Digital customer service
Today’s consumers increasingly head for social platforms, their email accounts, or live chats when they need something. If you don’t meet them there, they’re liable to find a business that will. That’s why digital customer service strategies are crucial.
What is digital customer service?
It involves the use of digital customer service tools to support customers through one or a combination of these channels. All with the overall aim of a digital customer service strategy being to enrich customer interactions and improve the overall digital customer experience.
Why do customers want digital customer service?
It stands to reason, then, they increasingly also want to communicate with businesses and brands in the same ways. Consumers want customer service to be as easy as possible, and being able to seek help on the channels you use day-to-day anyway fits the bill
Why should your business offer digital customer service?
Digital transformation in customer service can also bring other tangible and practical advantages. For example, a well-designed digital customer service strategy can bring with it significant cost-savings.
Many digital channels for customer support—particularly self-service options—are cheaper to operate than traditional alternatives like phone support.
Being able to deflect simpler queries to these channels can also take pressure off contact center agents, and make them more productive. Thus, both your digital and traditional channels become more efficient and cost-effective.
Benefits of digital customer service
The benefits of digital-first customer service range from providing a more convenient service experience for customers to boosting sales and improving customer loyalty and satisfaction.
In fact, digital customer service strategies in a contact center or business can::
Increase customer satisfaction
Perhaps the most important benefit of digital customer service provision is that it can keep customers happier. They can seek help on their preferred channels, thus reducing customer effort. What’s more, the fact you are available to them where they need you to be shows that you understand and care about their preferences.
Empower your agents
Giving your agents the right digital customer service tools and adopting others to take the pressure off them, empowers them to do a better job. An omnichannel contact center solution like RingCX ensures all customer data and information of prior interactions is at an agent’s fingertips.
That makes it simpler for them to provide personalized, effective customer service, every time. What’s more, self-service channels can handle many of the simplest queries, giving your agents the breathing room to better handle those more complex issues.
Provide cost savings
Twinning digital channels—and particularly, self-service offerings—with your traditional service alternatives also often ends up being more cost-effective. Some automated channels can run 24/7, while agents are made more productive by having the tools they need to deliver ideal customer experience.
RingCX: All the digital customer service tools you need
With RingCX, you get an array of features to supercharge your contact center operations. The easy-to-deploy software, with its intuitive interface, provides all the digital channels your agents need on one pane of glass.
Your agents will benefit from automated intelligence, easy-to-navigate digital channels, and smart virtual agents that can answer more basic questions—freeing up their time for more complex queries.
Another feature that bolsters your agents’ productivity is the ability to seamlessly integrate RingCX with over 300 tools, including trusted CRMs like Salesforce and Zendesk.
Live chat, meanwhile, offers 24/7 support for customers and increases satisfaction rates by providing efficient support in real time.
RingCX isn’t only a game changer for agents and customers, though. Let’s not forget how it can benefit you, too.
The platform enables you to access crucial data that provides insight into how your contact center is performing, allowing you to make informed decisions about any improvements that need to be made.
You’ll have access to things such as trending topics and customer sentiment, keeping you in the loop regarding your customers’ thoughts on your products and services—making it a future-proof solution that helps you adapt to changing customer demands.
How to improve digital customer service: Making the most of your digital customer service software
Having the right digital customer service platform is key to maximizing the benefits for customers and your business. There are some other things you can do to get the most out of your digital customer service strategy, too, however.
Provide thorough staff training
First things first, it’s vital that you provide staff with comprehensive training that enables them to use your organization’s digital customer service channels to the best of their ability. After all, there’s no point in purchasing top-notch software with all the bells and whistles if nobody knows how to use it properly.
Once staff members are certain about how to use all the features of the platform, they’ll be able to provide the best possible customer service as quickly as possible. Then, as many customers as possible will come away satisfied and be more likely to remain loyal.
Use automated chatbots to answer simple queries
Make the most of software that offers automated chatbots to give quick answers to simple questions. By doing this, you’ll be freeing up your agents, so they can deal with more complex queries.
If a customer interacts with a chatbot first and then it becomes apparent that it can’t quite solve their query, ensure that the customer is smoothly and politely transferred to a human agent. It’s also important to use intelligent routing so that customers are only transferred to agents who have the appropriate skills and experience to deal with their specific query.
Provide personalization
When your customers do have complex queries that need to be answered by a member of staff, it’s important to make them feel like an individual. So forget your “Dear Sir” or “Dear Ma’am.” Instead, opt for using each customer’s own name to offer that human touch.
That’s an absolute minimum, too. Strive to make each interaction they have with your business both as personal and as helpful as possible. With a tool like RingCX at your disposal, it’s easy for you to access customer data via your CRM as well as information on prior interactions—across channels. That means customers should be left in no doubt that your agents know them and how best to help.
Improve continuously
Don’t stop once you’ve chosen the digital service channels that your organization will use and you’ve trained your staff on them. Use customer feedback to make any necessary changes to keep your customers coming back again and again.
Maybe you’ve read online reviews that highlight that some of your customers aren’t satisfied with certain aspects of your digital customer service. Use this feedback to make the improvements that your customers want to see before you lose them to your competitors. It’s also important to ensure that your staff are kept up to date with the latest updates to the platform that your company uses to provide customer service.
Protect customer data
Last but not least, ensure that your customers’ data remains secure at all times by implementing robust security measures. After all, people will be reluctant to share their personal data with you if there’s any hint that their confidential information will end up in the wrong hands.
Adopt digital customer service solutions to improve customer satisfaction
By incorporating digital customer service solutions into your business strategies, you can increase satisfaction rates among customers by:
- Streamlining support operations over multiple channels
- Saving time for customers and support agents—i.e., through improved routing and other features matched to customers' needs
- Enhancing convenience for customers
- Providing details about customer pain points using data analysis and reports
A solution like RingCentral RingCX, what’s more, helps you combine your digital channels and more traditional service offerings (like phone) on one platform. A platform that also integrates seamlessly with an AI-powered unified communications solution in the shape of RingEX and your other existing business tools.
Deliver exception digital customer service with RingCX
Find out more about using RingCX as an AI-powered digital customer service solution