Customer service is the cornerstone of what makes a great brand. Let me explain why. First and foremost, exceptional customer service builds trust and loyalty with your customers. When people know that they can rely on you to promptly address their concerns and provide solutions, they are more likely to choose your products or services over your competitors. Trust is the foundation of any successful brand, and it is nurtured through every interaction you have with your customers.
Customer service is no longer just a department. It’s a critical component of your brand’s identity.
Customers Are Still The Key
Let’s dive into the top 3 reasons why customer service is a game-changer for great brands, and why dynamic customer engagement is crucial in helping you deliver the kind of seamless experiences that exceed everyday expectations and foster long-term loyalty.
1. Great Brands Know Their Customers
Customers are the lifeblood of any business. In the end, their satisfaction matters most.
Long gone are the days when customers relied on company reps for the information they needed. Today, they have access to a wealth of information via the internet, social media, and countless other sources.
Know What You’re Selling: A great brand understands what they’re selling. Coca-Cola, for example, isn’t just selling a sugary drink. They’re selling happiness, memories, and social experiences. When you can define what you’re selling, you’re able to focus on the essential promise your product or service is delivering for your customer. Any brand that fails to articulate its value proposition to customers (clearly) will struggle to stand out.
Know Who You’re Selling To: Understanding who your customers are is vital to building a great brand. Conducting research and gathering data on your customers, including their age, behaviour, buying patterns, and more, is crucial. So is having a contact centre platform that gives your reps all the tools, data, and insights they need in a single screen.
Know How To Anticipate Customer Needs: Great brands are always one step ahead of their customers. They have software and knowledge that helps them predict customer needs now and next. But to make this happen in your contact centre, you need to commit. First, collect and analyze feedback from customers. Then, observe changes in customer behaviour. And then, do everything it takes to stay up-to-date with evolving trends in your industry.
That’s why customer service can make or break a business. When your customers do take the time out of their day to engage you, they want to feel valued, listened to, and respected. This gives them the confidence to continue doing business with your company and recommend you to others.
70% of people who have a positive experience with a company’s customer service team are more likely to tell others about it.
It’s crucial to train your customer service staff accordingly. Educate them about your brand’s values, products, and services. Your customer service reps and your customers will benefit from staying up-to-date on industry trends, customer behaviour patterns, and the most popular online platforms.
Now let’s talk more about personalization below.
2. Great Brands Exceed Customer Expectations
Customer service all comes down to exceeding customer expectations.
It all starts with connecting with your customers on an emotional level, creating deep-seated loyalty. These relationships often go beyond the product or service itself because they grow out of the values and beliefs that a brand represents. One example is Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign—it inspires people to push beyond their limits and believe in the potential they’re capable of. Follow Nike’s example: establish a strong brand identity that resonates with your customers, making them loyal brand advocates.
Customers always want to feel valued. When they do, they tend to return the favour with brand loyalty. Have you heard about “perceived value theory”? It holds that when customers feel they’re getting more than what they have paid for, they develop a positive attitude towards the brand. This proven idea can work wonders in building a stand-out brand because it gives you added motivation to exceed customer expectations and create the perception that your company provides more value than your competitors.
People who do business with you want to feel special. They want to feel like they’re concerns are being heard, understood, and addressed. Mass messaging? They can spot it a mile away. Robotic answers? Just one more way to get frustrated.
Bad customer service experiences lead to customer churn, which can sink your brand’s social capital as well as your bottom line. But happy customers tend to spend more and generate revenue for your company. And that’s where personalized service comes in. More than ever, it pays for your brand to invest in technology that helps you deliver seamless and personalized customer service experiences.
A personalized approach can go a long way in building customer loyalty and creating lasting relationships. When customers have a need, they also need you to make it easy for them to get help—on their time and on their terms. When you have the power to capitalize on this opportunity and deliver standout service, it boosts brand loyalty and customer retention rates.
One of the top reasons customers switch to a competitor is due to poor customer service. To make it worse, it’s 6 to 7 times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to keep an existing one.
The ability to deliver a personal touch to a customer’s experience can make all the difference. To do that, it takes contact centre software that actually helps you make an impact. This means having a fully integrated system—every single piece of customer data in one place—so your customer service reps know everything they need from the moment of engagement: background info, conversation history, past purchases, etc.
