How can you maintain consistent personalized support?

CRM systems can be helpful but they need to be well trained/integrated into the workflow of the service operation. I have been at companies where service was inconsistent because there was no unity in how the CRM program was used.

CRM is a software system that helps business owners easily track all communications and nurture relationships with their leads and clients. CRM software for small business replaces the multitude of spreadsheets, databases and apps that many businesses patch together to track client data. The end result is its organisation, efficiency, time management and the impression it leaves on clients based on satisfaction.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) will be a necessity in your role as a Customer Success Manager and a critical tool for data collection, aggregation and analysis. These tools span the customer lifecycle, making it an integrated tool between marketing, sales, customer success and even customer service. Often, you will see Customer Success Manager job advertisements directly asking for proficiency/understanding in a specific CRM tool. Because these systems are beneficial but complex and the onboarding, navigation and confidence in the usage of these tools can be difficult, knowing the tool already does give you a competitive advantage.

Systems are very useful due to the facilities created. However, I think that the choice of properly trained staff and in particular with a passion for service, support, assistance and care make a total difference. There's little point in having someone who knows exactly what the customer would like or need if they don't have the empathy to convert this into repeat purchases, loyalty or a (free) promoter for the company.

To ensure consistent personalized support, we can adopt various approaches. Firstly, using a CRM system helps us monitor customer interactions and preferences, ensuring tailored assistance. Segmenting customers based on their needs and behavior allows us to provide targeted support. Carefully using automation can streamline tasks while still maintaining a personal touch. Empowering our agents with the authority and resources to address issues promptly enhances the customer experience. Additionally, gathering feedback from customers helps us understand their changing needs. Lastly, factors like training, communication channels, and ongoing improvement efforts contribute to delivering consistent personalized support.

Segmenting customers is a fundamental strategy in delivering personalized support.When implemented effectively, segmentation can drive revenue growth and enhance the overall customer experience.

Effective customer segmentation fosters a more personalized and efficient customer experience, strengthening relationships and driving sustained loyalty. By understanding unique segments, businesses can personalize communication, anticipate needs, and enhance overall satisfaction.

Have a good rapport with your customers. This is very much important because only if you know your customer well, you can support them accordingly and ultimately giving them the personalized support feeling. In my experience, by having a clear rapport with the customers and then understanding their needs and suggest them to use the tools at their arsenal in a more efficient way helps in the personalized support.

Consistent personalized support boils down to really knowing your customers, listening closely, and tailoring your responses to fit their needs. It's about building rapport, using data smartly, and empowering your team to make decisions that resonate with each customer. It's like treating every interaction as if you're helping out a friend – understanding, flexible, and genuinely helpful.

I have never found automated responses or chat-bots helpful. They do not get me the service I need quick enough/accurate enough

Always think in a perspective that, let’s say, if you guide a configuration or an implementation, always look out for the sense of the customer. If you observer keenly, you can make out if the customer is actually understanding what you are explaining. Also, since you are the product expert, you always need to think how you would implement if configure this if it was you. By this way, you can make the customer efficiently use the product.

Automation has significantly impacted keyword identification in chat triage. By building a robust knowledge library with videos and articles, automation recommends resources, achieving a 95% self-serve rate. This not only reduces the need for support staff but also empowers our customers to quickly find the answers they need and continue with their day.

From my time as a support executive, one thing is clear: Automation is meant to aid, not replace, customer support. We all know those robotic IVR systems aren't popular, and customers prefer talking to real people. Automation is helpful for basic stuff, but I'm not a big fan of relying on it too much.

Le contact humain doit primer même si certaines taches peuvent être automatisées. La clientèle préféra toujours le contact humain.

Loop in the CSM. Support Agents usually focus on the issue at hand, but the CSM can keep track of historical issues for their accounts. You want to make sure that if there is an ongoing issue it is addressed, or if a feature has come out that has solved an issue for a client, you close the gap, because CSMs are often full life cycle, they will keep track of this type of data.

