For any business, customers are often the harshest critics, especially when it comes to the quality of customer service. According to a survey by Qualtrics, consumers are 5.1 times more likely to recommend a business after an excellent customer service experience. This shows that revenue and growth of a company is closely tied to the support experience they provide customers.
But, how do you know if your brand meets (and exceeds) at providing excellent customer support? How do you measure it objectively?
By understanding, defining, and hitting the right customer service objectives.
What is the common objective of customer service?
The key Objective of customer service is to keep customers happy by resolving their queries and providing the support they need. Excellent customer service makes customers feel valued, reduces complaints, and creates positive experiences.
10 key objectives of customer service
The primary objective of customer service is to resolve customer questions quickly and effectively, enhance customer satisfaction, foster positive relationships, collect feedback for continuous improvement, and ensure a positive overall experience with the brand. Let’s dig deeper into each of them.
Deliver swift resolutions
Customers don’t like to wait. Period. As their expectations for fast and instant resolutions constantly raise, metrics such as First response time (FTR) and Time to Resolution (TTR) have become the north-star of good customer service operations.
You could implement several strategies to improve response and resolution times, such as:
- Creating exhaustive self-service portals
- Implementing AI chatbot to handle and deflect L1 queries
- Providing support agents with the necessary resources and training to deliver effective resolutions
- Implementing escalation procedures to ensure no issues falls through the cracks
It is also important to continuously monitor the strategies you’ve implemented to find areas of improvement. For instance, look for patterns in the questions customers frequently find difficulty in finding, or FAQs that a chatbot could take care of, etc.
Improve customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction isn’t just a metric; it’s the lifeblood of any business. When customers feel valued, heard, and have a good experience with you pre and post-purchase, they’re more likely to return, advocate for your brand, and stay loyal.
But satisfying every customer isn’t easy. How do you turn a lofty goal into reality? Meeting and exceeding customer expectations, consistently. Every interaction is an opportunity to delight and build lasting customer relationships. Here are a few ways you could do this:
- Quick response times: Customers value timely replies. Improve response times by streamlining your communication channels, implementing automated response systems, and ensuring your support team is adequately staffed and trained.
- Personalized interactions: Generic responses don’t cut it anymore. Customers want to feel like individuals, not numbers. Personalize your interactions by using customer data to tailor responses, addressing customers by their names, referencing their past interactions with your company, etc. This creates a more engaging and satisfying experience.
Enhance customer advocacy
For every business leader, two things keep them up at night — how to turn your leads into paying customers and how to make sure your paying ones stay. You can address both of these by getting customer advocacy right.
Customer advocacy is a company level culture where the needs and goals of the customers are prioritized. It also sets the course for how you approach great customer service and implement effective customer service strategies.
The benefit is simple: customer-centric support converts satisfied customers into loyal brand advocates, who will eventually refer your brand to their circle through word-of-mouth, referral programs, social media etc.
Here is an example of Ankur Shrestha, Co-Founder of Tough Trucks For Kids, sharing his experience with DevRev, and AI-native support software, from his LinkedIn handle:
Build customer loyalty
Customer loyalty is the end goal of customer advocacy. Loyal customers are more likely to make repeat purchases, recommend your brand, be open to giving feedback, and even forgive occasional slip-ups. To foster loyalty, focus on:
- Consistent service: 36% of respondents to a survey said great customer service is a motivation to recommend a brand online. Provide dedicated support channels for loyal customers. For instance, SaaS companies like DevRev have dedicated Slack channels with customers, in addition to self-service portals, chatbots, etc. This way, customers could reach the support and product teams in an instant when they need help.
You could also have a dedicated account manager for each customer or provide extended support hours. Ensure every interaction is positive and reliable. Consistency builds trust and makes customers feel secure in choosing your brand repeatedly.
- Exclusive discounts or pricing: Offer special discounts or preferential pricing on your products. If you’re on a subscription model, this can be based on their purchasing volume or longevity of the business relationship. You can also personalize the offers based on the features they use or love the most.
- Loyalty points: Implement a loyalty points system where customers earn points for their purchases, early subscription renewals, product adoption, etc. and can later redeem them for rewards, such as gift cards or upgrades.
