Choose the appropriate option and use it to make your articles stronger and more convincing.

Using tools such Grammarly or the services of a professional from Preply.com will allow you to proofread and edit your messages so you never miss a spelling error again. The more careful you are about correcting simple mistakes, the easier it will be for you to notice them as you write in the future.

3. Customer Needs – Key Content Line

Healthy narcissism is good. However, your satisfaction with achievements, innovations, or improvements means little to your customers. What matters is the benefit they are given. Therefore, phrases like “we offer” and “our products” are not very convincing. It is worth reformulating them.

By replacing “we can offer” with “you will receive”, you will dramatically change the course of content. He becomes customer-oriented. This is the essence of such copywriting.

Let’s take a look at an example. Let’s say a company makes dishwashing detergent. Having invested a lot of money and time on development, we managed to improve the formula. The company might say, “We have replaced the previously used PEG-7 glyceryl cocoate with glyceryl palmate.” However, for most clients this is not very clear.

If you put the customer in the center of copywriting, then the company will prefer to talk about the benefits that the product provides. For example, talking about the greater delicacy of the new formula for hand skin. It sounds more attractive. Try to always put the client, his wishes and needs first, and you will be chosen even from hundreds of companies.

4. Be empathetic with your customers

The support service is a lifeguard who helps to resolve emerging problems. And of varying complexity. The problem can be minor and can be fixed in one step. Or it can be difficult and require a replacement product. However, regardless of the complexity of the situation, the support service must help remove or fix the trouble. And in a way that will satisfy the client as much as possible.

This outcome is facilitated by:

1. Acceptance of the problem by a support specialist.
2. Perception of the situation as one that makes it possible to help the client.
3. Willingness and ability to solve problems.

It is also important to understand the client’s situation. This is where empathy is extremely appropriate. By being sympathetic, the professional shows that he understands the client’s situation, shares the person’s frustration, and is willing to help fix the problem. A support team’s job is largely about working with emotions and opinions. The ability to understand and express them is very valuable.

It gives users the feeling that they really want to be helped. Accordingly, the person will be satisfied. This is a great way to eliminate negative experiences and replace them with positive ones.

How does empathy translate into copywriting? This is done very simply:

1. State the problem.
2. Try to understand the client’s feelings.
3. Express their frustration.
4. Show respect and commitment to make things right.

For example, let’s say you sell sneakers. Somehow the client got a damaged pair of shoes. Then you can write: “I am very sorry that you received defective sneakers. I understand how frustrating this can be. Let me know the details of your order and see how I can help you in this situation. ” It’s enough.

5. Do customer training

This is especially true for complex products, as well as services in which the result also depends on the client. For example, the educational sphere. But the cases described above are not the only ones in which it is worth taking the time to educate clients.

If the product is updated, supplemented, or expanded, then it is worth reporting. Also inform about other changes affecting the purchase or use of the product / service. The same goes for company-related updates. If there is anything that can affect the user experience, then tell us about it.

Customers will appreciate the care. This attitude of business towards users is respectable. Plus, people understand what they are paying for – knowledge and specialized skills.

This solution harmoniously fits into the communication of the support service with customers. The problem can be solved. And you can teach the client to eliminate it on their own, thereby bringing more benefit. Plus, the likelihood of a repetition of negative experiences is excluded. And the company increases its own credibility for customers.

6. Use feedback to your advantage

Positive reviews are always encouraging. Unlike the negative ones. However, the truth is that all kinds of feedback can be used for the good of the company. The main thing is a constructive approach.

First of all, you need to collect customer reviews. Fortunately, this is not difficult to do. In addition to your business accounts and website, there are many sites where customers can share their experiences.

On independent resources, opinions are frank. Accordingly, not always pleasant. However, even the most outrageous comment is good for the company. After evaluating it constructively, you will understand what needs to be improved in the product or in the client policy. Correctly eliminate weaknesses.

The situation is similar with positive reviews. They are certainly more enjoyable to read. However, even the most grateful and enthusiastic reviews should be taken constructively.

Separate the author’s emotions from the data. Perhaps the person liked that the manager provided certain information. Check which one. Perhaps the client liked the UX design and the ease of ordering on the site.

These are all business benefits. They are worth knowing and using. For example, when forming USP. Also, these are the strengths of the company that should be used in messages to customers.

