Best Digital Tools to Improve the Customer Experience

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In the current market environment, customers have a lot of clout. They don’t just want a good experience, they expect it. To that end, it’s crucial for companies to provide the best possible experience across the entire customer journey. In today’s environment, this is now only possible by using the right digital tools.

A good customer experience is all about the relationship between your customers and your brand. In any relationship, both parties have to get to know each other well to have a solid, long-lasting relationship. The more you can engage with your customers, the stronger your relationship will become.

Your customers leave digital footprints behind with every move they make as they navigate the internet. This data is critical for companies in creating a good customer experience . To access this data, you need to have the right digital tools at work in your call center.

When you understand the digital tools landscape, including a cloud phone system and software integrations, you’ll be able to create a best-in-class customer experience that aids in retention and encourages brand advocacy.

Understanding the Digital Tools Landscape

Advancements in digital technology have opened up numerous options for the best digital tools, and new digital tools are continually evolving. As Deloitte so aptly puts it, “The digital workplace encompasses all the technologies people use to get work done in today’s workplace – both the ones in operation and the ones yet to be implemented.”

With customer expectations continuing to rise, having too many options for digital tools is a good problem to have. The best digital tools will help streamline workflows to help meet the demand of an incredibly fast-paced marketplace and unprecedented competition.

To understand the digital tools landscape for your company, you have to begin with your company vision, goals, and objectives. Because of the vast importance of the customer experience, you have to consider the impact that your digital tools have in your call center and how they impact your bottom line.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you choose the right digital tools:

• Have you created clear roadmaps to ensure a good customer experience and provide measurable results?

• Does each digital tool have a purpose?

• Do your tools minimize or mitigate operational risks?

• Is every tool part of a unified communication system?

• Do your tools ensure customer privacy?

• Are your employees able to communicate, collaborate, and share information internally?

• Do your employees have virtual access to your digital tools?

• Do your tools allow your employees to access the information they need without asking customers to hold for long periods?

Besides these, you’ll also need to consider how to determine the best digital tools for your customer support team. Because they’re a customer-facing team, support team members have the most opportunities to directly impact the customer experience.

How to Determine the Best Digital Tools for Your Support Team

The best digital tools will enable your customer support team to be productive and perform efficiently. At the same time, the right tools will enable your company to capture and analyze data with every customer interaction that takes place. Overall, the best digital tools for support teams empower your support teams and ensure a good customer experience for your customers.

The right digital tools will enable support agents to view all customer data using a single source. Support team members shouldn’t have to log in and out of siloed systems during their shift. Everything should be right at their fingertips, and the tools should be intuitive and easy to use.

As you set up your call center software, the best place to start is by choosing a cloud-based phone system. It’s quick and easy to implement, and includes all the voice calling features you need.

Depending on your industry and business needs, the next decision to make is which CRM or help desk software will best fulfill your needs.

You might also consider adding knowledge base software to your tech stack. The 2019 eCommerce Customer Service Experience Study by Aircall showed that 20% of customers usually tried to resolve problems using a knowledge base before they tried the phone or another communication channel. About 67% of customers also responded they preferred brands that created self-help options for their customers.

The Importance of the Omnichannel Experience

The same study demonstrated the value of using software that enables multi-channel communications. The following percentages show the communication channels that customers used to resolve issues:

• 69% – website chat

• 60% – email

• 11% – text messaging

To add another valuable digital tool to your stack, you can consider automated survey software. It allows you to analyze the customer experience using measurable results. Automated surveys provide a valuable source of customer feedback. Customers have a chance to offer feedback while their experience with your company is still fresh in their minds.

Finally, data and reporting software will give you insights into metrics and KPIs in real time just by monitoring your call center’s dashboard. You’ll be able to make data-driven decisions using objective data that will improve employee performance and hold support team members accountable.

10 Ways the Tools You Choose Impact Your Customer Experience

To be successful, your customers always have to come first. Today’s customers have high expectations due to technology. Your business strategy should reflect this and your customers should be able to reach you matter where they are. Use these tips to drive better interactions.

1. The best tools keep customers engaged. By engaging your audience, you’ll be able to entice them towards future products. The attention you pay your customers matters. Use it wisely.

2. Customers keep their mobile phones close. The right tools will allow you to reach them during normal waking hours within their time zone.

3. With the right help desk software, customers will have no issues logging issues. Also offer other communication channels give customers options for how to reach out. Ultimately, a help desk integration helps support agents organize tickets and share information. This helps solves problems quickly.

4. The right phone system and software integrations help capture customer data. Support agents can use this to personalize interactions. This allows customers to be treated on a personal level. They will have to answer less questions on things like purchase history.

5. By using tools that provide a single source of data, your support agents will be able to make recommendations based on past purchases.

6. Using customer survey feedback will allow you to quickly make informed decisions.

7. Marketing departments will be able to build ideal customer profiles (ICP) to target the right audience segments.

8. Your cloud phone system should integrate with your other tools to increase efficiency and productivity.

9. Subscription-based software programs won’t tie you down to one system. You can easily add and drop tools as your needs change.

10. The right tools form a tech stack that ensures a good customer experience that will build confidence and loyalty in your brand.