- Engagement through thought leadership and product education: Share regular product updates, valuable industry insights, whitepapers, research reports, or educational resources with your loyal customers. Position your brand as a trusted advisor by providing them with valuable knowledge and helping them stay informed about industry trends and best practices.
Increase positive reviews and ratings
Positive reviews and ratings enhance your brand’s credibility and attract new customers. To boost your online reputation:
- Encourage reviews: Prompt satisfied customers to leave positive reviews. Follow up purchases with emails or messages that include easy links to review sites.
- Respond to reviews: Show customers you value their feedback by responding to reviews. Address positive and negative feedback respectfully, and demonstrate your commitment to customer-centricity and continuous improvement.
Gather and utilize customer feedback
Customer feedback is a goldmine for improvement. It provides a platform for customers to tell you what they thought of the interaction with your support team, and how you can improve this key touchpoint. Consider gathering customer feedback via:
- CSAT surveys
- Focus groups and user interviews
- In-app rating widgets
- Meetings with Customer Success Managers or Account Executives
Once you gather customer feedback, analyze it to uncover patterns and areas for enhancement. Use the insights to refine your products and services, ensuring they better meet customer needs.
Increase CLTV and customer retention
Customer retention and CLTV are both measurements of customer loyalty — a critical indicator to the health of your business. This is essential for long-term success. A few ways you could boost these metrics are:
- Personalized check-ins with customers: At its core, business is about relationships. Regular meetings with customers, especially your largest or longest clients, helps you build a strong relationship with them. More importantly, it also gives you an insight into their current challenges, pain points, and goals. This insight into the context helps you break out of the one-size fits all approach, and personalize your solutions and interaction with customers.
- Predictive and proactive support: Predictive support is a proactive approach to customer service that anticipates and addresses potential issues or needs before they arise. Instead of waiting for customers to reach out with problems or inquiries, predictive support uses data analytics, AI, and a robust knowledge graph to forecast customer behavior, identify patterns, and predict future needs or issues.
A Gartner survey showed that “proactive customer service results in a full point increase” in key customer service metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), etc. By creating a customer service strategy that is proactive, you can help customers before they even need it, boosting CLTV and retention.
Boost revenue
Effective customer service can directly boost your revenue. For instance, when your customer service agents are well trained on your products and have insight into customer context, they will be able to effectively upsell or cross sell by recommending products and features that complement a customer’s current challenges.
Reduce customer service costs
With the recent shifts in the economy and the rise of AI, business leaders are looking to implement new technologies and strategies that will help them reduce customer service costs without compromising customer satisfaction. Here are a few ways you can achieve it without cutting corners:
- Creating an exhaustive self-service resources section or customer portals that help customers help themselves
- Implementing chatbots, especially AI chatbots powered by generative AI, that deflect L1, L2 queries while providing engaging experiences for customers
- Automating low-value tasks, freeing up support agents’ time to focus on more critical tasks
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For instance, MAD Rewards, a global platform that helps businesses create loyalty programs, used DevRev’s AI to scale down their support operations while maintaining customer satisfaction.
They had a large in-house customer support team operating across 70 countries and supporting almost nine languages. With DevRev’s AI-powered chatbot, they were able to:
- Deflect a huge portion of the basic incoming queries.
- Scale down the support function to a team of two, handling complex queries that require human intervention.
- Optimize support operations, while maintaining customer satisfaction
Enhance brand image
Delivering consistently high-quality customer service is key to enhancing your brand image. By maintaining excellent customer service, you build a strong reputation that attracts new customers and retains existing ones. Track brand perception through customer surveys and market research to ensure you meet and exceed customer expectations, solidifying your brand’s positive image.
Strategies to achieve customer service objectives
Customer service objectives direct every decision you and your team make towards improving customer service. It defines the overall strategy and approach to achieving them. The objectives also provide a framework through which your agents can make key decisions while providing customer support. Here are a few strategies you could employ to attain your customer service goals.
Training customer service agents
Your customer service agents are the spokesperson of your company, who interact with customers every day. This means they directly play a crucial role in the experience your customers have with your brand.
Ongoing training: Provide your customer service teams with comprehensive training that covers all aspects of the product, best practices for handling customer enquiries, etc.