Any feedback is an opportunity. It can be used as a vector indicating the direction of the company’s development. Testimonials also show why customers come back to you.

You can deal with them as follows:

1. Positive reviews. They demonstrate the strengths of the company. Use information from them in advertising and content for promotion. Also, positive comments can justify the increase in the cost of products or services.
2. Negative reviews are challenges faced by users. First, they show areas of development. Second, they show the places where customers need help. It can be provided just through customer-oriented copywriting and training. Frequently asked questions can be placed in the FAQ section. If users regularly need help with a specific task, then write a relevant blog article. You can also create a video tutorial using an online video editor. One action will increase the credibility of the company, the number of satisfied customers, as well as the value of the business for users.

Conclusion

Customer focus is a business strategy that puts the user’s needs at the center of all activities. It requires a willingness to accept gratitude and criticism. And not always constructive. However, by perceiving even negative messages as opportunities for growth and improved service quality, the business becomes more valuable. First of all, because it works with what many ignore.

The post 6 Rules for Customer-Centric Copywriting Your Support Reps Should Use appeared first on deskmoz.

A strong social media presence is more than enough for a business to survive in this highly competitive market. But, even so, the idea of social media remains difficult for many to master, even to this date. You need someone with complete knowledge and dedication towards this source to help your business to outsmart others. That’s when social media managers come into action.

A social media manager is your one-stop solution to lessen the burden of social media workload and create some master strategies to get significant results. So, the firms need to look in for the best manager in town. Some essential habits can help you to select the best social media manager from the pool of talents.

Set up your goals thoroughly and adequately:

Before you look for a social media manager, you better set your goals thoroughly. Lack of concrete goals can easily lead to a social marketing struggle. It becomes a complete waste of time that companies don’t have the liberty of. So, sorting out your priorities beforehand is a must and right from the start, mainly when it involves money. Once you have your goal sorted out, you can help a social media manager work on those projects and help grow your firm.

• Some companies are here looking for a faster and higher follower count. Then you have others looking for a Facebook ad professional. The companies’ requirements and job profiles of a social media manager are likely to change.
• Some chosen managers have specialized knowledge to manage customer service-centric concerns with ease. Then you have others, known for their multiple talents to handle each of these services separately but as one. So, pick up your requirements first before addressing a social media manager.
• Don’t forget to check out the updated LinkedIn list on social media manager. The selected listing is here to highlight the objects of the main picture. It furthermore helps to follow one specified count goal before getting into the nooks and corner of any position.

Some top skills to watch out for:

Before you finalize on the services of a social media manager, it is time to check out some of his skill sets. That helps you to make the right choice for your upcoming project.

• A reputed social media manager, according to Blastup, has better knowledge of setting goals. Not only that, but the same person can create a strategic plan to achieve the same and manage the entire process.
• Customers usually look in for a convenient way to get their queries answered. So, they often lead to social media plans. Social media managers can prepare those questions in understanding and helpful manner for the customers, which eventually lead to trust-building relationships. 
• Social media managers know the art of conveying thoughtful messages in shorter space and without grammatical errors. It helps people to click on the content that the companies have shared before.
• Social media makes it difficult to prove ROI. So, it is the job of a social media manager to take responsibility and prove business value in a secure communicative manner. With knowledge of various reporting tools, the task becomes easier for the managers.

Some extra digging is mandatory:

To hire the best social media manager among the lot, you need to do some additional research. Before bringing the candidates in, try taking a quick look at their personal social media channels or profiles. They need to be active on their accounts under various channels if they need to take care of your company’s ones. So, the businesses need to tune in for those social media managers, who know ways to utilize various networks. The profiles of such selected candidates need to be current, proficiently maintained, and impressive.

If you can’t find a suitable candidate locally, don’t be discouraged, as the perfect social media manager may be farther afield. If you’re willing to route hiring through an Employer of Record (EOR) service, you can broaden your search and hire talent from anywhere. An EOR can help you navigate the complexities of hiring talent from different locations, ensuring compliance and providing a seamless onboarding process.

Reputed experts have go-to sources:

Reliable social media managers have go-to sources, which help them to end up with the best content. Curation remains the central portion of SMM and also time-consuming. Talented social media managers can devour the content. 

