How to Make Sure Customers Want to Use Tools that Save YOU Time

In the world of customer service management, one might wonder whether the tools that save companies time and money also seem useful to the customer.

This is a guest post by Stefanie Amini, Marketing Director and Specialist in Customer Success at WalkMe.

Many millions of dollars have been invested in the last few years in creating new and determining which already existing methods can be utilized by companies to reduce their customer service costs and make them more time efficient. The question is:  are the customers themselves really in favor?  Measuring to what extent that customers really prefer to use these methods is critical in trying to find the proper balance between company efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Let us take a look at some of the key advantages and proper methods in measuring customer satisfaction in utilizing these cost-cutting and time-saving tools that companies are deploying.

What are the advantages to measuring customer satisfaction?

The advantages to the company itself are clear: measuring customer satisfaction with their experience over the phone, slashing company staff and other costs, and having a generally more organized, manageable system. For a call center, creating an automated system to deal with customer inquiries is quite appealing; the risk of a caller running into an ill-informed or testy customer service representative is eliminated.

Strategies to measure customer satisfaction

Further to the company’s benefit, being able to record or track a phone call in order to gain information about customer needs and complaints is vital and needs to be measured for the improvement of customer experience with the service or product overall. Other strategies, such as the use of social media, online metrics, and surveys, undoubtedly help publicize the company and gauge the mindset of the customer. However, there is always the risk that the customer will feel overwhelmed or even deceived by some of these tactics.

Downside to your users exposure to customer service tools OR tactics

As attractive a prospect as these tools sound, one would be ill-advised to rely on them entirely. A common customer complaint today is the lack of a “human” interaction; a person calls a help center and expects help from a trained professional to whom they can ask direct questions that a programmed robot would not be able to answer. Still, other tactics might be more understandable to a consumer. Online chat services such as LivePerson, is an example of a tool.  Firstly because users are familiar with this concept of chat and consider it a quick and easy way to communicate with the person on the other end.   Users though, can feel that if the answers are too precise, that they may not be dealing with a real person, and can feel concerned that their issues were not logged.

How to find that perfect medium

In terms of customer experience improvement, a company manager must find a happy medium between efficiency and the customer’s wants and needs when it comes to remote support.  This is likely most achievable through a hybrid system in which the customer feels a certain amount of real human interaction. At the same time, the company should attain certain tools that would not only ensure a reasonably timely profit, but also help it detect how to improve the system so that the customer does not exit the experience with something to be desired.

To summarize, we don’t really know if the customer necessarily wants to use these tools that save us the money, but we do know that they want a smooth fast service that is precise and engaging.  You can’t really say, but as long as you keep the customer happy, that is what is most important.

Stefanie Amini is the Marketing Director and Specialist in Customer Success at WalkMe, the world’s first interactive online guidance system.  She is chief writer and editor of I Want It Now, a blog for Customer Service Experts. Follow her @StefWalkMe


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