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Customer Service Best Practices: Key Tips for Exceptional Support

Luca MicheliJul 05, 2023
Customer Service Best Practices: Key Tips for Exceptional Support
Contents

Providing good customer service is crucial for SaaS businesses for several reasons. 

Customers pay a subscription fee to use your software, meaning their relationship with your company is ongoing. Therefore, maintaining strong customer relationships is critical to retaining customers and preventing churn.

As a SaaS business owner, you can also face solid competition as new players continuously enter the market. Providing excellent customer service can be a crucial differentiator, setting your business apart from competitors and increasing customer loyalty.

Finally, customer feedback is vital for product development. By providing excellent customer service, you can gather valuable insights, identify areas for improvement and drive product innovation. 

In this blog post, we will explore the importance of customer service for building customer loyalty and retention. We will also discuss how your customer service team impacts your business and provide customer service best practices to help you create a great customer service experience.

Moreover, we’ll introduce you to Customerly, our customer service solution that helps you streamline operations, increase productivity and efficiency, improve response time, and reduce costs associated with the customer service department.

The importance of customer service for customer loyalty 

customer service statistics

If you provide exceptional customer service, your customers will feel valued and appreciated and are more likely to remain loyal to your business. They may continue using your products or services and refer friends and family to your company, increasing your revenue.

Conversely, poor customer service can lead to a high churn rate and negative customer reviews. With the rise of social media and online review sites, negative feedback can spread rapidly and tarnish your reputation and profits.

How your customer service team impacts your business success

customer service team statistics

Customer service representatives play a crucial role in the success of your business.

Positive customer interactions can improve customer satisfaction, boost brand reputation, drive product improvement and increase upselling opportunities. 

However, negative interactions, such as long wait times, lack of empathy or misleading information, can damage your brand image, result in a loss of potential referrals, and increase costs for customer acquisition as you must constantly replace lost customers to keep your business running.

To eliminate the human factor from the equation and go one step further, you can invest in Customerly, our SaaS customer service solution, to automate all critical activities and delight your customers with the best customer service. 

All you need to do is start your free trial today.

What stats show us about the state of customer service

statistics about customer service best practices

Let’s look at some stats you should remember when optimizing your customer support efforts.

  • 40% of customers expect brands to solve their problems in their channels of choice. (Freshworks)
  • Customers are 2.4x more likely to keep doing business with a brand if they receive prompt or quick support with their problems. (Squaretalk)
  • 72% of customers will share a positive experience with six or more people. On the other hand, if a customer is unhappy, 13% of them will share their experience with 15 or even more people. (SuperOffice)
  • 76% of respondents expect customer service reps to know their contact, product, and service information/history. (Tidio)

Keeping up with changing customer expectations is essential for the success of your business. To get a complete overview of the current situation in the market, read our in-depth article on customer service statistics.

Customer service best practices to boost your SaaS business

customer service best practices for SaaS businesses

Now that we’ve explored the importance of good customer service experience, let’s dive into some practical tips you can implement today to improve your customer service and explain how Customerly helps you streamline your operations and reduce the number of unhappy customers.

Create a customer-centric company culture

importance of customer-centricity

A customer-centric culture means putting the customer at the heart of every decision, from product development to marketing and sales strategies. 

It ensures your customer service reps understand that their primary goal is to meet customer needs and exceed expectations. 

Customerly aligns perfectly with a customer-centric approach because it provides a range of features designed to enhance the customer experience. 

It provides automation tools to help you streamline customer service processes and reduce the workload on your support team. 

Customerly promotes open communication and empowers your customer service team to take ownership of customer issues, leading to faster resolution times and higher customer satisfaction rates.

Understand your customers’ needs

stats about customer needs

Let’s explore different methods you can use to understand your customers’ needs and tailor your products, services, and customer support accordingly.

Identify customer personas

It involves creating a profile of your typical customer, including their demographic information, interests, and pain points. Customerly enables your customer service agents to discover customer personas and tailor their interactions accordingly.

Collect feedback from customers

customer feedback surveys templates

Collecting customer feedback and analyzing data helps you understand customer sentiment toward your business.