• They know the right places to find such outstanding materials, which can easily interest the company’s follower base. As they are already well-aware of the places to look for, there is no need to waste time searching for one.
• Some of the reliable managers ensure to keep RSS feed collections to help curate monthly newsletters for the companies. 
• Some other social media managers suggest curating content in their rightful batches. It is vital to specify a selected time for curation, to avoid content consumption taking up their whole day.

Social media managers need to be compelling storytellers:

Just like any ad executive can portray stories about businesses to sell products to consumers, a skilled social media manager must take advantage of various arrays of social media platforms right at their disposal. The main aim is to portray some fantastic stories. Social media platform uses a different storytelling method which the manager needs to be aware of beforehand. The storytelling technique varies from one social media source to another as well.

Tune in for these points before you head towards a social media manager to handle your brand awareness. A proper selection can save you precious time and finally help your business grow to an ultimate height. So, make way for the best social media manager in here, as there is no room left for mistakes.

Good quality videos and photographs help in creating engaging content that attracts more audiences. A Social Media Manager must know different video and photo editor tools. Social media managers must know basic things like how to convert mov to mp4, edit clips, add transitions, and add sounds or voiceover to the video.

The post Essential Habits In A Social Media Manager To Look For Before Hiring Him For Increased Traffic To Your Site appeared first on deskmoz.

Knowing what to say before you come in contact with customers can help you prepare the way you speak to them and answer their questions. If you are new to the position, having a few set answers for certain issues can help you adjust faster. Here are the eight tips to help you achieve that.

1. Always be polite in every situation

   The very first thing you should remember when working as a live chat agent is to always be polite. No matter whom you are talking to and how they choose to express themselves, you need to stay polite and only worry about providing help.

   There will be plenty of times where people might make spelling mistakes or not say the basic please and thank you. There are also people that might be upset about a delayed order or a defective product. In any case, you need to be able to stay polite. This positive behavior can help set certain boundaries and motivate the customer to also speak in a certain manner. 

2. Use direct words and phrases

   When speaking to a customer, there are certain words and phrases you can use which will help you make the right pauses or give the right answers. Being direct is important if you wish to maintain the professional image of your company. Using direct language can help make the conversation a lot more personal and easy-going for any customer.

   In addition to this, it is important to not be overly formal during your chats. The best way to achieve that is by simplifying and making certain sentences more direct. Some examples to change include:

   • In order to 🡪 To
   • With respect to 🡪 On
   • The vast majority 🡪 Most

   As simple as these seem, they can make your conversations a lot more personal and easy to follow for your customers. This will help keep your conversations short yet professional, without making you seem like a robot.

3. Break up the longer sentences

   Long sentences during a live chat can be rather tiring, especially if the chat space is small. This is another important reason why you need to be direct and able to say a lot of things through just a few words. Using smaller sentences will help make the conversation easier to follow and understand for both parties.The easiest way to tackle this issue is to break up longer sentences into smaller ones. Instead of writing a paragraph, you can try and create small pauses between sentences. Especially when you are looking into a certain issue, taking some time to search and writing a few different update-type messages can be very helpful.

4. Use the right writing tools

   When writing any type of message to any customer, you need to make sure that whatever you write is grammatically correct. Grammar and spelling errors might make your conversation seem more human but they can also make your company look less professional.

   Using tools such as TopEssayWriting, Grammarly and TrustMyPaper will allow you to proofread and edit your messages so you never miss a spelling error again. The more careful you are about correcting simple mistakes, the easier it will be for you to notice them as you write in the future.

5. Be positive 

   Keeping a positive tone during any conversation is important when chatting with anyone. Many believe that staying professional is all about keeping a colder tone of voice but being positive and friendly is just as important. This can actually also help you increase the chatting experience and satisfaction of the customers you chat with. 

   You can use certain positive phrases such as “I believe I can help with your request” or “Let me know how I can be of help”. These might seem simple but they are very important and can be helpful when approaching a customer on a request. This element will also help you appear more human and less like a chatbot to every customer you interact with. 

6. Know your product well

   Knowing what your company sells well is going to tremendously help with live chats. Whether your customers have questions on the products or services you sell or their orders, knowing your product well is important. Being able to answer questions right away will show the dedication your company has to educate its agents on what they sell.

   You can easily create a “cheat-sheet” that you can run to for advice regarding different products or services your company has to offer. This will be especially helpful if you are new to the company. You can use tools such as BestEssaysEducation, Hemmingway Editor and Subjecto in order to proofread that information. This way, you can make sure it is ready to be used for informing the customers you chat with.

