Fast service: 5 tips for quick service
Understand what agility in service is, the importance of having fast and effective processes, as well as tips for expediting responses and investing.
One of the main customer demands is for Agility in service, a quality that enriches the customer experience (CX) strategy and positively impacts customer satisfaction.
But because the demand for quick service is so high, isn't it? The reason is simple: people don't like to waste time.
Imagine that you have an excellent and highly praised product, however, delivery to the customer takes weeks. This factor will probably show up in your site reviews as a point of improvement.
Now, suppose that a customer needs to make an exchange and, for this, they turn to support to answer some questions. However, he waits long minutes to be answered and, when he is, the attendant has difficulty answering, prolonging the service.
You can predict the result of the satisfaction survey that they will respond to at the end of the service, agree?
The saying is old, but it fits perfectly to illustrate the mentality of New digital consumer: time is money!
Do you want to evolve this requirement and provide agile service, with a WOW experience for your customer? Read on and learn tips for quick and effective service.
Have a good read!
What does it mean to be agile in service?
Agility in service demonstrates the company's ability to mobilize efforts and put them into practice to provide support that meets customer demand, with quality and speed.
This characteristic is highly valued in today's market and requires businesses to constantly reevaluate their processes so that customer experience processes are increasingly aligned with customer expectations.
The vice president of Aberdeen Strategy and Research, a North American marketing intelligence firm, Omer Minkara, points out that”companies are not only making customers happier, but generating operational efficiency and better financial results“, by investing in a fast and effective service structure.
Including, the Search for 'CX Agility' carried out by Aberdeen, listed the main benefits of agile service for companies:
- 2.2 times higher annual customer satisfaction rate (CSAT);
- 3.6 times higher annual customer retention rate;
- 3.3 times higher annual cross sell/up sell revenue;
- improvement in the reduction of service costs twice as much per year;
- 48% more growth in annual revenue;
- 2.4-fold annual increase in customer lifetime value (LTV);
- 80% increase in profit margins compared to the previous year, reducing operating costs and increasing revenue.
These statistics reinforce that being agile in service works, a characteristic that can be extended to other business processes.
The objective is to ensure that all sectors have speed as a non-negotiable value, with maximum quality.
What is the importance of agility in customer service?
The importance of agility in service is related both to customer satisfaction as for image and reputation in the market.
No wonder, when a problem occurs, customers search for what the business specifies in its Service SLA, that is, what are the quality parameters that the company is willing to offer.
Therefore, service managers must monitor the evolution of goals and work to ensure that the team is well aligned with the processes.
In this way, satisfaction goals can be bolder, going beyond the industry average so that there is a differential that highlights the company from the competition.
In addition, seeing the team's results scale consistently is an incentive for the team to maintain the level of quality and excellence in service.
Average service time (TMA) and its influence on agility
Among several indicators that provide more agility, there is the average service time (TMA).
The TMA is a quality indicator because it shows the average duration of a call, that is, it is a way of verifying how agile the attendants can be when fulfilling a customer request.
Other indicators are also useful for evaluating service agility, such as: average wait time (TME), number of calls answered, first time response, and resolution upon first contact.
Therefore, it is important to monitor these averages on a monthly basis to maintain the continuous improvement of the processes and, also, to establish the averages that you want to achieve for these indicators.
This is because, depending on the business, agility will not necessarily be less time, but precision when resolving a demand for support so that the customer has the correct answer.
To boost the team's results, the service manager can research the average performance of companies in the sector and create a strategy to overcome it, instead of just equalizing the margin.
More than competitiveness, the team must understand the business objectives, the defined strategy and the advantages of achieving better results.
Thus, the average service time (TMA) serves as a guide to agility and also to the quality that the support service should have.
How to get fast service?
To have fast service, it is necessary to have well-defined processes, support tools, and team alignment.
The results in relation to service agility will be commensurate with the team's collective effort.
In addition to the indicators mentioned above, which serve as a comparative parameter for evaluating the rate of customer satisfaction (CSAT), other strategies can boost results.
One of them is Single Point of Contact (SPOC or, in Portuguese, single point of contact), whose objective is for only one attendant to resolve the customer's demand.
The reason why this strategy is so relevant is to prevent the customer from being transferred to another sector and having to repeat their problem again to another person. In this way, service time can be reduced.
For the SPOC to work, the team must be well trained in the processes, know the sectors responsible for each demand to activate them and return the necessary information to the customer.
In addition to agility, support is more organized both internally and for the customer, who is able to follow the answers in a practical way.