Focus on specific scenarios that are likely to come up in their day-to-day job such as:
- Dealing with angry and unsatisfied customers
- Handing payment related issues
- Going back to customers for additional information on their issues
- Communicating any delay in resolutions
And more! These regular training sessions can help them develop new skills and gain confidence, leading to improved performance and job satisfaction.
Well-trained agents can resolve issues more quickly and efficiently, reducing the time and resources needed for each contact.
Inculcating brand values: Foster a company-wide focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty, encouraging agents to actively collect, understand, and pass on customer needs and feedback to the right teams.
Career opportunities: Create opportunities for your customer service team to advance in their careers through mentorship programs, leadership training, or cross-functional assignments. These opportunities not only benefit the agents but also promote internal talent development and retention.
Measuring customer service performance and metrics
By establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) and regularly analyzing performance metrics, you can gain insights into customer preferences, pain points, and the progress toward achieving specific customer service goals. Here are common customer service KPIs that can be tied to your objectives:
First contact resolution rate: This metric measures the percentage of customer enquiries that are resolved on the first contact, either with a chatbot or a customer service agent. A high first contact resolution rate indicates that customers are getting their issues resolved quickly and efficiently.
Here’s how you can calculate first contact resolution rate:
First Contact Resolution Rate = (Number of Resolved Inquiries on First Contact / Total Number of Inquiries) x 100
For example, if your customer service team receives 1,000 inquiries in a month and is able to resolve 850 of those inquiries on the first contact, the first contact resolution rate would be:
First Contact Resolution Rate = (850 / 1,000) x 100 = 85%
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): This metric measures the level of satisfaction that customers have with their overall customer service experience. A high CSAT score indicates that customers are happy with the service they received.
It is a best practice to share a CSAT survey with customers after every issue resolution.
Here’s how you can calculate CSAT score:
CSAT Score = (Number of Satisfied Customers / Number of Respondents) x 100
Let’s say 850 customers responded to a CSAT survey you sent out. Of those 850 respondents, 750 said they were satisfied with their customer service experience. Then, your CSAT score would be:
CSAT Score = (750 / 850) x 100 = 88%
Average handle time (AHT): This metric measures the average amount of time it takes to resolve a customer inquiry, from the initial contact to the final resolution. A low AHT indicates that customer service representatives are able to resolve issues quickly and efficiently.
Here’s how you can calculate AHT:
AHT = Total Time / Total Number of Interactions
Let’s say a customer service team handled 1,000 customer interactions during a month. The total amount of time it took to handle all those interactions was 24,000 seconds (4,000 minutes).
AHT = 24,000 seconds / 1,000 interactions = 24 seconds per interaction (or approximately 4 minutes)
This means that on average, it takes a customer service representative 24 seconds to resolve a customer’s inquiry or issue.
Net promoter score (NPS): This metric measures the likelihood that a customer will recommend a business to others. A high NPS score indicates that customers are highly satisfied with the overall customer experience and are likely to become repeat customers and brand advocates.
To calculate NPS:
NPS = Percentage of Promoters - Percentage of Detractors
Let’s say a company surveyed 1,000 customers and received the following responses:
- Promoters (Customers who rated 9 or 10 on a scale of 0-10): 650 customers (65%)
- Passives (Customers who rated 7-8 on a scale of 0-10): 250 customers (25%)
- Detractors (Customers who rated 0-6 on a scale of 0-10): 100 customers (10%)
This means, your NPS score would be
NPS = (65% - 10%) = 55%
In this example, for every 100 customers, 55 would be likely to recommend your product or service, while 10 would be unlikely to recommend it, and 35 would be neutral.
Best practices to analyze performance metrics:
- Identify trends and patterns in the data, such as common customer issues where response times are consistently high.
- Use the insights gained from analyzing performance metrics to make informed decisions about how to improve customer service processes and procedures, such as investing in additional training for customer service agents or implementing new tools that improve efficiency.
- Set specific goals and targets for every support agent for, such as increasing the first contact resolution rate by 10% within six months, and track progress towards those goals on an ongoing basis.
Using the right technology
Integrating the right customer service software in your support process helps you
- Enhance self-service
- Boost deflection rates
- Streamline support processes
- Deliver exceptional customer service
And more! All in one go. Here’s a closer look at how:
- Self-service: Many customers prefer to resolve their issues independently, without the need for human agent assistance. You can offer self-service options such as online FAQs, knowledge bases, and customer portals to provide quick and convenient resolutions to customer queries.
