Experiencing a PR faux pas is inevitable no matter how hard you try to avoid it for your brand. The risk of making an embarrassing mistake is all the more heightened because customers are constantly engaged with your brand through digital channels. A small mistake can be overblown and become viral on the web within an hour. “Even the best intentions can be misread by customers, and oftentimes it takes a lot of work to undo even a simple error,” explains Dan Fries, PR adviser at BlueTree.

Building a user community is one of the most valuable things a business can do for both its brand and its customers. When you bring customers together to learn from each other, everyone wins. Creating an online community space is one thing, but actually getting people to show up and use it regularly is the harder part. Badges are a powerful tool for increasing engagement in an online community.

The post-purchase period is a critical transition time for customers. Often, they need guidance on how to get the most value out of your products. In fact, 88% of buyers in a 2020 Wyzowl report said they’re more likely to remain loyal to a business that provides welcoming, educational onboarding content. Customer onboarding is something you have to get right—every time.

Let’s face it: being a call center agent is a tough job. And being a hiring manager tasked with finding people who have call center skills is no walk in the park, either. A wrong decision made during the hiring process can have far-reaching effects, and not the good kind.

Need more repeat customers? You’re not alone. Businesses of all sizes struggle to win over new shoppers and to inspire brand loyalty in the ones they already have. Pulling off both at the same time is even harder. These repeat customers are known as your customer base.

We think it’s safe to say that no organization has made it through the peak of the pandemic easily. But COVID-19 Benchmark data tells us that some have managed to adapt to constant uncertainty and continue supporting their customers, even as the world keeps changing.

Long call queues. Frazzled customer service agents. Frustrated customers. When unexpectedly high call volume hits a company—especially smaller ones with fewer resources on hand—the effects can be far-reaching. From customer satisfaction rates dropping to an overall impact on the customer experience, high call volume can pose a significant challenge to contact centers scrambling to satisfy customer inquiries.

Here are the newest integrations from Zendesk to help your agents provide great customer experiences.

42 percent of people in the world have a smartphone, and 87 percent of smartphone owners use messaging. Let those numbers sink in for a minute... Customers overwhelmingly want to interact with businesses on the same messaging channels they use in their personal lives. Messaging already had the highest customer satisfaction score of any support channel before COVID-19, with a CSAT of 98 percent.

Making a bad hire in any role brings a number of issues. Finding a replacement is expensive, and the quick turnover often lowers team morale. When hiring a customer success manager, making a poor choice is especially damaging. This position is critical for maintaining and nurturing long-term customer relationships. If you choose someone who is a poor fit, you're likely to see lower retention rates. In the long run, that means less revenue.

Customer support reps have to be knowledgeable about the products and/or services their company sells so that they can accurately answer customer questions. They also need to be aware of company policy so that they always interact with customers in brand-approved ways. But teaching new team members these things when they work outside a central office can be difficult. To do so, you need a stellar onboarding plan.

Messaging has the highest customer satisfaction score of any support channel, with a CSAT of 98 percent. It makes sense: messaging is fast, personal, secure, and asynchronous—in other words; customers can pick the conversation up at their own convenience, without losing the conversation history. But providing the seamless conversational interactions customers expect requires more than simply offering messaging channels. It starts with choosing the right messaging partner.

For up-and-coming companies, seeing the business grow can be immensely fulfilling. Yet it can also be a bit unsettling—as customer service requests increase, it often falls on a single employee or very small team to manage them all. And for a business that’s working overtime to get a foothold in the market, going on a hiring spree doesn’t make much financial sense—and even if it did, that team likely wouldn’t have sufficient tools in place.

Businesses often narrowly focus on growth and what it takes to acquire a new customer. But the investment into nourishing existing customers and showing them appreciation pays dividends. In fact, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one and increasing customer retention rates by just 5 percent can increase profits by up to 95 percent.

When you think about your best customer service experience, what comes to mind? Maybe it was the barista who knew your name and just how you like your latte. Or that time you called customer service, and the agent sympathized with you, then went out of their way to fix the issue. An excellent customer experience can change the way you think about a company, and it can create real loyalty.

Time to put away that crystal ball. If anything, 2020 has taught us to embrace a certain level of unpredictability in our lives. And while a global pandemic probably didnʼt enter into most peopleʼs plans, one thing is sure: we will be feeling its impacts for the foreseeable future. No sprint to the finish line here. For support teams, this might feel a little daunting. And why not? Customers are reaching out in record numbers. Your team may still be working from home.

You might say this is one of the worst possible times to be growing a business, but that’s not necessarily the case. On our new Sit Down Startup podcast, we talked to founders about how a customer-focused approach can help you thrive even as the world transforms before your eyes. They shared their thoughts on customer experience, empathy and hope as we look to the future. Read on for a few lessons from some inspiring founders.

Customer-oriented companies put consumers’ needs and expectations above the needs of the business—because customers are the business. That strategy may seem like common sense since it lines up with famous truisms like “The customer comes first” and “The customer is always right.” But many businesses still favor a sales-oriented approach, in which the needs and wants of the company are prioritized over the customer.

How well are your company’s products and services meeting your customers’ expectations? More importantly, how can you tell? The answer lies in measuring customer satisfaction. It’s a common buzzword thrown around in management and customer service meetings, but there isn't a single metric that can fully capture your customers' happiness. Instead, customer satisfaction is best quantified using multiple metrics.

2020 has been a whirlwind year, and with billions of people forced to contend with our new reality, we’ve noticed some interesting shifts in the way businesses and customers use messaging. As part of our new normal, where physical distancing and closures have changed how we work, socialize, and do business, use of messaging apps is increasing. According to our most recent Zendesk Snapshot, American smartphone users will spend 20% more of their time in messaging apps than before.