The Customer Service Playbook
Everything you need to know about building and managing successful support operations is in this Customer Service Playbook – Inspiring insights, the latest news, trends, and predictions to put you a step ahead of your competitors. Sign up to receive more content directly in your inbox.
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What is Personalized Customer Service?
Making your customer service communication lines as easy, frictionless, and specifically targeted to individual members of your audience as possible is imperative in a world where a great deal of emphasis is placed on using digital technology and social media to provide elevated customer experiences. Making a quantifiable impact on…
Part 1
Building your customer service team
Successful support starts with a kick-ass customer service team — the best practices for hiring, onboarding, and scaling your customer service department.
The Fundamentals of Customer Service Coaching
Customer service coaching programs include exercises to improve soft skills like active listening, communication, problem-solving, etc. Implementing effective coaching and training involves identifying goals, selecting the right coach, creating a training plan, incorporating feedback, and measuring success. If your goal…
Everything you Need to Know About Customer Service SLAs
Service level agreements (SLAs) define the support standards a customer can expect from your company while helping your teams know what they need to do to reach their goals. In this article, we look at the main types of customer…
How to Align Customer Service Strategy with Business Goals
When you strive to align customer service strategy with business goals you end up maximizing Customer Success. Customer success refers to the efforts a company makes to proactively meet customer needs and ensure the longevity and success of its relationship…
How to Scale Customer Support Like a Pro
Every company needs to grow and adapt if it is to survive and prosper. As you grow, it is imperative to scale your support operations as well, to continue offering exceptional service to your customer base. However, scaling up your…
How to Determine the Right Customer Service Structure
The size and structure of your team significantly impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of customer service. Support needs vary greatly depending on industry, business size, product, or service, so it’s natural for many organizations to find it challenging to choose…
A Guide to the Most Important Customer Service Skills
The ability to provide excellent customer service is one of the most important aspects of any business and something all employees should learn. Some of the most important customer service skills include communication, attention to detail, stress tolerance, empathy, and…
Part 2
Leveraging technology
Stellar customer service experiences happen where human touch meets technology – Find out how to make the most of the latest customer service clever technologies.
What is Personalized Customer Service?
Making your customer service communication lines as easy, frictionless, and specifically targeted to individual members of your audience as possible is imperative in a world where a great deal of emphasis is placed on using digital technology and social media…
How to Leverage Digital Twins to Improve Customer Service
In today’s hyper-connected world, customer service is no longer just a department within a company but a pivotal differentiator that can make or break a business. To stand out in a competitive market, companies must prioritize exceptional customer experiences. One…
How to Use ChatGPT to Improve Customer Service
In today’s competitive business landscape, delivering exceptional customer service is the key to success. 96% of consumers consider customer service an essential factor when it comes to brand – as a result, providing top-notch support is not just a nicety…
The Benefits of Text Analysis for Support Teams
Customer support is integral to business success. Customers expect elevated experiences when interacting with a brand, so they readily do business and even recommend brands that meet their expectations. Text analysis is one technique helping brands meet customers’ expectations in…
What to Look for When Choosing a Zendesk Implementation Partner
Careful consideration has likely gone into choosing Zendesk as your customer support software. Now you cannot wait to benefit from all the advantages of the advanced CX platform. But how do you reap the full potential of a solution as…
How to Harness the Power of Customer Self-Service
In a recent study, business professionals said that their number one priority for the next five years is the customer experience. Adding to this, 67% of customers say that they prefer the option of self-service over speaking to a company…
The 12 Best Customer Service Software Platforms for 2024
Customer service software is crucial to providing your customers with an exceptional customer service experience, which helps to facilitate business success. According to Financeonline, “Customer service of the near future will move towards a direction where humans and computers work…
Your Guide to Choosing Customer Service Software
Effective customer service is key to the survival and growth of any business. But how do you choose the right customer service software for your company? This guide will help you answer that question. To choose the right customer service…
Omnichannel Customer Service and How to Deliver it
Omnichannel support has become the gold standard for success in the customer service world. Luckily, in terms of technology it’s never been easier to go down the omnichannel path. For many businesses, however, grasping the benefits of an omnichannel strategy…
6 Reasons Why You Need a Knowledge Base
The on-demand culture is the in-thing. Everywhere you look, the shift in customer behavior towards immediacy resulting from the ease of access the digital world affords us is in full swing. Whether products, services, or mere information on how to…
How to Determine Which Customer Service Channels to Focus On
The proliferation of multiple customer service channels has increased customers’ expectations in their interactions with brands. Businesses strive to meet these expectations to maintain customer loyalty and increase revenue. While the Omnichannel approach has enabled seamless customer service on various…
AI in Customer Service: Yay or yay?
If you’re in business, you probably know that the quality of customer support is directly tied to customer satisfaction and loyalty. And for any business, keeping the wheels of exceptional customer service rolling is vital. But, it can be overwhelming. …
Part 3
Metrics and KPIs
Take a deep dive into the most useful customer service metrics and KPIs and learn how to use them to understand what drives the customer experience.
Service Desk Basics: Cost Per Ticket
Cost per ticket (CPC) is an often overlooked but crucial factor when evaluating contact center performance. It measures the total cost of resolving each ticket, including labor costs and any additional costs for external services or third-party products. If you…
Your Guide to Average Handle Time
The Average Handle Time is a critical metric in the contact center industry that measures the average time it takes for an agent to handle a customer interaction, including talk time and any post-call work. AHT is a vital indicator…
What’s Your Customer Effort Score?
