We live in a world where we value speed above all else. We expect two-hour delivery and two-day shipping. We can binge entire shows the second they’re released on Netflix. Social media and gaming apps give us instant gratification. The list goes on.
Suffice it to say, we hate it when things are slow.
And if we’re already in a bad mood — about to record a customer complaint, say — then we really want to get it over quickly.
That’s why it’s up to brands to record customer complaints as fast as possible.
The business value of recording customer complaints quickly
Consumers take efficiency so seriously that when they don’t experience it from brands, 77% say it lowers their quality of life. But recording customer complaints quickly isn’t just about improving your customers’ lives.
It simply makes good business sense. As Bill Gates wrote, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Unhappy customers can reveal all sorts of opportunities for your business.
Thanks to negative customer reviews, you’ll discover:
- Product quality issues you can fix to boost sales and lower returns
- Delivery, shipping, or fulfillment issues that lower customer loyalty
- Call center issues, such as long wait times, you can address to improve your customer service
- New product or service offerings your customers are looking for
- Why your customers prefer a competitor’s way of doing business
The faster you gather feedback from your customers, the faster you can jump into action to address it. You can resolve not just one customer’s issue, but prevent it from happening to others in the future. What started as a complaint can help streamline your operations, improve customer satisfaction, and benefit your bottom line.
Related: How to Record Customer Service Calls & Why You Should
3 key components to faster recording of customer complaints
To record customer complaints faster, you need an inbound call center solution that allows you to request, store, and analyze customer feedback. Then, you need a plan to request that feedback immediately, and share it with your team just as immediately. Let’s review each of these components in more detail below.
1. Use the right software.
Sure, there are helpdesk solutions and customer service chatbots you can utilize. But to really be effective, organizations need business communications software that connects the dots between internal and external communications. This way, you can access customer complaints in the same system your internal team uses for email and video meetings.
All-in-one software streamlines communications and boosts productivity, ensuring issues get routed to the right people and customer complaints get solved quickly. It also lets your team gather customer feedback in multiple formats, including chat, email, phone, and SMS. You want to be able to ask for feedback using whatever method your customer is comfortable giving it.
Choose a solution that offers analytics that will help you spot efficiencies for your customer service team, but it can help you better serve individual customers.
Good analytics tools will include key details about each customer, such as their revenue, past purchases, and preferred contact method.
Great analytics tools include all that, plus extra features like sentiment analysis.
Sentiment analysis automatically scans your customer communications for words that indicate a positive or negative experience. If something negative pops up, the account is flagged and escalated automatically — ensuring you can save customers before you hurt your company’s reputation.
Did we mention that Nextiva offers all of these features? Contact one of our experts today to learn more.
2. Ask for feedback when it’s fresh.
The best time to ask for a positive review is when it’s freshest in the customer’s mind. Customers are more likely to respond when the feedback request still feels relevant. Plus, the average human’s attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s, at just over 8 seconds. To avoid your customer getting distracted, ask for their feedback immediately.
With Nextiva, you can send automated follow-ups after every customer service interaction. Then, the software aggregates those responses, along with their customer sentiment scores, from every interaction they’ve had with your team, including live chat, SMS, mobile, and phone interactions. No matter which agent your customer connects with next, they’ll have the information they need to respond most effectively.
3. Make it accessible.
A vast majority — 76% — of consumers expect consistent interactions across departments. That’s why making their feedback immediately available to your team is so important.
Here’s where a UCaaS feature like Call Pop can be a call center agent’s lifesaver. Also known as call pop-ups or CTI pops, call pop lets your agents see who’s calling and their complete customer experience record before the agent picks up.
It’s clear to see the benefits from this, but call pops can go so much further when paired with other UCaaS features, like Nextiva’s threaded conversations.
Threaded conversations allow everyone on your team to see a customer’s full contact history from a single screen. Save your customers the aggravation of rehashing their issue with each new agent. Instead, your agent already knows what’s bothering them and can dig right into solving it.
Not only that, but your agent will be able to see their current sentiment score and know what tone to take going into the call. Your agents can even greet them by name! All of this contributes to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Together, call pops and threaded conversations supercharge your call center’s efficiency. With less time rehashing customer issues, your agents will be able to take a higher volume of calls. They can also add meeting notes directly to the customer’s contact file, ensuring efficiency for the next agent who answers their call.
Related: How To Record Business Calls and Why It Matters
Turn frowns upside down with faster customer service
Consumer expectations for customer service are at an all-time high. Your customers expect courtesy, efficiency, and consistency — and they want it all now.
But mistakes and miscommunications happen. When they do, the best thing you can do is record it quickly and get to work on a resolution.
With Nextiva Contact Center, this is all possible and more. Integrated surveys deliver feedback requests immediately after a call. Threaded conversations capture a customer’s entire communications history, so every agent they chat with is on the same page. And Call Pops help your agents get started on the right foot.
Related: What Is a Contact Center? Definition, Features, and Uses