7. Try finding a speedy conclusion

   Anyone that comes in contact with a live agent of any company is looking for a speedy conclusion or an answer on an issue. No matter how pressing the issue is, helping them find a quick solution will work positively in your favor. Especially during times when people are already experiencing a lot of pressure, similar to the whole Covid-19 crisis everyone can be more anxious.

   Finding a quick solution to a customer’s problem will help maintain the image they have of your company. Making sure they stay satisfied is important in order for them to keep using your company’s services. A speedy conclusion will help increase customer satisfaction and keep everyone stress-free. “Moreover, to ensure a safer customer experience, consider getting a DMARC report when it comes to emails and take other online safety measures.”

8. Supporting your company’s professional image 

   The way you approach customers and help with their issues through live chat support can affect the way people view your company. The more polite and helpful you appear, the easier it will be for people to have a positive view of the company you work in.

   Knowing how to handle certain situations is important when trying to talk to customers through live chat. Being prepared in advance will allow you to be more polite and actually help your customers easily and effectively. Therefore, the right writing tips can help you know how to handle different customers and situations and always stay professional.

The post 7 Writing Tips that Can Help You Live Chat Professionally with Customers appeared first on deskmoz.

Moreover, only a single one in every 25 unhappy clients directly complains to you. In case consumers have a positive buying experience, they will share the same with family, connections, and friends, which can ultimately lead to an increase in the sales of your company. All this, without even spending bucks! Amazing, right? But what if you fail to offer a positive consumer experience? Well, the answer is simple. Your clients will complain. Regarding the same, always remember that one unhappy customer holds a huge potential in negatively affecting your image in the industry.

Anyone who has been the business, no matter for how long has at one point in his/her life had to interact with annoyed or frustrated clients as it is just a part of the job, however, it is not at all simple. But, if you know the right words to say, as well as more importantly, the way to convey them, you can get out of a worse situation without letting the reputation of your business affected. Please note that according to Customer Think, 97% of the global customers feel that consumer service is vital in their choice of the brand. Handle the angry ones perfectly through the right Customer Management process and you might end up enjoying the best relationship with your customers than you previously had.

Here are some of the major causes of the client dissatisfaction

Slow Service – 

One of the most annoying problems faced by the customers is slow service as people wish to know that when they visit your business website, they will immediately be able to have what they want.

Not keeping the promises –

 Some promises might sound great however, if they have not been fulfilled, it might lead to distrust, switching to the competitors, and multiple complaints.

No availability of contact –

 For dealing with the consumer complaints, you should make it a point that your business is easy to reach out to.

Hidden costs and information –

 Keeping the extra charges hidden and then uncovering the same in the middle of a purchasing procedure are the frequent reason for the human to complain.

We have mentioned some strategies which you would like to try while dealing with unhappy customers and turn them into happy ones with the help of live chat support – 

Pay attention to their problems – Frustrated consumers are asking you to listen. They should know that you are paying attention to their problems or concerns, and they wish you to devise a solution and sort out their issues. That is why you must hear it out to what is making a specific customer so dissatisfied. Furthermore, you should never underestimate the importance of good customer service as according to Forrester, 73% of the customers accept that valuing their precious time is an important thing businesses can do in terms of customer service.

Permit them for telling and get their frustration out in the open and then relay the issue back to them, only for clarification. While doing a live chat with them, you can type something like this –

So Babita, you are dissatisfied with “problem”.’ Once the client confirms that this is their issue, you can begin working on the solutions for remedying the same, quickly and effectively. In case you have paid attention, you will know the solution to the problem and make sure that your unhappy customer turns out to become a happy one. After all, you are required to do anything for delivering on your exceptional consumer service.

Apologize – One of the major rules to keep in mind when it comes to excellent Customer Management is to never be afraid of apologizing for your mistake. A lot of consumers are just wishing to receive their complaint’s acknowledgment and an apology, still, a lot of companies are reluctant to admit when the mistake has been made. Hence, never underestimate the significance of a simple “sorry”.

According to a study by the Nottingham School of Economics, 45% of the customers withdrew the company’s negative evaluations made by them in the light of an apology, but a mere 23% of the customers agree to take back their negative evaluation in return for the compensation. It has been proved that when the client hears the words “I am sorry”, this triggers the immediate instinct of forgiveness. However, don’t only stop at an apology but follow through with the promise of resolving the complaint.