The Best Digital Tools For Your Support Team

No matter what function you need to implement, the right software tool is available. These are some of the best digital tools for support teams, as well as some additional software that they would find useful:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM systems manage your customer data and provide insights into your sales pipeline. They also offer various supporting features such as workflow automation and lead management.. An effective CRM will also provide the foundation for integrating with other valuable apps to extend your capabilities even further. Check out these top CRMs and how they can integrate with your phone solutions:

• Microsoft Dynamics

• Onpipeline

• SugarCRM

• TeamGram

• Zoho

Help Desk

Help desk software refers to ticketing programs that help your support agents manage requests, solve problems, and facilitate self-service. The software automatically records and logs calls, and captures other data about customer interactions. Try these options:

• Freshdesk

• Front

• Gorgias

• HappyFox

• Help Scout

Email

Modern email  platforms allow you to set up automated email workflows with all kinds of customer communications including promotions and follow-up. Here are a few email programs to check out:

• HubSpot

• MailChimp

• Constant Contact

• AWeber

Call Center Software / VoIP Phone System

Cloud-based phone system software gives you a wider variety of voice calling features than a traditional PBX phone system. Voice calling software helps your company increase its availability and serve customers faster with features like queue calling, ring groups, automated call routing, and much more. Aircall is one leading cloud phone vendor with all of these features, as well as integrations with other major platforms

Analytics

Your cloud phone system provides a dashboard that offers insight into call center activity. It works with other software programs to customize metrics and KPIs for the most meaningful, actionable results. Get better analytics with these programs:

• Aircall

• Fire Tiger

• Intelligent Services

• Plecto

• Toucan Toco

Overall, the right digital tools for customer support bring everything together to help you build a best-in-class customer experience environment.

Building a Best-in-Class Customer Experience Environment

These digital tools are only the first step in improving your customer experience. The following are the steps you should take to build a best-in-class customer experience environment.

Train Support Agents

Empathy is the name of the game these days. Train your support agents on how to develop an emotional connection with customers. The vast majority of customers buy based on their emotions. Customers will be more likely to refer others and make a subsequent purchase after having a good customer experience.

Use Software to Train Your Support Team

The right digital tools give you lots of tools to help train your support agents. Call recording, call monitoring, and call whispering are just a few of the phone features you can use to identify your support team members’ skills and coach them along. Offer on-site and virtual training, and use analytics to track their progress.

Leverage Multi-Channel Tools

By using the right tools for your customer facing teams, you’ll be able to respond to customers via phone or chat and follow up with an email. Make sure you have the ability to switch channels as needed.

Solicit Feedback From Support Team Members

It’s important for your support team members to feel that they’re engaged. Feeling that they’re being listened to will motivate them and help them do their jobs better.. Set up a regular time of the year to send out an automated survey or host a meeting to ask for your employees’ feedback. Your support agents are using the tools every day and they’re likely to discover strategies that will pay off for everyone, including your customers.

Create a Customer-Focused Vision.

This starts with communicating your principles and vision to everyone in the company. Refer to your principles often, and make them part of your company’s culture. This will guide your employees’ behavior towards making them more customer-centric.

Segment Your Target Audiences and Create Personas

Your marketing team will be familiar with your ICP. Unless you educate your support teams about it, they won’t be. The more your support teams learn about your ideal customers, the better they’ll be able to cater to customer needs.

Collect Data During Customer Interactions

The best digital solutions for customer support capture data in real time. With survey tools, you’ll be able to tie good feedback to individual support team members and reward them accordingly.

Track Your ROI

Make sure to track the ROI of your efforts. By doing so you will be able to deliver an excellent customer experience. As your company starts to embrace digital transformation, you’ll want to be sure that your efforts are paying off. Automated surveys score results based on Net Promoter Scores (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT). The results give you measurable data to help you make timely adjustments in your strategies.

Consider the Entire Customer Journey

Each customer interaction gives you a snapshot of your customers’ perspectives. The entire customer journey reflects customer satisfaction overall. Having a clear understanding of the end-to-end interactions gives you the data to make decisions about how to better optimize the customer journey.

Why the Phone System You Choose Matters

Your small business phone system matters because it’s the only way you’ll be able to compete with other companies based on the customer experience. Failing to meet or even exceed your customers’ expectations will cause them to look for a better customer experience somewhere else. Traditional business telephone systems simply can’t compete with the benefits and advantages that cloud-based phone systems offer.

To be competitive, your small business needs to consider switching from a PBX phone system to a cloud-based phone system. With the latter, the phone system vendor you choose can make a very big difference in equipping your customer support teams with the right digital tools.

Ordinarily, your budget plays a big factor in choosing your phone system and other business equipment. Before cloud technology, large companies with bigger budgets had the advantage of being able to get the best phone systems.

But with cloud-based phone systems,services are subscription-based and affordable, even for SMBs. There’s no expensive equipment to purchase, install, or maintain. Your vendor takes care of everything.

Not all cloud-based phone system vendors are equal in the features and benefits they offer. With Aircall, you get a wide range of user-friendly voice calling features to assist your support teams in providing a good customer experience. What’s more, the App Marketplace offers a large array of software integrations that provide many additional functions and capabilities. Give yourself a competitive advantage by choosing a cloud-based phone system that’s a leader and innovator in voice calling software and sets your company up for the best possible customer experience.

Published on May 10, 2021.