- Omnichannel support: Customers juggle between different messaging and social media apps—Meta, X, WhatsApp, Slack, email, etc. By responding promptly and professionally to customer inquiries and complaints across channels, you can provide a more convenient experience for your customers.
- AI-powered Chatbots: AI Chatbots can provide quick and accurate responses to customer inquiries, 24/7. These chatbots can understand the context of a conversation and provide more personalized responses based on the customer’s history and preferences. They can also help to route more complex inquiries to human agents when necessary.
- Ticketing systems: A ticket is merely a record of a customer’s request for assistance or support. When a customer contacts you with a query, you can create a ticket to track the request and ensure that it’s addressed in a timely and satisfactory manner.
Ticketing systems centralize customer support requests from various channels into a single workspace. This allows the support agents to search, reference, and respond to tickets regardless of where the conversation began.
A modern, AI-powered ticketing software facilitates collaboration between internal teams, minimize errors, and helps deliver a stellar support experience.
Companies that nail the objectives of customer service: Case studies and real-life examples
Amazon
Amazon is known for its exceptional customer service, which has contributed significantly to its success. The company’s customer-centric approach is evident in its policies, such as its easy returns policy, fast delivery times, and easy-to-reach customer support.
Amazon has a comprehensive self-service portal that guides customers to their answers effectively. In addition, their customer service team is available 24/7 via phone, with easy IVRs and minimal wait times. This makes Amazon a widely trusted platform.
Zappos
Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer, provides customer service 24/7 via phone, email, and live chat, and they go above and beyond to exceed customer expectations. Zappos offers a 365-day return policy, free shipping both ways, and a personalized shopping experience that includes product recommendations based on customer preferences. The company also invests heavily in training employees to provide outstanding service, ensuring they embody the company’s core values.
The customer service, combined with the personalized shopping experience, makes Zappos one of the most loved brands for its customers.
Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines emphasizes a strong, positive company culture where employees are valued and empowered. This translates to better customer service as happy employees tend to deliver better service. The company’s customer service team, which is available 24/7, are known for their friendly and helpful attitude. Southwest Airlines also offers a generous baggage policy, no change fees, and a loyalty program that rewards customers with points that can be redeemed for flights and other perks.
Their efficient boarding process that focuses on punctuality, open lines of communication with customers so feedback is heard and acted upon, and prioritizing customer needs makes them stand out in the airline industry.
Ritz-Carlton
Ritz-Carlton is a luxury hotel chain that is renowned for its exceptional customer service. They emphasize a company culture centered on
- Customer satisfaction: Every guest is treated with personalized care and attention.
- Employee empowerment: The staff undergo rigorous training that focuses on the company’s core values. They are also allowed to spend up to $2,000 per guest to resolve issues without managerial approval.
- Continuous improvement: They constantly seek feedback and implement improvements to enhance guest experiences.
This approach has earned them numerous awards and a reputation for outstanding service.
Apple
Apple exemplifies itself as a customer-first company with its products and services designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. This reduces the need for support while ensuring customers feel empowered to use their devices effectively.
The company’s Genius Bar provides in-person support at its retail stores, and its customer service team is available 24/7 via phone and email. It invests heavily in training its employees to provide knowledgeable and friendly service, ensuring a consistent and high-quality customer experience.
Apple also offers a comprehensive knowledge base on its website to help customers find answers to their questions quickly.
What do they all have in common?
These companies have successfully implemented effective customer service objectives. And all of them have a few commonalities that help them nail customer support experience. They all go above and beyond to exceed expectations by:
- Providing 24x7 customer service on channels their customers prefer
- Focusing on employee satisfaction and empower them with the right training to take the right call during stressful situations
- Prioritizing customer needs and are always on the lookout to gather and address feedback providing excellent support, and going
Objectives of customer service: Prioritizing your customers needs
While the customer service objectives steam into various metrics and functions, all of them aim towards a common goal: enhancing the customer experience.
By focusing on improving customer satisfaction, building loyalty, fostering advocacy, increasing positive reviews, and utilizing feedback, companies can drive customer retention and revenue while reducing costs. Implementing these strategies ensures not only satisfied customers but also sustainable growth and a competitive edge in the industry.