Na CX Trends 2022 survey from Zendesk, the agents interviewed cited the key skills they consider important to improve their performance, such as:
- respond to customers in a conversational and convenient manner (39%);
- manage customer requests efficiently (32%);
- understand what to prioritize (30%);
- resolve requests quickly and easily, without resorting to alternative solutions (29%);
- collaborate with the right teams in the organization (29%);
- finding the right business context for an answer (28%);
- provide agents with a complete view of customer data to inform the conversation (27%);
- use automation to solve problems faster (19%);
- collaborate with external teams (17%).
To achieve these objectives and to have a fast and quality service, the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) is a strategy that contributes to improving internal work and what the client receives.
The response, in turn, will be monitored by the result of the CSAT and other indicators.
Also read >>> How to measure CSAT: assessment scales + examples.
5 tips for quick and effective service
In addition to the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) strategy, we have collected more tips for quick and effective service, which can help your company grow:
1. Improve chat service
Tools such as WhatsApp, virtual chat, Facebook Messenger and direct messages (DMs) on social networks are part of the daily life of the digital consumer.
In this sense, improve chat service Contribute to give quick answers in the service. The result is a shorter average service time, answering simple questions quickly and also answering more than one call at a time.
Analyze the results of the current service structure in relation to the quality of calls and customer reviews of the performance of the team of attendants.
Thus, the manager can identify the points that need to be improved and train the team to be 100% qualified.
Make one FREE diagnosis of your CX operation and gain valuable insights to improve the quality of your chat service.
2. Get the contact history of customers
Another strategic tip to provide fast and effective business service is to have a file of customer contact history.
This feature makes it easy to verify previous requests, as well as to check if what they are looking for is related to a previous problem or question.
Thus, it is possible to monitor the customer's adaptation to the product or service and whether their doubts complement each other or demonstrate difficulty in using what they purchased.
The best way to have reliable and secure information storage is to use a service desk software complete for your CX operation.
3. Integrate information in one place
Since we are talking about service desk, in addition to serving to create a history, this type of software makes it easier to integration of channels and service data in one place.
Therefore, using a modern system that brings together all the useful resources contributes to greater agility in service.
In addition to maintaining a history and integrating channels and data, the service desk allows knowledge base be included, which makes it easier for the attendants to find information about the service/product.
The advantage of this type of tool is that new functionalities can be included as the company needs to increase its service capacity.
Also read >>> Front App vs Zendesk vs Intercom: which is the best help desk?
4. Base your CX strategy on data
When reviewing the improvements that need to be made to your CX strategy, it's important have data to guide decisions.
By the way, the main objective of measuring and calculating service indicators is to translate them into effective actions to improve the necessary aspects of the customer experience.
In addition to the indicators, satisfaction with service surveys, employee surveys, and training evaluation are important sources of data to guide changes in the strategy.
Then, invest in consistent and scalable planning so that your team gains confidence to pursue increasingly aggressive goals.
5. Preserve the team's talents
As we highlighted above, service agility comes from well-aligned processes and a strategy with well-defined objectives.
But another important detail for a company's CX efficiency is its team of attendants. The better trained and familiar they are with the company's processes, the better they perform when it comes to helping the customer.
Therefore, invest in a good work structure and value the results achieved by the team to create a positive organizational culture.
Valuing people is also fundamental to achieving goals, after all, without the competence and involvement of the team, the objectives do not get off the ground. In parallel, offering opportunities for promotion internally is a way to keep good talent on the team.
That is, recognize the effort and commitment of employees so that talents want to remain in your company.
The future of customer experience is agile
Even if the service agility indicators are showing satisfactory results in your company, know that this is not the time to settle down.
After all, keeping customers satisfied means constant work through innovation and adaptation, because they require companies to deliver more and more quality.
The CX Trends 2022 survey reinforces this trend: more than 60% of the clients say that they now have higher standards of service, after the 2020 crisis.
With an agile customer experience strategy, a specialized team, and the right technologies, companies can meet the needs of today's customers, prepare for tomorrow, and remain profitable for years to come.
A Cloud Humans helps your company to optimize service processes and those related to the customer experience so that the team provides a customer service humanized, fast and assertive.
To this end, we use, among other resources, technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) that guides the division of tickets between the attendants and the ideal volume for each one. In this way, the service is initiated, on average, from 30 seconds to 1 minute.
Talk to our experts who are available to present our solution and show how much it can help you achieve your business objectives.