Be Caring – Difficult customers are required to be heard and they should also know that you care for them. It means that the live chat agent must be empathetic and should be concerned with their problem as well as the reason behind the same. As an agent, you must be capable of doing whatever it takes to solve their situation.

Keep it in mind that the typical company hears from 4% of the dissatisfied consumers, along with 96% not voicing out the problems, and 91% of those who never come back. When Live Chat Agents care, unhappy customers ultimately appreciate the help. Always try to look at the situation from your customer’s point of view – How you would fee in case you were the client in this situation? It is easy to solve the frustrations of people if you genuinely try to put yourself into their shoes. Showing the consumers that you care about their complaint and they will play a major role in calming down the situation as well as retaining clients.

Angry or dissatisfied customers need solutions, and probably you do not wish to devote a lot of time resolving the problem and in this case, find the quick method for offering solutions. Solving the matter instantly represents your capability of resolving the problems. Furthermore, a survey from Bold 360 reports that 71% of the businesses believe that by 2021, online chat would come on the top in terms of offering customer support.

An angry client wishes to know that you will make the frustration (anger, pain) go away. By aiming at the solution and how you wish to make it happen, the consumer will automatically start to focus the negative feeling into the positive ones. If the live chat agents believe that they have understood the situation and can make the unhappy customers satisfied, inform them of your way to correct the situation. In case the consumer resists the solution or is doubtful about what the issue is, give the power into their hands for correcting the problem. Seek out their opinion on what could be done from your side to make them happy and then once you get the answer, look for a way to make it happen.

Follow up with your client – Do not forget to follow up with the customers for making sure that they are satisfied with the offered solution. It can be in the form of the follow-up mail or a survey asking for feedback on how to handle the complaint. After all, 70% of the consumers leave the company as they believe that it does not value them.

Only a few businesses follow up with the customer as this procedure shows them how much the company values its clients and it also makes the consumer feel cared for.

Teach effective escalation techniques to the agent – Not each agent will be prepared for managing every complaint. That is why ensure the fact that the representatives know how and when to pass the problem to the management if the need arises. Regarding the same, it is suggested to cultivate the appreciation for complaining customer. Chat agents must never approach the consumer complaint believing that he/she is crazy or “wrong”.

Never forget that businesses that make the concerted effort for improving their consumer experience also see the employee engagement rates rise by an average of 20%. Foster the environment of appreciation and understanding for the complaining consumer within the business or contact center. Let the team for Live Chat Outsource know that the complaining consumers are not against the business by enforcing the same into their training by sharing these kinds of customers’ success stories. Through this, you can also engage them in the training activities which cultivate empathy.

Go beyond their expectations – There is no denying the fact that consumer expectations lay the foundation for consumer satisfaction. For keeping your consumers happy you should strive to fulfill all their expectations. They wish to get a pleasant surprise. This is the best way for resolving issues with the difficult clients, by exceeding the expectations they have got virtually and ensuring the fact that there is nothing left for complaining.

Please note that as per Forrester, 72% of the companies, improving the consumer experience comes on the top of their priority list. Exceed the customer’s expectations and ensure the fact that they are taken care of. Go for an extra mile to pay heed to, comprehend, and solve their complaints. Even if you are required to halt everything else for making this happen, go for it.

Some useful tips on exceeding the expectations of your customers

Try to actively recognize the problem, you can tell them already from tracking about the delay, make sure that you have got this information and always be prepared to respond.

In terms of responding to the complaints, always be on your toes. You must answer email or phone complaints within as less time as 15 minutes.

Understand the difficult consumers are just frustrated. Provide a satisfactory and quick solution to solve immediate frustration and the overall resolution for completely fixing the issue. All clients are searching for immediate assistance, and you could provide them with the same by acknowledging and advising that the right client is assessing the situation.

Good consumer service is hard to get and most of the consumers are used to poor treatment. Whether you opt for Live Chat Outsource or have an in-house team of chat agents lets your customers that you are different and that you want to exceed the expectations.

Consumer complaint checklist

Resolving consumer complaints seems a lot like putting out the fires. It is reactive and irrespective of how good your service or product is, pleasing all of your consumers is impossible. So next time you receive the complaint, utilize this checklist for responding, resolving, and keeping your clients happy. Always remember that 3-quarters of the online consumers expect to get help within 5 minutes.

