Providing cost-effective customer service is essential for any business.
In today’s digital age, customers expect businesses to provide efficient self-service methods alongside an excellent customer service team. However, many companies struggle to offer both a quality team and a cost-effective service.
This blog post will discuss four ways you can provide cost-effective customer service without sacrificing quality.
The Cost of Customer Service, Acquisition, and Retention
Customer acquisition costs are rising and have always remained significantly above the cost of customer retention. According to Invesp:
- New customers cost 5x more than keeping an existing one.
- Most companies focus more on customer acquisition than retention.
- More than 80% of customers are acquired via your website.
Your attention should be focused on both acquisition and retention, not one or the other. Retaining your current customers is much more valuable than perpetually seeking new ones. But new ones bring unique opportunities and allow you to test new business models, pricing schemes, and audiences.
There’s value in both. Both of which stem back to your customer service structure. How you assist existing, new, and potential customers doesn’t have to deplete your resources. Let’s look at ways you can improve customer service to focus on both retention and acquisition in a more cost-effective way.
Reduce Customer Service Costs with These Methods
These four methods for lowering customer service costs can easily be implemented on your website or with your client support staff. After doing so, you should see a near-immediate difference in the cost of customer service.
Create a Good Onboarding Experience
The key to cost-effective customer service is good onboarding. When customers are appropriately onboarded, they are more likely to be satisfied with your product or service and less likely to need support.
There are a few things you can do to improve your onboarding process:
- Incorporate video: Let customers visualize how to set up their new product with video introductions, how-tos, and visuals that guide them through every step.
- Be thorough: Make sure your onboarding materials are clear and concise. Customers should be able to understand your product or service and how it works without needing to contact customer support.
- Follow up: Provide a contact button in case a customer doesn’t understand something or needs to chat with your customer service team. Remember, self-service doesn’t replace your customer service; it’s part of it.
Provide Self-Service Options
Customers prefer self-service. They want to find answers to their question on their own. It’s faster to look something up than to dedicate time to an entire phone conversation. In this multi-tasking era, embracing self-service outlets that allow for certain levels of autonomy is crucial.
You can reduce customer support costs by providing a knowledge base system—or an AI-powered knowledge discover platform—for customers to gain insight into your products and services, no matter how complex the question is.
- 81% of customers attempt self-service options before other channels.
- 90% expect businesses to have self-service options.
Korra’s knowledge discovery platform does the heavy lifting for you. With the power of AI and natural language processing, Korra allows customers to ask detailed or complex questions without having to contact customer support. Answers are found in a snap no matter what format—HTML, PDF, video, DOCX.
Offer Live Chat Options
Digital channels like web chat are chosen more often than contacting a call center which is becoming more of an escalated service. That means phones are less for customer queries and more for significant account issues or technical support tickets.
The best cost-saving ideas for your customer service platform should include live chat. You can automate repetitive tasks with live web chat by setting up a bot to answer simple customer questions. When those questions become more complex, the customer can be easily guided to your knowledge discovery platform, email support, or calling in.
Quick cost comparison between communication outlets:
- Live chat: $5/contact
- Call center: $12/contact
- Email: $2.50/contact
Email appears to be the cheapest, but it is the slowest. Many support representatives don’t respond to email queries for at least 24 hours. A cost-effect customer service structure should include all aspects of communication, but the focus should rely more on self-service and instant service.
Use Omnichannel Support
Potential customers are all around. From social media to refer clients to site visitors. Your current customers are everywhere, too. So, your support efforts should encompass all locations, not just one. Omnichannel support includes:
- knowledge discovery platforms
- live chat
- phone support
- social media
While omnichannel means every channel, you should remain selective of the platforms you dedicate resources to. For example, if your customer base doesn’t use TikTok, then don’t publish there. But if there’s a large community on Facebook, use that to your advantage. Be active on your page or in groups. Connect with customers. Provide little how-to snippets and answers to common customer questions as posts.
Utilizing omnichannel support also helps with receiving and responding to customer feedback. It creates positive customer experiences, knowing that you can be reached on various platforms. Essentially, you are coming to your customers instead of forcing them to come to you.
To reduce customer service costs, you can focus on platforms that matter most to all your customers.
Cost-Effect Customer Service Doesn’t Mean Cutting Costs; It Means Providing Better Service
Cost-effective customer service is essential to businesses of all sizes. You can optimize your spending while improving customer care by utilizing self-service options, live chat, and omnichannel support.
At Korra, we provide an AI-powered knowledge discovery platform that helps businesses improve their customer service at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. Your support agents will thank you, and so will your customers.
Try Korra for free today and see how our platform can help you take your customer service to the next level.