As with any customer support channel, there are tried-and-true ways, as well as less effective ways, to offer live chat to your customers.

While the general use of customer relationship management software (CRM) has become the industry standard, it hasn’t always been this way. Over time, as customers have come to expect a more efficient experience, companies have turned to various ad hoc solutions to manage their customer service offering. Now, it’s not enough to know just a few things about your customers.

Most companies realize that providing robust self-service options to their customers no longer falls into the “nice to have” category—yet creating and maintaining self-service that keeps up with ever-changing customer preferences and business needs can seem daunting. But as Trustpilot has discovered, making content easily accessible, improving agent efficiency, and harnessing actionable analytics can lead to the kind of self-service that drives scalability.

Uncomplicating the customer experience can be especially challenging for companies with complex ecosystems: think of buyers and sellers within marketplaces like eBay or Reverb, or the web of interconnected business owners, drivers, and customers on the receiving end of food or furniture deliveries.

It's no secret that customers prefer to be autonomous and solve their problems on their own. This has been true for a while now: 67 percent already said they rather self-serve than speak to an agent in 2013. But today, customers don’t just expect businesses to simply offer self-service.

The world has experienced some big changes recently. Just about every company is now grappling with how to set up their business for long-term success in the new normal, and it is telling that investments in customer experience will be one of the last areas targeted for cuts.

Every business owner understands the value of superior customer support. Today, improving customer satisfaction often boils down to implementing call center software. This technology can automate call routing and recordings, along with many other features. Choosing a call center solution, though, can be an overwhelming process. First, you need to decide what type of system best matches your specific business model.

Customer service agents have an important job. They are often the first (and sometimes only) voice a customer hears when contacting a company. So in many ways, a good customer service experience rides the people on staff. Does that challenge sound invigorating? If so, you might want to consider a career in customer service. But before you can solve any customer issues, you need to get the job.

The terms service desk and help desk are often used interchangeably, and it’s easy to see why. Service and help are synonyms after all, and the goal of both desks is to resolve issues and restore normality as quickly as possible. But each desk has a distinct role. Unlike a help desk, a service desk is an IT function that traditionally supports a business’s technology infrastructure. Instead of helping customers, service desks support employees.

Customers expect a lot from support teams, especially when it comes to speed. In our 2020 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, people rated quick resolution time as the top factor in good customer experience. To meet customers’ demands for fast resolution times, agents and support reps need to adopt ticketing system best practices that drive consistent, excellent service.