Have you ever heard the story of "David versus Goliath?" The story that brings out the idea - an underdog beating a giant isn't an exception.
This is something that most of the emerging businesses fail to consider.
Many small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) around the globe are no different from David: with much less workforce, they have to fight for the right piece of meat.
Like, in the story, a weak shepherd defeats a gigantic warrior, you can too keep pace with the "big ones."
In the interest of stopping you from making bad business decisions, we are here to tell you how intelligent helpdesks can help you solve some of the customer service deficits and defeat the giants in the market.
The up-and-coming SMEs are aware of catching up with more significant enterprises by integrating intelligent and on-demand solutions. Still, a recent study shows that many SMEs are far behind on such developments. First and foremost, they shy away from the efforts associated with integrating new software.
Despite knowing that a helpdesk software powered by artificial intelligence(AI) would significantly reduce their costs in the mid-term and solve their most critical customer service problems, they ignore it.
According to a survey of 600 customer care professionals and 6891 SMBs (with up to 100 employees), here are the particularly evident deficits:
Deficit #1: Too few contact possibilities
Email, telephone number, and postal address—that was yesterday. At least from the customers' point of view, today, they find it more convenient to contact customer service using the latest messaging applications like Facebook or WhatsApp. So, it doesn't matter what your company size is. You need to be at the top of everything to keep your customers happy.
The consequence for companies: Today's standard in customer service is Omnichannel. Professional customer service also offers social media channels for customer communication. That's why using intelligent service desk software is common nowadays.
Thus, bundles of customer inquiries from different channels remain in a central place.
But the reality in many SMEs is different: Two-thirds of companies do not offer such a service. With them, you can write or call and
e-mail them. That's all.
Deficit #2: No professional software
The next question is whether this email reaches the right person. The survey reveals that more than half of the SMEs surveyed do not use professional email software. Instead, customer service employees work with Yahoo, Outlook, and Gmail.
They haven't standardized on handling customer service requests. Thus, advanced features like ticket auto-assignment and data auto-extraction aren't available.
Deficit #3: Long response times
No wonder the responsiveness of many SMEs leaves much to be desired. Eighty-five percent of customer service managers rate their service quality according to the response times of their employees. Besides, almost half of all companies need eight hours or more to answer a customer inquiry.
How do customers react to long response times? They may try to reach out to you through a different channel or wait for some initial reply from you.
Whatever they choose, they never prefer waiting for long. Long response times not only reduce customer satisfaction but also increase processing effort. To put it another way, Companies that improve their responsiveness relieve their support team.
Finding a solution here is vital because customer expectations are rising. Today, 44% of customers do not even wait an hour for an answer. How quickly a response should be given depends strongly on customer behavior as well. Companies should prepare themselves for this. Especially since the overwhelming majority of customer service managers in SMEs expect an increasing volume of work in customer service.
AI-based solutions capture and understand the context of incoming emails and automatically forward them to the right agent. For instance, intelligent software will route the tickets based on significant factors like ticket count, agent availability, or skills.
Deficit #4: No networked data
On the helpdesk dashboard, the support team can see the status of the processes at a single place, like:
- which agent is familiar with the case in hand
- customer correspondence history
- 360-view of your team's performance
- alerts on issues that conflict with your SLA
- bottlenecks
Thus, AI-powered customer service software solutions keep everybody on the same page.
Deficit #5: Too little knowledge about your service
The lack of networking leads to a further deficit in the customer service of many SMEs. They know too little about the quality of their service. For almost all companies surveyed, there's an urgent need to see the quality of their services. But, this does not lead to any action.
Less than a third of businesses analyze their business process to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. Such a small figure is not surprising when the data collection is inadequate and not placed at a central location.
Also, half of the companies use another opportunity to learn more about the quality of their service: they ask their customers. Superhuman - the email management software, took this to another level by building an engine that helps them understand how much their customers like the product.
They did so by just asking their customers, "how would you feel if you no longer use the product?" and measured the percentage of the ones who answered "very disappointed."
The benchmark was 40%.
Companies that were still struggling to grow always had less than 40% of users respond "very disappointed." While the ones with reliable traction, almost always exceeded the 40% threshold. This shows how a simple act of asking your customers about your service can help you grow.
Whether customer surveys or analysis of one's performance - a realistic assessment does not have to be time-consuming. AI-based software delivers reliable and fast insights. In modern help desk software, you can automatically measure your productivity and filter out which topics are particularly popular with customers at a point in time.
Deficit #6: Self-service offers missing
When it comes to offering an excellent customer experience, the vast majority of SMEs ignore the need for self-service. Most customers prefer to find information themselves, which allows them to resolve problems at their own pace.
Unfortunately, only 9 percent of the companies surveyed offer this service. A great self-service portal would significantly relieve the burden on customer service employees. A good FAQ list, tutorial videos, and knowledge base - there are many ways to answer your customers' most pressing questions. Building a self-service portal is the best way to give better, quicker solutions to your customers.
Solve these deficits - Take over established behemoths
Genuine customer enthusiasm no longer succeeds today on the usual, well-trodden paths. It is only possible with an AI-supported solution. Thus, by implementing an intelligent helpdesk to your workstation, you can solve these customer deficits, take over established enterprises, and increase customer satisfaction to another level.
Say goodbye to overwhelming workloads and hello to smoother operations with ThinkOwl, the AI-powered customer communication and helpdesk software. Streamline tasks, track issues efficiently, and boost productivity for a happier, more successful support center. Sign up for a 30-day free trial now.