These 6 technologies give your business 5-star customer service ratings

Looking to improve your business's customer service? Check out these 6 technologies. They'll help you get 5-star ratings in no time!

Get stellar customer service for your business (Image Credit: Yan Krukau)

Years ago, all it took to run a successful business was an innovative product that customers wanted. After that, everything else was secondary. You could succeed with relatively high prices. You could even get by with subpar customer service technologies. Today, though, that’s no longer the case.

Modern customers have higher standards than ever. They aren’t satisfied with just a quality product any longer. They also insist on businesses treating them well and will make future purchase decisions based on that.

According to a survey by American Express, 33% of consumers now say they’d consider switching companies after a single instance of poor service. Conversely, 93% of consumers report that they’d likely make repeat purchases from companies with excellent customer service.

All of this means businesses need to take customer service and customer communications seriously. Fortunately, doing so is easier than ever. Especially for businesses willing to deploy the latest technologies. Here are the 6 most important ones they can use.

1. An omnichannel contact center platform

One of the best customer service technologies businesses can use is an omnichannel contact center platform. They’re typically software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that help businesses centralize their customer communications.

The idea is to ensure no customer request goes unnoticed or unanswered. Plus, most contact center platforms offer AI-powered features like automated SMS and text response and advanced integrated voice response solutions.

Most importantly, however, contact center platforms can double as a business phone system, facilitating phone communications between employees and customers. This also allows customer service agents to connect customers with subject experts.

For example, if a customer identifies a problem with a product that stems from its manufacturing, the agent might loop the product’s designer or manufacturing manager into the conversation. Then, not only can they deliver the most appropriate response, but customer feedback also goes to the right employees.

2. Email management solutions

Believe it or not, email is still one of the most critical customer communication channels today, particularly among Millennials. As a result, the average worker receives about 74 emails every day. Customer service representatives may receive an order of magnitude more than that.

This all means that businesses have every incentive to invest in an email management solution. This can include email software with advanced categorization features and AI-powered autoreply functionality.

There are also plugin-based options that can extend the functionality of existing email solutions. Those are perfect for businesses with preexisting email systems they don’t want to give up on. Some solutions are also geared toward managing outgoing marketing emails, making them useful for incoming and outgoing messaging.

3. Live support chat solutions

One of the challenges businesses face in their efforts to improve their customer service is the need for immediacy. According to surveys, 90% of customers expect answers to their customer service inquiries immediately.

To meet that demand, businesses either have to spend a fortune on staffing or invest in technology that allows fewer employees to handle more inquiries. One of the best ways to do the latter is to invest in a live support chat solution.

Live support chat is a preferred customer support technology. More importantly for businesses, however, it creates some amazing opportunities for customer service automation.

Today’s best live chat software solutions often let businesses add things like interactive chatbot support, which can satisfy customer queries with no agent interaction. Solutions like that can lower business customer service costs by up to 30%. Plus, they do it while improving customer service outcomes.

4. Social media management solutions

Even though plenty of businesses don’t intend for customers to use social media for customer service, many do it anyway. That means businesses have to pay attention to incoming messages on their social channels whether they want to or not.

And this is more universal than it may seem. History is already littered with stories about businesses scoring major points with customers via social channels and others who dropped the ball entirely.

To ensure a proper response via social media channels, it’s a good idea for businesses to invest in a social media management solution. Such solutions unite multiple social platforms into a single management interface.

They allow the business to see who’s saying what at a glance. That way, they can promptly get customer questions and complaints into the right hands. Otherwise, an angry customer who slips through the cracks might go viral and damage the business’s brand.

5. SMS management software

Text messaging is another channel customers love to use when they want support from the businesses they patronize. As a result, it’s mission-critical for businesses to have the infrastructure required to receive and respond to messages arriving via SMS.

There are a variety of SMS management software solutions that work well for this purpose. However, using a separate SMS platform may make seamless communications difficult for customer service agents.

Fortunately, many omnichannel communications platforms include SMS management built right in. So a business that’s already invested in one may already have the necessary functionality.

Or it might be possible to integrate a third-party SMS solution into its communication platform. That way, incoming SMS messaging can feed into a unified inbox where all email, phone, and other communications aggregate for triage and response by customer service representatives.

6. A customer self-service portal

Although an AI-powered FAQ is one of those customer service technologies that empowers customers to help themselves, businesses can go much further. They can create an entire customer self-service portal with numerous ways customers can answer their questions and help each other.

Many customer self-service platforms are simple to set up. With them, businesses only need to add their branding, product information, and other relevant data.

With a customer self-service portal available, customers will have a single place to go to access all of the business’s customer service options. They can find contact information, access support chatbots, open support tickets, and even discuss their issue with other customers.

What’s more, customers now broadly expect businesses to have robust self-service options. According to a survey by Microsoft, 90% of consumers worldwide indicate they expect this from every business they deal with. So launching a self-service portal is a simple way to improve customer service outcomes.

The bottom line

The takeaway here is that modern consumers now demand excellent and responsive customer service from businesses of all sizes. It’s no longer possible for businesses to leave customers waiting for support, even for short periods. Customers want immediate responses across various communication channels and will take their business elsewhere if they don’t get it.

By deploying some or all of the customer service technologies detailed here, businesses can meet their customers’ demand for service without spending a fortune or dramatically scaling up their customer service operations.

At the end of the day, making strategic investments in this area will lead to happier customers, better customer retention, and repeat sales. In other words, they’re investments that will pay for themselves many times over in no time.