• Acknowledge the customer’s complaint
• Inform him/her about the action you are about to take
• Record as well as categorize the consumer complaint
• Solve the complaint as per the company policy
• Follow up with him/her for making sure that they stay satisfied with the provided solution

Managing client complaints is an ongoing procedure. You can utilize web forms for collecting complaints from the website and then use the consumer service software for storing this complaint on every consumer profile. Make sure to monitor the complaints every month or week so that you can track down new trends and complaints, and ensure the fact that you follow up on the open complaints.

In case even if a single client leaves you, it affects your business and that is why you shouldn’t be afraid of escalating recurring complaints to the top management for getting a quick resolution. All of us have bad days as we all are under different pressures from different sources. Your Customer Care Outsourcing team should acknowledge this as it must help them understand that when the customer experiences bad service along with all other pressures in life, it can prove to be the final straw at times. Re-think the method through you which manage unhappy consumers, perhaps all they wish to someone who can listen to them, and acknowledge that the problem exists as most of the issues can very conveniently be fixed.

Indulge in a proactive live chat session with your customers

As mentioned above, not all customers will directly complain to you. Besides, consumer expectations for the chat response times are much higher as compared to email as the average wait time for the chat is 45 seconds. The Internet enables the clients to share the feedback in the multiple channels, such as comparison websites, forums, and social media channels etc.

Regarding the same, you have to get engaged in social listening and be proactive while handling a customer complaint. Looking for online complaints is not simple, however, here is the list of some suggestions on where to start –

• Has your company’s brand name been mentioned on Twitter?
• Has any sort of negative comments been made on the blog of your company?
• Has anyone left the bad review on the Google My Business page of your firm?
• Do consumers post messages on your social media page?
• Is your product/service listed in the complaint forums or directories when you search in Google?
• Are comments made on your official YouTube channels positive?

All of the social media networks will require being under supervision. In case you do not respond, the readers will suppose that you do not care. But, in case you reply to the messages online, this can be seen as if you are trying and that you genuinely care. This act solely can inspire customer confidence and brand loyalty.

According to Newvoicemedia.com, the topmost reason people dislike calling the companies is that they are unable to interact with a real person right away. There is no denying the fact that consumer complaints are inevitable as it is the best way for your customer care outsourcing team to gather direct feedback from the clients and improve the service or product.

Choose to deal wisely with the customer complaints and let your company grow in the right direction. But, the way you manage the complaint makes a difference between losing a customer or keeping one. This is why, whenever you receive the consumer complaint, pay heed to what the client has to tell, apologize, and find the solution and then follow up to check whether he/she is satisfied with the way you are managing it. While doing so, you are in the right direction of improving the product, delivering a better quality of consumer service, and creating more faithful customers. Keep your eyes and ears open, show your care and be genuine, provide exceptional customer service, and then give that a bit extra for exceeding their expectations.

The post Customer Complaint Handling Made Easy with Live Chat Support appeared first on deskmoz.

Is your company finding ways for improving the consumer experience through live chat? As the remote workforce grows and the office dynamics evolve, live chat software have become an important aspect of communication. Maybe some new hires in your organization find it hard getting a grip on interacting at the same. Are you someone who is looking for improving his CHT i.e., Customer Handling Time on chat? So now, it is vital for being up-to-speed on the professional chat skills. 

There is no denying the fact that the website visitors like the idea of talking through live chat. According to recent studies, consumers are happier with chat as compared to phone or email (73% for live chat satisfaction whereas 61% for email and 44% for phone). With time, more and more customers are opting for this platform. However, it might be famous but doing it accurately is not an easy task. The customer service agents of your company need chat-specific tricks for leaving the best impression on your visitors. 

Here is the list of some important tricks and tips for the live chat agents to hone their 

Professional interaction skills

1.  Be fast to accept the chat – Consumers must not wait once they initiate the chat request. As per reports related to live chat, about one-fifth of the consumers rate the long waiting time as its most annoying part. Always remember that they do not like to be in the queue and the only way for ensuring the same is by accepting their chat request just after you receive it. 

Say, if a client on live chat needs urgent help or is irate, then it would not be an amazing start to your chat if you have already made them wait for a very long time. Keep the average wait time as less as 20 seconds. 

