Consumers worldwide utilize the internet to get easy access to products, services, and support. In response, businesses across industries invest more in customer support.

A study from Harvard, however, makes companies rethink their responsiveness to customer problems. According to research, companies fail to respond on-demand to their customers online. While consumers expect a response in a 60-minute time frame, enterprises respond within 42 hours, on average.

As a result, leads grow cold and are lost to the next vendor. Frustrated customers, on the other hand, air out their complaints in public on various social media channels.

Poor customer experience ultimately leads to loss of customers, with the majority leaving bad reviews and dragging their family and friends not to use the company again. A large percentage further take the complaint to a manager or supervisor.

Needless to say, silence and delayed response results in a bad image for the brand. Meanwhile, top business owners are able to manage the demand. As HomeAdvisor President and COO Craig Smith puts it, 15 minutes is ideal for a responsive customer service.

Now is the best time to discuss what customer service excellence looks like in the digital age. Here are some of the best practices for managing leads and responding to customer concerns:

Figure Out Who is Responsible

Customers need to feel they are seen and heard. Organizations need to assign employees responsible to handle every mode of communication between the enterprise and customers. Assign a backup person for every assignment so someone can respond to the customers when the assigned person is unavailable.

Smart Tip:
By defining teams, you can automatically direct a customer query to the right team member, which will definitely shorten your ‘time to connect’ and thus your time to resolution.

Devise a Plan

CSR can make a mistake when they respond to customers under pressure. Plan for what to do with positive and negative concerns, and what action to take in various situations. Also, consider when to respond in public and when to take conversations in private through DM, email, or phone.

Set-up a Help Center

The easier it is for your customers to find out answers to their questions, the lesser demand for responsiveness to customer problems. This can easily be resolved by reviewing common customer concerns and providing information easily accessible to customers through a FAQ page.

Create Templates

Spend time to write well-crafted statements and streamline social media moderation. Programmable messenger bots can be a quick and effective way to provide responsive customer support.

At the same time, it is crucial to write personalized statements. Canned statements risk sounding automated, which is counter-effective—use them wisely.

Utilize Customer Service Tools

It’s impossible to keep track of all emails, phone calls, social media mentions, and messages from every customer without the right tools. There are some useful tools, like Xeno, that help businesses avoid ignoring any customer. Small enterprises need to dedicate more time responding to all posts, reviews, tweets, and DMs as a way of community building.

Tick tock, tick tock…

The consequence of losing customers and potential leads push enterprises of every scale to strive for customer service excellence. With proper planning, delegation, and the right customer service tools, teams can respond to customers in 15 to 60 minutes.