Your brand needs to help your customer service agents adapt to the new reality. By equipping them with the right technology and training them to be game changers. In the past, people used to tolerate long hold times, delayed responses, and repeating the same requests over and over again. Not anymore.
- Incoming calls and messages should be prioritized according to urgency
- Representatives should have instant access to 360° customer data and interaction history across all channels
- Customers should be able to expect a consistent experience whenever they interact with your brand—via email, chat, social media, phone call, or any other channel
Exceeding expectations doesn’t need to be complicated. It can be as simple as delivering a personalized touch to your customer service. Customers appreciate the little things because it makes them feel big. And the sky’s the limit.
If you’re in the hospitality space, think about what it would mean to be welcomed with a handwritten note from a manager. Or about including a small gift as a delightful surprise added to a delivery. These types of personal touches make customers feel appreciated and create a memorable experience they’re likely to share with others.
When your brand’s customer service game is firing on all cylinders, the right personal touch can even turn an unhappy customer into a loyal advocate.
3. Great Brands Help Service Reps Help Customers
As we talked about above, customers are the lifeblood of your brand. But your service reps are the head, heart, and hands. And they’re often the first point of contact for prospective and existing customers.
In the contact centre industry, employee turnover rates are often high. Really high. Employee retention is critical for the long-term success of your brand. Why? Because you want to have long-term relationships with your customers.
Getting stuck in a never-ending cycle of hiring, training, and coaching new agents hurts your bottom line—not to mention the negative impact on customer service.
One of the best ways to keep your customer service reps happy—and to help them help your customers—is to give them the channels, tools, and data-driven insights they need to excel. The right contact centre software can help agents:
- Efficiently manage calls
- Retrieve pertinent customer information, and
- Provide a seamless customer service experience
Equipping your team with the right technology ensures swift and seamless customer interactions. Top it all off with an omnichannel solution and suddenly you’re able to provide customers with a consistent experience across all platforms.
Investing in AI (artificial intelligence) tools can also help your customer service team generate fast responses and make decisions that can improve customer satisfaction:
- AI-powered tools give you the power to offer 24/7/365 customer self-service and improve the performance of your reps at the same time
- Chatbots can handle up to 80% of routine inquiries
- Virtual agents help deflect calls from more complex issues, freeing up human agents to focus on complex cases
If you haven’t yet explored AI to enhance your customer service operations and understand your customers, the time is now. Contact centre software that leverages AI in smart, simple, and practical ways can personalize responses based on customer data (e.g., purchase history and previous interactions), creating a more positive brand experience.
The essential thing to remember is that you should treat all channels equally when it comes to monitoring and routing messages. Strive for processing inquiries within minutes—not hours—to make sure customers feel heard and valued.
When customer service reps have the tools they need to succeed, they’re more likely to stay with your company. More likely to deliver standout customer service. And more likely to keep your customers happy.
Simple, Memorable Customer Service = Game Changer
Add it all up and it’s clear how customer service can be a game changer for your brand.
In this article, we’ve taken a look at 3 key reasons why great customer service is the foundation of all great brands:
- Great Brands Focus On Customer Satisfaction
- Great Brands Exceed Customer Expectations
- Great Brands Help Service Reps Help Customers
The benefits of exceptional customer service cannot be underestimated. it’s not enough to be “good enough” at what you do. In crowded markets where choice is aplenty you need to be the best, and simple, easy customer service is the best way to differentiate your brand from the competition. And to reap the rewards of increased customer loyalty, better brand recognition, and a positive brand image.
With the right customer engagement software you can deliver quick, efficient, and frictionless experiences for your customers—and just as important, for your reps. Plus, set a whole new standard for service and care.
Why not plant a flag in the ground? Why not put your customers and their satisfaction first? Why not consider contact centre technology that’s actually built for the way people want to communicate?
Investing in customer service isn’t just the right thing to do for your customers. It’s also a smart business decision that gives your brand an unstoppable competitive edge. Take the time to evaluate your current contact centre capabilities. See what improvements you can make as soon as today.
In the game of customer service, the stakes are way too high to be left to chance.