2. Always greet your customer – After accepting the chat, your first duty is to greet your customer courteously and professionally. It might be helpful for you to use the canned responses at the beginning of a chat as it will help save time while managing multiple chats at the same time. 

Always remember that 41% of the customers prefer this channel to contact the support teams. Moreover, greeting must be in a friendly yet professional tone. For example, “Hi Kanika, Thanks for reaching out to us, how can I help you today?” 

This is particularly important in case you are offering consumer service as a part of being expert is also being friendly and respectful. Do not abandon your basic manner such as saying thank you as well as please and greeting the recipient etc. Also, if you are communicating with a person for the first time, give your introduction instead of quickly making the request. 

3.  Remember that it is a chat –It is not the transaction, list of terms and conditions, or letter from the lawyer, it is just a chat. This is the major reason why it should sound like the natural communication between 2 people. However, one of the major problems faced by the live chat agents is that they become way too formal over the chat. Regarding the same, it is suggested that they should ask themselves “Would I say this at home?” before pressing the Send button. 

Avoid using sentences which have many jargons, are very formal, and too long as these factors make the visitors feel as if they are interacting with the robot. After all, why shouldn’t the agents write what they would be willing to say? This is, by far, the number 1 rule for a live chat agent while communicating on a platform that has the topmost rate of customer satisfaction i.e., 92%. The sentences in your chat must be like you were chatting with the client in real life or over a phone call. This means, keeping it short and simple is the best way for keeping it effective. 

4.  Empathize with your customer – Empathy is as relevant on the platform of live chat as it is while speaking to the client on your phone, however, it is something easy to overlook. Furthermore, it might be simple to jump into the fix or a solution when the client has said something upsetting or significant to the agent. In a situation like this, however, your priority should be showing empathy. 

Empathy is an important professional live chat skill for each consumer support expert. If he can empathize with the situation of a customer by putting himself in the latter’s place, then you will have better chances of having the good outcome. Never forget that 63% of the consumers who use live chat on a site have more chance of returning to it. 

It would be simple for the agents to let the dignity slip and reply in the same tone to rude, stressed, or angry customers. Rather, you must master the art of empathy. Trying to look at the things from the client’s perspective is imperative as it makes clients easier to handle, which also controls the chat time. Use the empathetic statements like – 

• Yeah, Me too
• You are right
• I can see your point
• Sure, I can understand
• Oh, that sounds difficult

5. Adopt the customer’s way of talking – Just like while building the rapport over a phone call, mirroring the language during live chat is a good way for talking with the customers. An added perk to this platform is that if your website visitor uses emoticons, then you can use it too. 

It makes the huge difference whether you are interacting with a senior citizen or the digital native. In a one-to-one conversation, you are well-aware of the tone to strike only by looking at the other person. But when it comes to live chat, things are different. That is why it would be best for you to begin the chat on a neutral note as well as adjust your chatting style to the chat partner. Never underestimate the importance of live chat skills as 70% of the consumers prefer to interact with the human agents as compared to chatbots. 

When your chat partner interacts casually, using a lot of emoticons and short sentences, follow the lead. In case the other person is taking things formally, the agent should also adopt the more reserved style himself. 

6.  Signal to your client when he needs to wait – You will not always have a solution for every query consumers ask over the chat. In a situation like this, you must take some time for researching the solution so that you can offer the correct answer to the customer’s query. In case you feel that the subject could require a bit of investigation or you have to discuss the same with an engineer or a professional, interact about the same with the client. Furthermore, more than 70% of the businesses believe that online chat would come on the top by 2021. 

Gather every piece of information needed from the consumer to make 

sure that you or the next chat agent who will follow up with the client contains all the data they require for investigation and get back to the client. If you need cannot solve the customer’s issue on that instant or need to keep him waiting, update them about what is happening. One of the major things to keep in mind while indulging in Professional communication during the live chat session is that you should answer the consumer as soon as possible. In case you need a bit of time, let him know that you are working on his problem and will return to him in just a matter of minutes. 

7.  Get the help when required – While it is best to resolve a problem in the single live chat session, at times, the most suitable way for helping the consumer is to have some assistance. In case a client explains an issue or a term a few time but you still do not know its meaning, get the colleague for taking a look at it before you ask the customer for repeating themselves.  