With Customerly, you can assess customer satisfaction and loyalty in real-time by creating and distributing Net Promoter Score (NPS) and in-app surveys

It helps you improve your customer service team’s performance and identify growth opportunities.

Take action on customer feedback

Using customer feedback to improve your service involves taking action on the feedback you receive and updating customers on your efforts. 

Consider addressing common issues, implementing helpful customer service tools or enforcing new customer service policies to keep your customers happy.

Make it easy to contact customer service representatives

customer satisfaction stats

Customers expect convenience and ease when contacting your company. If a customer has a question, comment, or concern, they want to quickly and easily reach out to your business and receive a timely response. 

If you fail to provide this level of accessibility, you risk losing customers to competitors who offer more seamless communication channels.

Provide multiple communication channels

It allows your customers to choose the one that works best for their needs. These channels include email, phone, chat, and social media.

Customerly provides intelligent live chat and video live chat features to enhance your service. 

The intelligent live chat features allows you to automate responses to frequently asked questions, freeing customer service teams to handle more complex issues. 

You can align the design with your branding, select one of six live chat icons, set profile pictures to humanize the experience and enjoy real-time chat translation to communicate with customers in their preferred language. 

You can read our live chat guides to learn more about this feature.

Customerly video live chat feature

The video live chat feature lets you connect face-to-face with customers on desktop and mobile devices, providing a more personalized and engaging experience that speeds up the resolution of user issues.  

It is valuable for SaaS businesses with complex products or services, as it allows them to provide real-time demos and tutorials and resolve customer doubts. To learn more, read our video live chat guide.

Offer self-service options

Self-service options can save customers time and effort and reduce the workload for your customer service team. Some standard self-service options include FAQs, a knowledge base, and video tutorials.

Customerly provides a help center feature, which allows you to decrease the number of customer service team members, reduce support requests and improve overall customer satisfaction. 

Customerly help center feature

By developing a searchable knowledge base, you can create and organize a collection of articles on the most frequent topics, quickly address repeated issues and help customers find solutions without contacting your team.

You can also analyze failed searches to identify missing keywords and add them to your content, ensuring customers can find what they need.

When a customer submits a request or types in a keyword, Customerly automatically scans your content library and immediately retrieves the most suitable information through video tutorials, code snippets, text, or GIFs.

To learn more, you can read our useful help center guides.

Ensure a prompt response time

Ensuring a prompt response time helps prevent issues from escalating and potentially causing more damage to your brand reputation. 

Customers today expect a fast reaction, and failure to do so can result in dissatisfaction and lost business.

Customerly offers a ticketing system to manage and prioritize customer requests efficiently. You can assign tickets to specific customer support team members, and the system provides real-time notifications to ensure a prompt reply.

Personalize the customer experience 

Customerly unified inbox

Customer relationship management requires more than just solving problems and answering questions. It’s about making your customers feel seen, heard, and valued. 

Customerly streamlines communications between customer support teams and customers. The built-in CRM system provides immediate access to customer data and previous interactions to encourage personalization.   

Using our conversation inbox, you can unify and track all customer communication in one centralized location, which boosts your customer service team’s productivity and efficiency. 

Your customer success manager can assign conversations to team members automatically or manually on the most appropriate channel to close all open issues and boost customer satisfaction.

While resolving customer complaints, your team can: 

  • Use rich text messages
  • Add notes to share essential details
  • Share help center articles 
  • Use canned response templates
  • Brighten the conversation with emojis and GIFs
  • Share any attachment

It makes your conversations more engaging, making customers feel you understand their specific needs and are invested in their success, increasing their happiness.

You can read our guide on getting started with your new inbox to learn more about this feature.

Measure and analyze your team’s success

Customerly team reports

Effective customer service optimization requires proper measurement and analysis.

Customerly provides team reports that give valuable insights into your team’s workload, including the number of received and resolved conversations. 

By understanding these metrics, you can define customer service standards, improve customer service quality and reduce response times.

The chat report lets you understand how your team handles customer inquiries to provide targeted training or support and improve their performance, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.

