Actionable Ideas for Startups to Boost Their Customer Service Efficiency
Customers are the life and soul of any business. That’s why companies in every stage must keep their customers engaged and continue providing them with outstanding experiences. This is even more important for startups that invest most of their resources in customer acquisition strategies to build their user base from scratch.
To be honest, a limited amount of customer churn is natural. However, by providing reliable customer service, startups can reduce this figure considerably by ensuring positive and helpful customer experiences.
Below, we have identified four strategies for startups to boost customer service efficiency and hack their growth:
1. Create An Impactful Onboarding Process
Did you know that 77% of users ditch an app in less than three days after downloading, and only about 2.7% stick around for more than a month?
Think about it – what’s the use of signing up new customers if they don’t know how to use your product correctly? A thoughtful onboarding process tells your users about the features and benefits of your product and educates them on proper usage to reap the promised benefits.
Some actionable ideas include:
- Creating immersive yet straightforward videos to guide users around your app or product.
- Integrating feature call-outs in the first login screen to prompt users to click the key areas in your UI.
- Building a series of emails as a supplemental onboarding tool to further educate users about your product’s features and benefits.
2. Offer Real-time Support via Live chat software
Users often abandon a website due to a lack of adequate information. However, you can prevent this by integrating live chat on your web page and social media messengers to offer real-time support to customers without wasting their precious time.
Not surprisingly, live chat is an integral part of any reliable customer service plan. An increasing number of users prefer to live chat software over other communication channels, owing to faster response times and convenience. Live chat is also convenient for customer service agents, enabling them to handle multiple conversations at a time.
Benefits of live chat for startups include:
- Reduced costs – Live chat is known to save up to 50% support costs for businesses in comparison to using call center support.
- Higher customer satisfaction – Live chat is convenient, fast, and accurate, and companies that use live chat report a 92% customer satisfaction rate.
- Increased conversions – Live chat is known to increase conversions and repeat sales through real-time support that minimizes the urge to comparison shop.
Startups can benefit immensely from implementing customer support technologies like live chat, co-browsing support, chatbots, etc. However, it is also pertinent to adopt a customer-centric culture and train your support agents in traits like empathy and patience to ensure an outstanding customer experience.
3. Invest in Omnichannel Support
According to Forrester, most adults prefer to shop with retailers that offer consistent customer service, both online and offline. As a startup, you can curate an omnichannel support system at the outset, without focusing on any single channel in particular. The result would be a seamless and consistent experience across multiple channels, which would improve your customer experience and satisfaction. To achieve this, you may follow the outlined steps:
- Start by mapping your customers’ preferred communication channels.
- Ensure fast and efficient service on all these channels, using tools like live chat, chatbots, co-browsing technology, etc., to bring online and offline support channels at par.
- Integrate your communication channels with your CRM to keep track of customer communications across channels.
- Include a self-service option to improve customer experience.
4. Enable Self-Help by Integrating a Knowledge Base on Your Website
Customers are most satisfied when they can find the information they need quickly, without wasting any time. Besides, many customers, especially the millennials, prefer resolving their problems on their own by using a self-help section or FAQs available on the company site. Integrating a knowledge base on your website, thus, offers two distinct advantages. First, it improves user experience by providing a ready solution to problems even before they arise. Second, it reduces the burden on your customer support agents so that they only need to focus on complex issues. A comprehensive knowledge base comprising FAQs and informative articles, whitepapers, reports, etc., also showcases your domain authority, building customer trust in your brand and product.
Here are some best practices to build your knowledge base from scratch:
- Make your knowledge base easy to search so that customers can find exactly what they need in just a few clicks rather than scrolling through heaps of content.
- Divide your knowledge base into logical categories and sub-categories, as users don’t always know what they are looking for.
- Ensure that your knowledge base or FAQs are easy to find to enable self-service.
- Use a visual UI to make information scannable.
Below, we have listed some questions to ask yourself before you start writing content for your knowledge base:
- What are the current problems faced by your customers?
- Which issues show up the maximum time in your support tickets?
- What have your competitors written in their knowledge bases?
- In what ways can you educate your customers to elevate their experience?
- What are the trends and the most commonly asked questions in your industry?
Conclusion
Startups that invest in customer service tools experience reduced churn and higher customer retention, owing to improved customer experience. However, evolving customer expectations require consistent mapping, which can be done by collecting feedback at the end of every conversation. This may be done via email, polls, in-chat NPS surveys, etc., to identify any roadblock, and improve the customer service process continually for lasting success.
