Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

August 2020

7 strategies to win back your customers' trust after a damaged brand reputation

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.

4 ways badges can boost community engagement

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.

How to build and scale your customer onboarding process

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.

Proven ways to deal with high call volume

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.

30 customer success interview questions you should ask every candidate

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.

5 messaging best practices for a better customer and agent experience

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.

How to successfully onboard a remote customer support team

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.

5 key things to consider when evaluating a messaging partner

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.

The ultimate guide to customer appreciation

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.

How a ticketing tool helps SMBs scale with growth

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.

7 tips for excellent customer service

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.

7 tips to get your support teams through 2020 (and beyond!)

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.

Leading a startup during a pandemic: 5 lessons from 5 founders

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.

5 tips for providing customer oriented support (and why you should)

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 to measure customer satisfaction: advice from industry leaders

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.

Apple Business Chat and Google's Business Messages: What you need to know about the two newest CX channels

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.