If you are unable to help with the specific problem, it is suggested to transfer it to the other agent who can as the customers expect answers as fast as within 10 minutes. Also, while transferring the chat, fill the other chat agent in on the case first to ensure the fact that the client does not have to repeat himself again and again. In case you are unsure about the specific solution, then discuss the same with your colleagues or manager who can offer you some tips or guide you as per their experience. 

8.  Take care of formatting, spelling, as well as other mechanics – Of course, it is possibly fine for abandoning capitalization while interacting with the customers and the emoticons can prove to be the fun aspect of the chats, according to the communication style of your consumer. However, only because it is the different method of communication does not imply you are free to overlook all grammar standards, like spelling and complete sentences etc.

This is particularly relevant in case you are communicating with end-users or customers. Also, it would be an added benefit for you to learn how one can add the line breaks to his chats (usually Ctrl + Enter). Nobody wishes to go through the huge wall of text. Also, 87% of the businesses adopted live chat for connecting in real-time with the web visitors and it is enough to state the importance of this platform. While the chat is likely a less formal one than the other forms of writing, punctuation errors and spelling mistakes never help in improving communication. 

You surely do not need to write formal, standard sentences in the fast-paced chat, but the need for spelling words and using apostrophes accurately is inevitable. For instance, avoid these simple but drastic mistakes – 

• We will be happy to assist you as well as Ship the items to toronto Canada
• Whats the start as well as end date for the trip?
• Right now, our team is expereincing technical glitch in the system

9. Use Active Voice – Removing the personal pronouns is significantly a tool for denying responsibility and that is why it must not be used during a live chat session. Make it a point that the agents take the personal responsibility for the client’s issue as well as use words like “you” and “I”. This will ensure the fact that the clients feel as if they have someone who is actually inside the company personally doing his best for resolving their issue. 

Moreover, an important expert chatting skill to keep in mind is that just like the agent is motivated for doing on a phone call, use the active verbs for signaling to the client that their problem is a major priority to the business. Stating that “your contact is our priority” will mostly irritate the client, as he will realize the number of contacts an agent handles every day and might think he is being lied to. Hence, an agent must use the active language for showing them instead. Always keep the fact in mind that those businesses which miss out on the live chat option get a much lower rate of customer satisfaction ranging from 82%-84%. 

10.  End the chat with something specific and genuine –Ending your live chat session appropriately is a must. In case you are on the live support chat, you are likely to follow a protocol – thanking the client, making sure that their problem has been solved, and so on. However, everybody has the right to know about when the conversation has come to an end. Do not abandon the chat without a “thanks” and letting the recipient know that you have moved on to the next task. 

In today’s era, 67% of the B2C businesses utilize live chat platform for the customer support. Keeping its demand in mind, end your chat on the high note. Don’t use only a generic closing such as “Anything else I can help you with today?” or a basic sign-off like “Thank you for reaching out to us.” Yes, the above-mentioned are necessary prewritten and polite sentences, it would not harm going beyond the expectations. 

Try to close with a particular reference to the topic that is covered in your chat-

• Thank you for upgrading the account, Marcel. Have a great day!
• I am sorry about the issue you faced with our site today, and I hope…. 
• I am glad that we could assist you to troubleshoot the issues with your modem….

Apart from these, here are some extra tips for a chat agent to master his expert live chat skills – 

• Do not ask for a lot of information in a go – Avoid asking for a lot of information about the client before they even start the chat. This might put them off initiating the chat to start with. 

• Offer your customer a friendly treatment – It is equally relevant for the company to keep the interaction flowing in a personable way. The live chat agents who do this usually get many compliments for never providing with robotic canned replies to their clients. 

• Know about the offer – Be sure of what you are stating about the service or product. The hiring of knowledgeable and well-trained staff is a good method for impressing people. 

According to recent statistics, the highest number of chats takes place from 7 AM to 7 PM. Indulging in the live chat process can be fun, frustrating, productive, and everything in between. You just need to pay attention to these above-mentioned chatting skills for making the most of this platform without having to risk miscommunication or sacrifice professionalism. 

Mastering the art of attaining the most impressive chatting skills might seem a daunting task to you, but with the help of a few tips and tricks as well as practice, anybody can become the chat pro in no time. Remember that be it on the phone, email or chat, your ultimate aim is to offer customers the best service experience. Once you instill this in your mind, it will become a lot easier for you to hone these skills and get the desired results. 

The post Tips & Tricks to Hone your Professional Chatting Skills appeared first on deskmoz.