How a business handles customer service interactions increasingly defines its online reputation, yet, according to our recent survey that gives a list of the best and worst customer service brands, many are still getting it wrong. Brand reputation and online image can draw new customers or deter them, therefore we all need to be asking, “how do we get customer service right?”

How a business handles customer service interactions increasingly defines its online reputation, yet, according to our recent survey that gives a list of the best and worst customer service brands, many are still getting it wrong. Brand reputation and online image can draw new customers or deter them, therefore we all need to be asking, “how do we get customer service right?”

Hiring expenses are on the rise, with even small businesses often shelling out five figures for each new hire. Contributing factors include persistently low unemployment rates, an aging workforce, and a growing preference for freelance work. So when you finally find the right person for the role, it’s essential to onboard them quickly but effectively to make good on your substantial investment.

Customer service organisations today are fighting an uphill battle. Service agents face record case volumes, and customers are frustrated by growing wait times. Often, to manage the case load, agents will simultaneously work on multiple customers’ issues at once while waiting for data from legacy systems to load.

Losing customers without understanding why can be incredibly frustrating and damaging for a business. As much as we like to think we know our customers and have our fingers on the pulse of their needs, there are often hidden reasons behind losing customers that catch us by surprise.

Losing customers without any plan to mitigate the situation is a surefire path to ensure your business goes under. If you’re seeing a decline in customers, there could be various reasons for why that’s the case, like poor customer service, inconsistent pricing, or lack of training for your sales reps. Digging into why you’re losing customers doesn’t need to be a big mystery to solve. However, understanding why you might be losing customers is essential so you can create and implement a plan to recover and retain your clients.

In recent years, the role of technology, especially the role of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, has significantly increased across a variety of industries. Customer service is one of the industries that has been introduced to the capabilities of AI technology, and businesses are turning to it and other evolving technologies to improve the quality of their business and the customer’s experience.

There’s no better feeling than positive feedback for your business. When a customer leaves a great review or emails to tell you how much they love the product, it’s a great morale boost for the entire team–but does that happiness actually translate into more sales? Customer satisfaction is a great starting point, but it’s not enough to turn someone into an advocate for your business.

Customer service is the support you provide your customers before and after they purchase your product or service. Offering timely service that consistently meets customer expectations leads to a positive experience of your brand. It helps you build trust and foster long-term relationships with customers to help grow your business.

While tactical customer service measures are typically managed by a single company department, strategic customer service innovations — that is, those that reflect what the customer is actually experiencing, not what you’re experiencing in your operations — necessarily involve the coordinated activities of multiple departments. Many leaders run into the issue of “organizational indifference,” where counterpart managers in other departments naturally focus on the measures top management has told them are most important, and for which they’re being held responsible.

Think about the last time you received service that was exceptional. And by exceptional, I mean exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. How you were communicated with is often what shapes your impression — good or bad.

The fact is, better customer experiences are better for business. Great CX means your customers are happier, feel taken care of, and are more loyal—all of which leads to more profits. It takes the right tools and data to fuel those experiences, and a lot of it is already at your fingertips.

When they say that "the customer is always right", they might just have a point.

In Singapore, a survey conducted by U.S.-based experience management company has revealed that offering poor customer service experiences can lose businesses a crazy amount of revenue – to the tune of US$11 billion per year, in fact.

What we’ve learned from the sudden shift to remote work is that people are generally quite positive about technology adoption to support their work and learning requirements. Many learning and development (L&D) professionals have scrambled to keep the lights on during the COVID-19 pandemic but, at the same time, they have taken the opportunity to evolve learning experiences into the digital era.

In today’s incredibly digital world, there’s still no substitute for the personal touch that great customer service can offer — whether in person or online. However, companies and brands need to bring their A-game these days.