With the agent report, you can track individual reps’ performance, which helps you provide personalized feedback to improve their results. It leads to a more efficient and effective team that can provide helpful customer service and deliver exceptional customer experience.

This proactive approach helps you maintain high customer service quality levels and avoid negative feedback or reviews that can hinder your business.

To learn more about the team report, read our detailed guide on insights into your customer support team performance.

What to do next?

As you can see, Customerly offers a comprehensive set of tools and features that enable you to provide exceptional customer service and support during the entire customer journey. 

From the unified inbox, intelligent live chat and video chat to the help center and team reports, Customerly provides everything your SaaS business needs to optimize customer service operations and increase customer satisfaction.

If you want to improve customer service, reduce response times, and streamline communication channels, sign up for Customerly today and experience the benefits firsthand.

How to revolutionize your customer service in 10 steps

customer service best practices

As the business landscape evolves, so do the expectations of customers.

You must continuously improve your customer service to stay ahead of the competition. It requires a commitment to ongoing learning, evaluation, and enhancement of your processes. 

Here are some customer service tips to help you start faster.

  1. Identify the areas that need improvement: It will give you a clear idea of what to focus on and where to allocate your resources.
  2. Set measurable goals: Once you have identified the areas that require improvement, set specific and measurable goals. It will help you track your progress.
  3. Collect data: It will provide a baseline to measure your progress and help you identify areas where you fall short.
  4. Analyze the data: Identify trends and patterns. It will help you understand the root cause of any issues and help you develop effective solutions.
  5. Involve your team: Encourage reps to share their ideas and feedback and ensure everyone is on board with the process.
  6. Prioritize improvement opportunities: Use customer satisfaction surveys to collect additional data and prioritize improvement areas to focus your efforts and resources.
  7. Develop and implement solutions: Develop and implement feasible, effective, and sustainable solutions based on your analysis.
  8. Monitor progress: Once you have implemented your solutions, monitor your progress. It will help you identify any issues and make any necessary adjustments.
  9. Celebrate successes: Celebrate your successes along the way. Recognize the efforts of your team and acknowledge the progress you have made.
  10. Continuously evaluate and adjust: Continuous improvement is an ongoing process, so it’s essential to be open to feedback and willing to make changes to ensure your business remains competitive and successful.

Implementing a process for continuous improvement is crucial for businesses to stay competitive, increase customer satisfaction, and drive growth.

How to find innovative customer service best practices

customer service best practices tips

Customer service best practices are constantly evolving, so staying informed about the latest trends and innovations in the industry is essential. Here are some ways to stay up-to-date.

  • Attend customer service conferences and events to learn from experts in the industry and network with other professionals.
  • Follow industry leaders and influencers on social media.
  • Read industry publications and blogs and use free online resources, such as webinars, podcasts, and white papers.
  • Participate in online forums and discussion groups to exchange knowledge and ideas with other professionals in the industry.
  • Find training and certification programs to expand your knowledge and customer service skills.
  • Attend workshops to learn practical skills for implementing new customer service strategies.

By staying up-to-date with the latest practices, you can continuously improve your customer service and gain a competitive edge in the market.

Final thoughts about exceptional customer service

Customerly customer service solution

Providing exceptional customer service is essential for the success of any business, particularly in the SaaS industry, where competition is fierce. 

By implementing the customer service best practices outlined in this post, you can create a customer-centric culture that fosters loyalty and retention. 

Remember to continuously improve your service by soliciting feedback, staying informed about the latest trends, and implementing new technologies and processes to differentiate your business from competitors and build long-lasting customer relationships.

Customerly is a comprehensive and user-friendly customer service software that helps you enhance customer service quality by providing personalized communication, improving team collaboration, and using advanced reporting capabilities. 

It is a reliable and effective solution for businesses looking to improve customer retention rates, generate positive reviews, and increase customer satisfaction. 

Luca Micheli

Luca Micheli

CEO @ Customerly

Luca Micheli is a serial tech entrepreneur with one exited company and a passion for bootstrap digital projects. He's passionate about helping companies to succeed with marketing and business development tips.

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