You’d like to be ‘one-of-a-kind’ rather than be common. Won’t you? Your customers think the same. They want to be treated as individuals while purchasing from your business. So bid your goodbyes to the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and say hello to the art of personalization in customer service.
Personalized customer service entails when you treat your customers as individuals, tailoring experiences that they might benefit from individually. Such a technique applies when you deliver client-specific needs and expectations. It helps you foster a deeper connection with your client base as you make them feel more valued and inspire brand loyalty.
Before moving forward with your business, you must have essential questions in mind. Like, how will you land up new prospects, and convert them into paying customers? Why will your customers keep coming back to you? How will you increase ‘word-of-mouth’ inbound marketing? Your products/services quality should always be grade-A, better than the best. But to get on the top, you need to walk an extra mile and that is personalization for you.
Your targeted audience has high expectations of your services. They want first-call resolution of their issues and get personalized support from your team on convenient communication channels. Some of them are motivated to engage with as little as their name. But others might need extra effort from your end with special offers or customized discounts. It actually differs from person to person and that’s what personalization is all about!
So you see, you would want to know a customer on so many levels. Of course, you wouldn’t have just a handful of them. Therefore, identifying and meeting their expectations seems like such an overwhelming job and becomes even tougher if your support team does not address them appropriately.
According to a research study by Qualtrics, 77% of customers are likely to recommend a brand to people after having a personalized interaction with the company. They prefer the most engaging brands that have prompt responses to their queries. Our potential customers also wish for product recommendations and curated offers on different occasions. Hence, it can be easily broadcast as one of the primary reasons to invest in data analytics and technology.
It is super crucial to strategize personalization and go the extra mile to refine the same. Let me take you through the benefits of personalized customer service and how Zoho apps helps you curate them to perfection.
Who doesn’t want a consistent business? Everybody. That comes with customers. And they will instantly like you as a brand when they feel valued and appreciated. To achieve that, you need to acknowledge their queries and support them with customized service. Reports suggest that companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to earn, on average, an additional $700 million within 3 years of investing in personalized customer experience. That’s 70% of growth in revenue!
There’s no hiding that the pandemic created “a new generation of people who increasingly go online for all of life’s daily needs and expect services like a curbside pickup” as the global CMO of Walgreens Boots Alliance Vineet Mehra rightly pointed out to Adweek.
Customers expect personalized service and that’s one thing that is not going to change anytime soon. Gartner shows that 46% of businesses are investing in data analytics for personalization and also, while Bain & Company says that businesses can grow revenues between 4% and 8% above their market when prioritizing better customer service experiences.
Our customers expect seamless solutions to their issues without waiting for long hours or being carried forward to different teams to address their problems. With data, you can identify the product roadblocks, and address them with first-call resolution or prompt responses to minimize your churn rate.
Businesses all over the world adapted digital tools. They have indeed opened virtual doors to global audiences. But do you think your prospects are going to consider becoming paying customers only based on the products you offer? No. for that, you need to build loyalty from your existing customers.
Your existing customers are likely to refer you as a brand to their friends and families when they have delightful experiences. According to Khoros for 86%, good customer service turns one-time clients into long-term brand champions. Still, the stakes remain high as one bad experience is enough for them to take their business elsewhere. Ruby Newell-Legner’s “Understanding Customers” even claims that it takes 12 positive customer experiences to make up for one negative experience.
Customer service is critical. But Zoho apps handle it with care. It helps you achieve your goal and when you do, reaching out to new clients through organic ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing becomes a cakewalk.
You know customized client support is no longer a plus point of a business. It is a necessity. But before you offer customer service, you need to know your customers to curate personalization in their experiences. So it is crucial to understand what they need and what they expect. This comes when you build a strong communication flow with your customers to get a better understanding of their requirements.
But is it possible for you to remember comprehensible details? No. That is when you turn to technology – a product like Zoho CRM software. It captures and documents all the customer information you need in kempt records for your easy retrieval.
Let’s take it from the top. Whenever a prospect shows internet in your services and shares details via web form or a live chatbot, the integrated Zoho CRM readily captures the same as a lead record. It automatically alerts your sales team about it so that they can look out for further conversation. When the moment comes and you convert the lead into contact, account (for B2B opportunities), and deal, the CRM pre-flows the information in respective records, within less than sixty seconds. Zoho CRM lets you maintain detailed records and communication touchpoints so that your team can access the information and personalize their interaction.
Modern customers expect and enjoy brand interaction on different platforms. One of the key components of personalized customer service is to look out for customers across several communication channels. For instance, you can upgrade your website with a live chatbot that greets your prospects and helps them with product information.
Now, speaking of customer service, it will be unjust if I don’t mention Zoho Desk. This app extensively helps you simplify customer service operations. It empowers your customers with an omnichannel ticketing system that streamlines support tickets. These tickets provide all the contextual information that you need to resolve, prioritize, track, and automate support tasks. In a single flexible interface, it collects support tickets from different channels (email, social media, live chatbot, telephony, webform) and organizes them so agents can stay organized and reply faster. This makes your interaction more targeted and accurate as your support agents become already aware of the possible roadblocks.
The website is the virtual storefront of your business. So most of your customers are going to experience personalization while spending a considerable amount of time on your website. Now, when people enter your office, surely you will want to understand what they are looking for and help them with recommendations. Apply the same for your virtual store. Twilio says that around 60% of customers are influenced by personalized product recommendations. Your web visitors will easily become your proponents when they get high-caliber individualized experiences.
Of course, you would give your 100% in your job to serve your customers with personalization. But is it working? How will you get assurance? Answer: Feedback.
Closing the sale opportunity and delivering the product does not end your task. You now need to analyze how you can make your customers feel appreciated and valued by your business, in the post-sales interaction. That’s where collecting feedback becomes a necessity.
You can take this personalization strategy to your advantage only when you act upon your customer feedback. It will give you a detailed picture of how well your customer service strategies are working and what are your customers engaging with, the most. Implementing solutions that they might suggest helps you build intangible customer loyalty.
Self-service portals, knowledge bases, community forums, or FAQs are the recent trends in the customer service sector. Modern customers prefer solving their issues independently and thus more than 77% of them view self-service provisions as a form of customer service.
You can use the Zoho Survey which comes with 25+ different customizable questionnaires along with features like piping and skip logic. You can include NPS (Net Promoter Score) to ask your customers to rate your service on different grounds. This context-aware application lets you collaborate with your team to refine the questions according to your product/ service features. These questionnaires are also easily shared with and collected from customers enlisted in your social media or email campaign. You can collect the survey results and analyze them with visualized response trends and structural data to make better-informed decisions.
Also, Bain & Company says that the NPS Promoter score has a customer lifetime value that’s 600%-1,400% higher than a Detractor.
From the business perspective, you always need to understand the current trends of the market, pre-think your strategies, and adapt to them. While there are several trends to watch out for, personalization is one trend that is not going anywhere anytime soon.
No standing apart from the competition crowd is quite difficult. But there’s always a way out. And that’s personalization for you. The way you approach your customers differs from others. Set your aim at leveraging high-caliber personalized customer service to outweigh others.
Want to learn how to implement useful applications like Zoho CRM to ace your personalized customer service goal, connect with our experts right away!