Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

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.

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.

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.