Even if you’ve been living in a cave, you must’ve probably had to interact with a brand, whether to make an inquiry, a purchase, or lodge a complaint. Subconsciously or not, you may have held certain expectations of convenience in…
The Importance of Customer Satisfaction
Yes, product quality matters. Yes, a competitive price will get you far. But, the data has spoken – it shows that 66% of consumers care more about the experience than price. It, therefore, stands to reason that the success of…
What’s your Net Promoter Score?
Quantifiable metrics allow you and your team to measure and compare the effectiveness of almost everything in your business. By measuring how customers respond to your products, services, and processes, you find ways to improve and grow. One of the…
The Benefits of Improving First Contact Resolution Rates
First Contact Resolution is one of the most commonly measured support metrics, and for good reason. The percentage of customer inquiries resolved at the first attempt directly correlates to customer service performance and customer satisfaction. In the following paragraphs we…
Part 4
Performance, quality, and analytics
Evaluate how well you support your customers and determine the quality of service you deliver to stay a step ahead of the competition retain your client base.
Customer Service Analytics Explained
Every day we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, as recorded in 2020. Businesses use social media, algorithms, and other tools to organize their data and use it to achieve their goals. Customer service analytics help them to identify the…
10 Steps to Improving Customer Service Productivity
What is productivity in customer service? Why is it critical for your company? How can you measure customer service productivity, and what can you do to improve it? If you’ve ever asked yourself any of those questions then you’ve landed…
How to Measure Customer Service Performance
“I won’t complain. I just won’t come back.” That’s the thought ping-ponging through the minds of unsatisfied customers. Conversely, 9 out of 10 customers would repurchase once impressed by your customer service. It’s squeaky bum time for customer service departments…
ABC of Data-Driven Customer Service Management
Exceptional customer service management in today’s fast-paced business environment makes for a competitive advantage. For customer service leaders who look to empower team members, develop operations, and impact their bottom line, the data-driven approach to managing support is a…
Using Feedback to Boost Customer Service Leadership
While customer service is a competitive advantage, unsatisfactory support is one of the main reasons why customers abandon companies. As consumer expectations, propelled by the latest technological advancements, continuously evolve, customer service leadership has emerged as the main factor impacting…
Part 5
Agent performance and engagement
Customer service representatives can make or break your contact center. Tips and best practices to keep your staff satisfied and engaged.
Agent Self-Evaluation Through Customer Feedback
Agent self-evaluation enables customer care representatives to review their own performance. In the process of reflecting upon personal performance goals, customer feedback can be used as an invaluable resource. That is because feedback is the most straight forward way to understand…
Superagent: The New Breed of Customer Service Representatives
Contact centers are undergoing a renaissance. The seismic rise and shifts in customer expectation means companies are now drilling down on experience (rather than cutting costs/saving time) as a true long-term and more sustainable differentiator. The contact center — a…
Agent Performance Metrics
Many businesses suffer dwindling patronage because their contact centers do not provide high-quality services. Interestingly, call centers with poor service have something in common – they do not effectively analyze contact center agent performance metrics for actionable insights. As the…
Customer Service Agent Onboarding Checklist
The traditional method of hiring new customer service agents, giving them a few days of basic training, and then unleashing them onto the contact center floor sets up your agents for failure. It results in high agent attrition rates, increased…
Agent Attrition Rates and How to Keep Them at Bay
Agent attrition refers to how often customer support agents leave a firm. According to a NICE survey of 400 U.S. and UK contact centers, agent turnover is a massive problem in the industry, with contact centers seeing an average attrition…
Agent Engagement: How to Motivate and Retain Top Talent
The contact center is the beating heart of any great business. It’s the human touch of contact your customers have with your company. Their customer service experience—good or bad—will color their perception of your company forever. 93% of customers are…
What Drivers Affect Customer Service Agent Satisfaction?
Agent satisfaction in customer support is affected by many drivers that are common in many sectors, such as workplace culture, team spirit, and the quality of supervisory work. Surveypal has studied the drivers of well-being at work in customer service…
Part 6
Customer service value vs. costs
Poor customer service can lead to the demise of your business. Drill down on the importance of support by examining its value against its cost.
The Real Cost of Poor Customer Service
Poor customer service has a devastating impact on your company’s bottom line. The cost of bad customer service is significantly more than just lost sales or angry customers. It affects your company’s reputation, employee morale, and even threatens its long-term…
Customer Retention or How to Hold on to Your Customers
In business settings, customer retention is one of those terms that never goes out of style. Research shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by up to 95%. According to other studies, the cost of retaining an old customer…
Customer Service: From Money Pit to Profit Center
Until recently, customer service was a less pronounced aspect of business, and not much thought was put into making it a value-add. The thinking behind this was that customer support was only useful for receiving complaints from begrudged clients. Accordingly,…
Tried and Tested Strategies to Reduce Customer Service Costs
High levels of service quality and improving the customer experience result in more loyal customers, higher turnover, and better profits. But customer care professionals tasked with delivering these greater levels of service quality also feel pressure to reduce service costs…