Exceeding Customer Expectations

This blog is the first in a series in support of Customer Service Appreciation Week 2020. Read on to learn how NICE Actimize is “ACEing Customer Service”, our 2020 theme. 

As a customer support team, exceeding expectations is in our DNA. Rather than simply meeting our customers’ expectations, we go a step further. Our team’s goal is to earn customer respect and surpassing their expectations to build a long term, positive experience around our product and our brand. 

Here are just a few ways the NICE Actimize customer support team accomplishes this:

Solve current and future customer challenges

The first and perhaps most important thing your organization needs to do is solve the problems your customers are experiencing. Offering your customers a solution to a challenge they’re facing, or a way to achieve the goal they’re working toward is why they’re coming to you – so don’t leave them hanging. Offer your customers’ solutions that align with their individual needs and preferences.

Be timely

A critical aspect of solving problems for customers is responding to them as soon as possible.  A big component of customer delight is the ability to be available and responsive whenever your customers reach out. Whether the issue is big or small, show your customers that you’re always prioritizing them by responding quickly. Even if you can’t solve the issue right away, let them know you’re working on it or escalating – this will show them you’re their advocate. 

Adopting a customer relationship management software, or CRM, is a great way to start managing all of these interactions with your customers. With a CRM, you can record and log all emails and other forms of communication, as well as set up reminders to follow up with specific clients on various issues. 

Solve for the present and the future

Quick solutions for your customers’ problems are great in the short term, but that doesn’t mean their issues are resolved for the future. Going beyond the immediate solution to provide information and ways to help your customers manage their challenges – and teach them to do so on their own, if and when possible – is how you can solve for the future, too. Empower your potential and existing customers with educational resources, recommendations, and tools for success to build your brand’s inbound experience. You can do this by writing helpful blog posts, sharing tips on social media, and creating a self-service knowledge base. 

Help customers succeed

Make sure you understand why people are buying your product or service to determine how to help them succeed. When you truly understand what it is people need from a product or service like yours, you’ll be able to target those pain points and solve for them to exceed customer expectations. By constantly innovating your product, services, processes, and the overall customer experience, you can ensure you’re delighting people as you grow and evolve over time. Innovation can be large scale, such as when you launch a new product. It can also be on a smaller scale, such as the way you train new employees to handle customer questions. 

Respond to feedback with empathy

If a customer comes to you with a complaint, no matter the size, remember to listen – and don’t take it personally. Your customers are paying to use your product or service. So, when things break or go wrong, they want their inconvenience to be understood and acknowledged with empathy. If you’re looking for a way to effectively collect and manage customer feedback, you might consider using an automated software. For example, customer feedback software allows you to create and customize surveys that can be linked to the customer’s record in the CRM. This gives your customer service team time to research a specific customer’s history with your company and come up with an effective response before reaching back out. 

Be unexpected

We need to make a lasting impression on our customers. While your primary goal is to solve the customer’s problem, you can create a memorable experience by giving customers more than they ever anticipated. Customers expect to see their needs fulfilled, but are truly delighted when your team goes above-and-beyond in the customer experience. You can do this by personalizing each customer interaction, and ingraining a customer-centric culture throughout your company. 

Build a community

People enjoy the feeling of belonging to a community or group. Your company can supplement this positive feeling through community management, or by creating a user community that benefits your customers. Your community might be used as a resource for sharing useful information or act as a medium for users to submit customer reviews. No matter what your community’s function is, fostering a space where customers can interact with one another and your employees adds value to your customer experience. 

The NICE Actimize Customer Support team is proud to implement these guidelines to ensure we are exceeding expectations with our solutions. 

Learn more about our services here.