If you’re like most American business leaders, you’ve got big growth goals for 2020.
And your customers have even bigger demands. According to recent Microsoft study, more than half of customers surveyed stated that their customer care expectations are higher than they were just a year prior.
So, how are you doing? Is your customer service platform ready to meet those demands? If your 2019 was plagued by challenging call volumes, mishandled calls, and dissatisfied customers, maybe you’re not. But you’re hardly alone. Most of my conversations with business leaders today are focused on their growing concerns with the unpredictability of customer needs and disappointments – and their negative impacts on revenue, retention, and profit.
Here are 3 New Year’s Resolutions to make – and keep – to make sure you’re keeping up with your market’s needs.
1. Happy Customers are a Result of Happy, Highly Trained Employees
Too often, growing businesses invest in new product, new markets, and keeping an eye on the competition – but fail to invest in beefing up their inbound customer care team. Changing sales dynamics often lead to unpredictable call volumes – and new customer questions and concerns. If your customer care agents are all highly trained, super customer-oriented, and so happy with you that they’re highly unlikely to leave, this shouldn’t be a problem for you. If they’re not, look out. Qualified customer care professionals are increasingly hard to find and even harder to retain. And talented customer service supervisors are as scarce as unicorns. If you’re experiencing painful talent gaps, don’t expect to “wait it out” until it gets easier later this year. It won’t. For growing, medium sized organization, now is probably the time to start looking at an outsource platform.
2. Make this the Year of Scalability
Ensuring that you always have great agents ready for complex calls isn’t simply about hiring, training, and coaching. It’s about predictive ability, reliable systems, and a staffing model that enables you to ramp up or down within minutes. If you’ve been trying to keep your platform in-house, now might be the time to start looking closely at outsource partners. If you’re already outsourcing – but disappointed in wait times, average handling times, CSAT scores or other indicators of CX performance, stop believing the excuses and start shopping around. You – and your customers – deserve total satisfaction.
3. Become an AI and Technology Superstar
Tech innovations come along with dazzling speed. Not that long ago, artificial intelligence was considered a tech luxury. Today, it’s virtually impossible to meet customer demands without it. But not every AI solution is the right one for you. (And some aren’t that great for anyone.) As you grow, you need access to a team of experts with the knowledge and judgment to determine the investments you need to make. And I’m not just talking about AI. I’m talking about everything, from hardware to software to operational procedures. Twenty years ago, you could dabble in tech and make decent decisions on behalf of your platform. Today, it takes a crack team – and hefty financial wherewithal – keep up.
If you want to make 2020 your best year yet, reach out to us at Skybridge Americas. Our sole purpose is delivering superior customer care and customer experience and we would love talk about how we can help you reach your goals.
-Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
Find out how Skybridge Americas can help you delight your customers and grow your business.
We seamlessly integrate our superior customer care skills with your brand messaging. For more information, contact us at 763-299-4570 or submit our contact form.
