Customer experiences really matter. We’ve all received bad customer service, and we all know how it can impact negatively on perceptions of a brand or product. Improving the customer experience is all about having the right people with the right information and support in those customer-facing roles. An intranet CMS portal can improve customer service in your business by giving customer-facing staff the tools they need to provide a quick and knowledgeable response. In this post, we look at three simple ways the company intranet CMS portal can improve customer service.
Importance Of Good Customer Experiences
Organizations are judged according to the quality of the customer experience they provide. In any interaction, the customer will be weighing up how helpful and knowledgeable the staff member is about them as a customer and the product on offer. They will also be weighing up the speed and helpfulness of the response: how quickly the phone or email is answered; how quickly the issue is resolved; and how helpful the staff member is.
Think back to the last bad experience you had as a customer: perhaps you got a cappuccino instead of the mochaccino you ordered, or maybe it was the 20 minutes you spent being passed from pillar to post trying to resolve a query on your cell phone bill. How did it make you feel about the brand or service?
Get it right and a company will not only retain the business of that customer, but the customer may well also act as an advocate and recommend your product or service to others.
Get it wrong and you will lose that customer’s business to a competitor and the former customer may also spread the word about their bad experience to anyone that will listen. And if they do so on social media, the negative impact on your brand can be far reaching.
It has been estimated that the cost of poor customer service is in excess of a staggering $80 billion per year in the United States alone, and over $300 billion worldwide. It’s much easier to retain an existing customer than it is to attract a new one and so companies need to be proactive in ensuring that they offer the kinds of customer experiences that will attract and retain customers. Here are three easily implemented ways to do just that with your company CMS portal.
Comprehensive Customer Information
The CMS portal is a great place to store all customer information including past purchases, future needs, and the latest interactions. A customer likes to feel as though they are valued and one way to convey this is if the customer services officer they are speaking to has that personal knowledge of them. Having a customer database on the CMS portal means that all the crucial customer data is consolidated in one platform. Customer-facing staff can quickly and easily access the key information and provide that all-important personalized experience.
A comprehensive customer database will also be of high relevance for other parts of the organization. From informing Research and Development on the development of new products and services to advising the marketing department on marketing strategies and advertising campaigns, advanced customer information will be a great boon to your business all round.
Up-to-date Product Information
Products and services are frequently being updated and often the customer-facing personnel are the last to know! All the relevant product and service information, policies and procedures can be stored on the intranet CMS portal. This information must, however, be high quality, up to date and relevant. It should also be succinct. Given the speed of response that is expected from customer service operators, the information should be very pertinent and digestible within about 30 seconds. An advanced CMS portal search function will assist staff in quickly locating the information. The portal also allows for a multi-layered approach so as a customer query progresses to more complex issues; the customer service operator will be able to click through from short summaries of information to more detailed single topics to resolve the customer’s query.
Providing A Vehicle For Customer Feedback
Visibly and actively listening to customers is an excellent way to enhance the overall customer experience. There are many ways that customers provide both positive and negative feedback to businesses. It could be in an email or phone conversation, through social media with a comment on Facebook or a tweet, or it could be through a formal complaints process. Rarely is this feedback recorded and analyzed in a single platform. The intranet CMS portal offers that opportunity to consolidate customer feedback from multiple sources into one centrally held knowledge base. Trends can be analyzed over time, by geographical area, product range or service, or even by individual customer. Making this information available to all employees is not only helpful to customer-facing staff but will also be relevant to those staff members who don’t regularly interact with or talk to customers. Promoting a more customer-centric focus throughout the whole organization will have a positive impact on customer experience overall.
Consistent Staff Training
Customer-facing staff are typically some of the most junior members of a business and often have a high turnover. Organizational costs in terms of recruiting and training the right people can be quite significant. Online training programs represent a cost-effective way to deliver training consistently and can be quickly and easily altered in the light of changing circumstances and demands. How to videos, wikis and webinars can be completed in short, bite-sized chunks thereby minimizing the time staff are away from their workstations. They can even be completed outside of standard office hours.
Intranet CMS Portal Equals The Right Tools
Equipping customer-facing staff with the right tools and information to provide positive customer experiences is what ultimately will make a difference. The CMS intranet portal is the vehicle for providing those tools and information. Customer services personnel that feel well trained, valued and supported will want to continue working for you and will be the most important ambassadors for your brand.
If you’re looking for cost-effective ways to improve customer services in your organization, contact the team at MyHub to see how an intranet CMS portal can help.
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