How To Revolutionize Customer Care Service In This Pandemic?

It won’t be an understatement to say that COVID-19 has been the defining event of 2020, with lasting implications on all aspects of life. Businesses worldwide are still reeling from unparalleled disruption and upheaval in its aftermath.

The far-reaching impacts of COVID-19 have had many companies rethinking their customer experience model. And as more people turn to online shopping, a brand’s ability to deliver a seamless customer experience is severely challenged.

As businesses continue to look for ways to provide support and reassurance to their audiences, revolutionizing customer care has become critical to their continuity and sustainability. While a robust contingency plan helps, it is imperative to focus and transform your customer support.

Here are a few ways to do just that:

Instant Transition To Remote Working

Physical distancing and overnight lockdowns have forced companies to change how they operate and cater to their clientele.

Even though flexible arrangements like remote working support organizations, ensuring a smooth transition to work-from-home in contact/call centers has proved challenging.

They’ve had to switch from large offices with hundreds of staff to a dispersed workforce confined to their homes. This has left employees potentially struggling to operate effectively from their homes.

The fact is that companies were not ready.

However, businesses that prioritized customer service were quick to make technology and digital marketing their allies. While their websites get up and running, their representatives visit online forums to entice people to buy from their on-call or online. Many have also turned to social media and email marketing to remind their new and old customers of their presence.

Technology has taken center stage as it is critical to the call center’s ability to embrace remote working seamlessly. Moving forward, such cutting-edge and advanced digital solutions will remain essential in delivering a consistent customer experience (CX).

Promote Customer Satisfaction

COVID-19 affected customer experience in two ways. At the outset, customer expectations changed drastically as they turned away from luxury purchases. And then, their queries became much more time-consuming and complex to answer at times because they wanted to make sure their hard-earned cash wouldn’t go to waste.

For instance, consumers shopping for groceries online may have questions about product availability, booking a delivery slot, and the store’s stance on social distancing and safety precautions.

But, internal factors that revolve around staffing, technology, and budgets hampered many organizations’ abilities to respond to their customers.

Essentially, most businesses end up compromising the quality of their service as they lose focus on specific channels. While customers might have accepted this during the early days of the lockdown and pandemic, it’s no longer a viable strategy.

What marketers need is a sustainable and long-term solution to customer satisfaction woes.

As it turns out, the solution is quite simple: stay connected with consumers online and do all that you can to guarantee that you care. According to 68% of the respondents in a popular survey,  companies should focus on helping people during the pandemic, while 81% believe that they should offer discounts, offers, and loyalty perks for loyal customers.

Strategically Prioritize Standout Digital Customer Experience

Customers are financially, mentally, and emotionally stressed by COVID-19. Companies implemented advanced technology and went touchless to manage their digital customers.

This, in turn, impacts their buying and spending patterns, and there will likely be long-term, collective shifts in the way your customers behave and shop online.

According to a report by Forrester, 37% of shoppers prefer to remain indoors while carrying out their main activities remotely, including socializing, working, consuming media, and making essential purchases.

As brick-and-mortar stores have limited their services physically, one-quarter of the consumers in the U.S. have shopped online for the first time. And just one-third of the existing online buyers plan to visit physical stores when they reopen.

These statistics substantiate the new customer mindset. Shoppers don’t plan on abandoning the convenience and safety of online shopping even when physical stores reopen.

And as more retailers pour more resources into building their online shopping experiences, customers’ expectations for online shopping will continue to rise.

How Can Outsourcing Help?

Today, many organizations outsource their customer service with a variety of improvements and amendments.

Understanding your customers’ expectations will help you deliver a great and consistent experience. But to do that, it is clear that companies need a flexible and resilient workforce that can work as and when required.

This is where outsourcing comes into play. COVID has upended the customer experience (CX) dynamics, so it is no longer about getting people to work but bringing the work to them. 

It is also vital to de-risk the outsourced customer service. Look at different ways to make outsourcing more flexible. For example, automation tools and software can streamline quite a lot of the tasks. Similarly, new channels like virtual contact center platforms can take the entire customer service division off your hand, taking care of your patrons for you in real-time.

Virtual assistants and chatbots are also getting smarter. They’ve gotten pretty good at being kind and empathetic, two values the world needs in abundance right now.

A high-end call center offers a strong structure and bona fide management skills to handle major emergencies and minor customer service issues. It is a smart investment of your resources, especially during these unprecedented times.

When you hire an external team for customer service, your customers get timely help with their concerns and queries. You no longer have to worry about finding enough people or resources to answer all customer queries, concerns and complaints. Just make sure to pick a service with a demonstrable track record and the necessary resources to manage the high call volumes amidst the pandemic.

Outsourcing to contact centers covers many channels such as chats, emails, social media responses, as well as support for your inbound calls in real-time. Furthermore, it drives first-call resolutions, improves the overall customer experience, and eventually retains a higher percentage of your current customer base. Not to mention the potential opportunity to augment your existing base.

Wrapping Up

CX outsourcing has been a rising trend in the industry because of its many advantages that can add value to a company such as:

• Cost savings
• Scalability of service
• Access to a pool of trained professionals

Just make sure you are partnering with a provider that can build great, high-performing teams such as inbound and outbound solutions, omnichannel teams, social media, and back-office services, and is  ISO-certified and GDPR-compliant, so your company and client data are safe.

In summary, having the right outsourcing partner promises the following:

• Operational excellence
• Build a dedicated customer support team
• Operational savings of up to 70%
• Access to world-class talent
• A+ recruitment process
• Industry experience
• ISO-certified and GDPR-compliant
• 71 Net Promoter Score: Sense of security and peace of mind

Partnership with Infinit-O

Infinit-O’s mission is to create endless opportunities for your company to realize its full potential.

We can build you a great, high-performing CX team:

• Social Media Managers 
• Online Community Managers
• Customer Care Representatives (Omni-channel)
• Chat / Email Support Representatives
• Technical Support Representatives
• Others

Let’s work together to build a great Customer Care Support Team

Start small. Exceed expectations. Think infinitely. Think Infinit-O.