Nothing can match the human touch. Nowadays, Chat bots are trying to streamline and respond to some autonomous queries but that at times annoys customers than enhancing experience. Companies can actually use better support as their USPs. There are many companies we are building trust with their after sales support whilst making it a great contributor to revenue. Empowering agents, having them divide in specialized segments creating niche amongst them, regular training, CRM solutions can help improve client experience to a great extent. Allowing support team to provide discounts, refunds may help alleviate the customer frustration to some extent. Having said this also needs special skills in support team to identify the eligible candidate.

"agents" need to have enough time to remain in contact with their clients. i.e. you need enough people to do the job and they cannot be bothered by too many administrative tasks.

Having up-to-date knowledge about the product and all the processes is key! So, give to agents all accesses they need to help customers, have constant training and create an internal knowledge base that is constantly updated. If it's collaborative, even better.

NPS is a vanity metric. It can be a moderately helpful tool as a way to see the overall feeling of your customers, but the reality is that it doesn't tell you what you're doing well or what to improve. It can be a nice complementary piece to other metrics, but get feedback that will help and ask for actionable items from customers. Specific processes that you want feedback on or other areas to improve are best to gather info on. Oh, and actually using that info to refine your actions is essential!

We send clients a simple survey every month - a simple thumbs up or down. If we receive a thumbs down then someone from our team immediately reaches out to touch base with them. It is important to have trust and constant communications to keep a healthy working partnership

Collecting feedback is key to continuous and enhanced customer support. More often than not, this area is left untouched but this deserves to be in focus with strategies on how to attract in surveys. Analyzing the feedback is the next big step in ensuring we're doing the right thing at the right time.

During my time working in customer support, I've learned customers want consistent and reliable relationships with the people representing the software, service, or product they use. Depending on how your support team operates, it might be important for customers to know that your company has a system for ensuring call backs, answering questions thoroughly, or following up with additional requests, as needed. Providing the customer with a consistent presence when they have questions builds a relationship of trust that ensures they will come to you with both good and negative feedback in a timely manner.

Consistent communication maintains trust on the part of the customer and shows that the agent is consistently working through the issue. Customers are often heard saying their concerns, tickets, or inquiries go into a black hole. A human being acknowledging receipt of the concern followed by a quick summary of the plan or current status of the issue makes a huge difference in the ability of a customer to believe their concern will be resolved. This should be done regularly while the issue is being worked, even if there are no significant updates.

In customer success, occasionally checking in with clients to ask these four feedback questions about your product and relationship can help set both of you up for ongoing success: - What's working? - What's not working? - What's missing? - What's confusing? The answers they give can help you provide short and long-term value by helping you better understand what features need an introduction or refresher, how the product can grow, areas to refine the relationship, and give you starting points to show the customer ways in which the product and relationship have evolved over time.

One thing I've found is that if you have customers that are entering support tickets and asking for help, there is something good there: they're using the system. You know what they are doing and how you can help. However, recently I've tried to focus on finding the customers that aren't using the system as they are the most likely to end up as the "I never saw them cancelling" types. So going in and auditing customers that haven't entered tickets, haven't logged in for a while, don't have automated reports set up, or aren't asking questions on calls are the real red flags that should be acted upon.

I can give you? here some more of the options that you have (and you can use ALMOST successful). But the BEST thing you can do and almost no one does is: - CALL YOUR CUSTOMER - Make him feel IMPORTANT! You can use automation for simple requests like: "what is the tracking number of my order?" etc. For more complicated issues, and because the details are the ones that make the difference in any product (why not also in your customer experience)... You need to give them something amazing! (and simple) Your product can be amazing, but the competition out there is huge... (Believe me). Make your customer say: "WOW". I'm actually important!?They really want to help me. Instead of me "chasing" them, they call me to ask about my problem...