The concept of putting your customers first is nothing new.

However, doing so in 2019 and beyond is about much more than just providing stellar customer service.

Food for thought: trust is the number one factor for consumers today when it comes to building long-term business relationships.

And creating that sense of trust doesn’t happen by accident.

Instead, it happens through consistent conversations with your customers. The more you understand your customers and walk in their shoes, the easier it is to serve their needs.

Enter the era of customer intimacy.

In this guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know about customer intimacy to transform buyers into loyal, long-term advocates.

In this new era of Customer Service, companies are becoming so knowledgeable about their customer that they are becoming mind readers.  Okay – not exactly mind readers – but close! It’s becoming more and more imperative to get ahead of issues and anticipate what your customer wants and needs before they do. In the 2015 Forrester Trends: The Future of Customer Service, it was predicted that organizations would explore proactive engagement to improve operational performance as well as predict future customer behavior.  In the same report, Kate Leggett wrote that connected devices were expected to proliferate at a rate of 50 billion by 2020 and that companies would deliver preemptive service which, in turn, would save companies money, better personalize customer engagement, and anticipate future customer needs. Well, 2020 is just a few short months away, and that prediction is coming true. 

Proactive customer support is a no-brainer. Instead of sitting around waiting for problems to arise, agents are meeting issues and customers head on, and perceiving issues even before they become a problem. What’s more, companies are using multiple channels, in a seamless customer experience, to go the extra mile and show that they care. This is where customer loyalty is born. 

In this post, we will explore two of these channels: Email and SMS communication. We will take a look at each of their individual characteristics and properties as well as show how the two compliment each other when used in partnership. We will also see the different ways that they can be used to improve your overall customer service so that you are operating not just reactively, but proactively as well.

How many times have you had what feels like an endless email back-and-forth just to come to the conclusion that a call would have been better? Then, the endless dance of figuring out when works for a call begins. Sometimes it feels like it takes the same amount of time to get something scheduled as it did to decide you needed a call in the first place.

With scheduling links added to your arsenal, you’ll never have to deal with this scenario again. Using a tool to make scheduling easy for you also has the added benefit of making it easy to do so for your clients, colleagues, or anyone else who needs to get a little of your time. Studies have shown that using online scheduling tools boosted key company metrics for health care provides such as no-show rate, decreased staff labor times, decreased waiting time, and improved satisfaction from customers. Whether you work in health care or not, scheduling tools can improve your customer’s experience. 

There are a few different use cases that online scheduling is most viable for. In this article, we’ll break down a few specific ones, and how they can best be utilized for your company and team.

This is a guest post from Richard Moy.

Over the last three decades, traditional outsourcing has earned a reputation for being a low-quality, cost-cutting measure. In that time, business leaders have discovered that any potential savings from outsourcing can evaporate instantly thanks to a poor customer experience. One defamation case in 2012 argued that the company lost out on revenue worth upwards of $750,000 thanks to just a few negative reviews online. While this is an extreme (and admittedly, rare) example, a study by KPMG found that there’s a clear correlation between a negative customer experience and lost revenue. 

In response, we’ve seen many organizations dismiss traditional outsourcing as a viable option to scale their support operations. But in recent years, a handful of new vendors have entered the marketplace, all of which offer a more compelling suite of products known as Support-as-a-Service. Much like Software-as-a-Service, Support-as-a-Service offers on-demand customer support teams that can be scaled up or down as needed. 

Although this might sound very similar to traditional outsourcing, some key differences make Support-as-a-Service a much more appealing option. Here are a few ways that Support-as-a-Service vendors are working to change the perception of outsourcing.

This is a guest post from Jessica Huhn.

Why should your brand strive to generate word-of-mouth? The answer is simple—people trust what their friends, family and peers have to say about your brand more than they trust ads and other messages that come straight from your company. So, they’re much more inclined to listen to word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth recommendations easily convince these friends to become your new customers, because their peers trust their word

Word-of-mouth happens organically, whenever your customers positively share your brand with friends and colleagues (online or offline). But the organic nature of word-of-mouth can make it hard to predict or control. Fortunately, there are plenty of methods your brand can use to motivate customers to talk about you. We’ve rounded up the top 10 innovative ways to increase word-of-mouth. 

This is a guest post from Mindaugas Skurvydas.

Having a loyal customer following is the lifeblood of any business – regardless of its size. Returning customers on average spend 33% more on purchases than new customers. And lets not forget the fact that it may cost up to 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain existing ones. These numbers show just how vital it is to cultivate a loyal following for your bottom line. 

This is a guest post from Daniel Bishop.

The success of your business venture is directly tied to your ability to acquire and retain customers. The more people you sell to, the more renown you will gather for your brand. Likewise, maintaining a long-term relationship with your existing customers will provide you with a reliable stream of revenue.

However, it is not always feasible to devote equal attention to both of these activities. Some businesses will tend to focus more on customer acquisition, whereas others will concentrate their efforts on customer retention. The question then becomes, if you had to choose one approach over the other, which one should you pick?

You’ve probably heard of multichannel support at this point—at least 95% of marketers say that they know how important it is, after all. But, if people know how important having a cohesive, unified experience is, why do 61% of customers report that they have not been able to easily switch from one channel to another when interacting with customer service? Mostly because it’s pretty tricky. It’s hard to provide a cohesive experience, especially if you do not have the engineering resources to devote to it—not to mention if you start to add new technologies like video chat into the mix.

This is a guest post from Tufan Erdogan.

Most people spend a few minutes writing a quick customer feedback survey, blast it out, and get just a handful of replies. This is the wrong way to go about collecting customer feedback.

Survey overload is real. If you want customers to take time out of their day to give you feedback, you need to make it easy and provide a compelling reason for them to do so.  

In this post, we’re sharing eight tips for how you can collect more actionable customer feedback using surveys. 

This is a guest post from Ester Brierley

Digital technologies are an integral part of every modern business. Every company has a website and account on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media. Companies launch carefully planned email campaigns and use artificial intelligence to attract customers. However, there is also one traditional method that has always demonstrated the best results, it’s word of mouth. Although it may seem like word-of-mouth marketing has nothing to do with online communication, the truth is that the internet creates a perfect environment for such marketing tactics.

Online reviews can have a great impact on your profits. According to statistics, as much as 90% of buyers make their purchase decisions based on online reviews, and more than 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Reviews increase the credibility of your brand. In fact, you can later repurpose these customer reviews in your content marketing efforts. However, what should you do if your customers don’t leave enough reviews? The answer is simple: just ask them to write one.