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The biggest challenges faced by customer service managers
Facing customers is no easy feat — and with the everchanging customer journey, it’s only becoming tougher. Here are the 6 biggest challenges faced by customer service managers and how you can solve them.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Today’s customers have become more demanding than ever before. This is because of the high expectations many top brands have set for the masses.
They’ve shown what it’s like to provide stellar customer service — low response times, genuine replies, and attentive support. And consumers today have now come to expect it.
Coupled with rapid digitalization, customers have all the data at their fingertips and are thus more well-informed about the kind of service they should be receiving.
But with all that said, even the most successful brands are bound to face some customer service challenges — rude customers, unreasonable requests, you name it!
However, in a time where customer satisfaction and experience are more valuable than ever, it’s your job as a customer service manager to deliver the best support to your customers.
On that note, let’s take a look at the 6 biggest challenges customer service managers face and how you can overcome them to better serve your customers.
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6 challenges customer service managers face
1. Ensuring employees are engaged and happy
There’s no doubt that customers are a business’ top priority. They keep the business going because no customers =/= revenue, right? But, keep in mind that your customer service reps are equally as important.
Without your customer service reps, your business would be in shambles. They’re quite literally the voice of your business and can affect whether customers decide to purchase from you (or continue being a loyal paying customer).
However, maintaining the satisfaction of customer service teams proves to be highly demanding. A study shows that 74% of contact center agents are at risk of burnout, with 30% being at severe risk. The main causes of this are that reps don’t feel empowered to provide help to their customers, and they feel that the company isn’t ‘customer-focused’ enough.
Another study also found that reps’ basic needs are not being met — with as many as 71% of reps citing system and tool inefficiencies as their top contribution to work stress.
To get to the root of the problem, you have to first understand the issues your reps are facing. You can create online forms or surveys to find out what’s stopping your team from producing the best outcomes.
You can then work on resolving these issues and implement the necessary strategies to overcome those hurdles.
For example, you should invest in proper CRM software to centralize all customer information. This creates alignment between your reps and allows them to properly follow up with customers.
2. Being available on all preferred communication channels
In this digital age, several communication platforms have popped up. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and the list goes on. This also means that customers are no longer seeking answers solely through email or on the phone.
Hence, having the option to reach out to brands through multiple channels has become an increasing expectation customers have of your business. Why be limited to only sending emails when they can also connect with you through other social media platforms, such as through a Facebook chatbot or WhatsApp?
However, it comes with its own set of challenges.
Which rep will oversee which platform? How can you manage all platforms at once? How do you ensure quick responses if there are so many channels?
Fortunately, chat marketing tools such as NovoChat can help you tremendously in this aspect. With its centralized inbox, you can connect multiple communication channels and view them in one dashboard. This allows you to easily manage and monitor all customer conversations without having to juggle between multiple tabs.
Furthermore, you can assign conversations to certain reps or your live chat outsourcing team and conduct multi-agent customer support to ensure the best experience for your customers.
3. Providing service whenever customers need it
Tying in with our previous point, being available on multiple communication platforms means that it’s much easier for customers to reach out to you.
This also means that you could be receiving queries from customers at any time, even during non-business hours. On top of this, customers also expect quick responses, and sometimes even in the middle of the night.
However, it is one of the realities that for most companies, it’s just not possible to have employees working 24/7 to respond to the queries sent by customers.
In such cases, customer service chatbots come in really handy. Chatbots can be programmed to answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) and simple requests. They can also transfer complex questions over to the support team.
To add on, you can use chatbots to send automated responses which help to better manage the expectations of customers regarding when they can expect a reply.
While a chatbot can never replace your human team, it can greatly reduce the burden on them and ease the stresses of having to reply to customers as quickly as possible.
4. Managing an increasing number of messages
With more support channels, more conversations are bound to be initiated. Once again, you’re so readily available to your customers for any support questions.
Similarly, a chatbot can help you better manage the influx of messages. FAQs can easily be resolved by chatbots and need not be handed over to the support team. Advanced chatbots can also detect certain keywords customers use in their messages, and send over related information.
For example, if a customer requests the pricing information, and you’ve programmed your chatbot to detect ‘pricing’, the chatbot can send over a pricing document or direct the customer to a pricing page.
5. Personalizing responses
Personalization is a longstanding challenge that many businesses face. After all, including a customer’s name or knowing their purchase history can be a hassle if your customer service team is already stretched.
However, this should not be forgone.
Keeping responses personalized can very well set you a bar above your competitors.
That said, make use of customer data platforms to understand your customers better. These platforms have most of the relevant data about customers that you can use to create a personal touch when communicating with them.
Furthermore, you can go the extra mile by writing personalized content for chatbot responses. Personalized messages are more effective and can improve your customer service tremendously.
6. Ensuring quick response times
Maintaining a low response time proves to be a challenge when managing multiple channels. Even when not managing multiple channels, some businesses can take up to 24 hours to respond.
We hate to break it to you but if you take that long to respond to your leads, it’s no wonder that they’ve already sought out your competitors before you even know it.
While scaling your customer service team might not be a plausible solution for every company due to various constraints, a quick way is to adopt a click-to-call solution like Novocall’s. As its name suggests, a lead literally clicks a button and receives a call from your rep. And just like that, you can reach out to your leads in under 30 seconds.
This helps to streamline the call scheduling process and eliminate back-and-forth emails and messages just to schedule one call.
If you are unavailable at the current moment, Novocall’s click-to-call software also allows you to schedule automated callbacks.
Don’t let these challenges phase you
We hope that this article has given you an idea of the common challenges faced by customer service managers and how you can easily overcome them.
Every challenge can be seen as an opportunity.
While you can’t control external factors like when and where a customer reaches out to you, you can definitely work around it with the above-mentioned tools and approaches.
If you’re looking to reduce lead response times and provide excellent customer service, give Novocall a try and see what the software can do for you!
Vibhu Dhariwal
Vibhu is Co-Founder & Director of Marketing at Digital Gratified, a Digital Marketing & Web Development company. He likes sharing his experience in outreach marketing, link building, content marketing, and SEO with readers.
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