3 Ways How Outbound Services Improves Customer Experience and Retention
You might have experienced this before: customers leaving you and moving to another brand. They’ve reported that they no longer feel taken care of because of poor customer service—long wait times on the phone, high abandoned calls, or simply being seen-zoned on a messaging app. Unhappy customers can lead to negative reviews on the internet, less new customer acquisition due to these sentiments, and an overall decrease in revenue.
According to an article by SuperOffice, around 68% of customers leave a brand because they believe they don’t care about them. There are several reasons why they come to that conclusion. Some studies have concluded that:
- 70% of consumers they’ve surveyed no longer buy from a brand because they’ve encountered poor customer service, a study by McKinsey reported
- 59% of Americans would rather try a new brand or company for better service, according to a study by American Express
- 73% of customers a Support.com study surveyed said that price is a leading factor why they left a brand
Have you encountered these types of feedback in your own business? How can you retain your customers, while acquiring new ones, and maintain high satisfaction on all ends?
Use Your Outbound Team
You can use your outbound customer service to reach your customers beyond the usual follow-up or promo announcement. Your outbound representatives are the problem-solvers of your customer support team as they call up the customer with the complaint, ask for more details about their situation, and walk through them through methods to solve their problem.
They’re also the ones who remind subscribers about their overdue payments and ask them when they can expect the payment. The outbound team is also responsible for upselling or cross-selling products or services your company has: from upgrades to add-ons, these reps encourage customers to stay with your brand by adding better offers to what they already own.
How can your outbound team go beyond selling your products or services and become a trusted voice of your brand and retain your customers?
Here are 3 ways:
1. Anticipate Customer Needs
Knowing your customers is an important deal-breaker in retaining them. The outbound team should have access to necessary information that can further help them troubleshoot problems with customers who have had previous issues with a product or service.
For example, a passenger contacts a cruise ship’s customer support because they need to reschedule the dates of their cruise. The representative handling the call simply draws up the passenger information, tells them that they can still move to a later date at no additional cost. For added delight, the representative asked if the customer would be needing additional senior treatment, as the customer noted that they will be bringing a wheelchair with them.
This added effort of simply knowing what your customer needs before they say anything improves trust and loyalty, and a high chance of seeing the passenger on another cruise.
2. Increase Personalization
From simply addressing them by their first name on social media or targeting promotions that they need at any given moment helps in retaining customers. People, especially on the internet, still like to interact with people and gain authentic experiences with brands, so it is important to identify where their attention is and communicate with them in their preferred channels.
Make it a point to add some human touch when interacting with your customers, especially in an impersonal space as the internet. They will remember how you’ve taken the time to look at their name, read their message, and understand their frustrations or praises. These very human customers want to feel like they’re being taken care of by their favorite brand. Do not make a canned, automated response.
A streaming company, for instance, has outsourced a team of outbound representatives to check their customer reviews on social media channels. One rep encountered a positive comment, saying that they’re so happy that the company is finally streaming one of their all-time favorite childhood shows. The rep replies with a thank you and even gives them a list of similar shows that the subscriber might enjoy after.
3. Asking for Quality Feedback
Customers are now more empowered to share their experiences with your brand and share their thoughts via social media. Positive, negative, and neutral sentiments may be tracked using the right analytics tools, but tracking them in a wide sea of data may be hard. In order to directly get feedback from your customers, create a process for asking them what they think about the product they’ve just bought.
Reach out to them using email-distributed surveys, personalized phone calls, or follow-up messages on social media. The information you get will be more concrete, and will help your product team address flaws in your product or maintain the quality of your service.
You can’t do this alone though. You need to focus on core competencies. Employing an outbound team might be too expensive, especially if you need to train them. Partner with a CX solutions company to build you a great team of outbound representatives who are experts in their field, from upselling your products to delighting your customers. When a customer continues doing business with you, you maintain lower customer acquisition costs, retain high conversion rates, improve revenue and profits, and get better feedback from them.
Infinit-O is a trusted customer experience solutions partner that can help you build and operate a dedicated team of CX professionals of every level including inbound and outbound specialists designed specifically for your unique needs, with cost savings of up to 70%. We can help you meet your goals, whether they be growth, better productivity or simply bottom-line cost savings. With access to excellent talent who use cutting-edge technology, we provide some of the best strategic solutions for your business. We are ISO-certified and GDPR-compliant, so your company and client data are safe with us.
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