Catch up on your prescribed dosage of customer service with this week's latest and greatest content on the Service Blog.
Enjoy,
Flori Needle
HubSpot Service Blog
Artificial Intelligence Call Center: How is AI Used in Call Centers [+How Will AI Impact Customer Service]
During my college and postgraduate years, artificial intelligence (AI) was the emerging technology to be aware of. For years, I studied how AI and virtual reality (VR) would impact media and content creators. Now, I've been reading articles about the same technology, but how it can impact businesses, especially in the customer service sector. While AI is still new and evolving, its ability to reduce operational costs, personalize the customer experience, provide actionable analytics, and increase customer agent efficiency, are just some of the reasons that AI can change the way customer service organizations function today. In fact, executives report that customer experience is the most important reason companies implement AI (53 percent). In this post, we'll review how AI is used in call centers specifically, and what an artificial intelligence call center might look like.
The 13 Best Shared Inbox Tools to Help Manage Team Email
It's easy to contact most businesses through their general email address -- something like info@ or support@. Having one single point of contact works great from the customer perspective because it streamlines the process of getting in touch with a business. It's also great for businesses because it centralizes communications into one place. However, with service requests incoming left and right, it's easy for the inbox to get disorganized and confusing. In addition, when many people work in a shared email inbox, it can be hard to know who replied to what, if questions have been addressed, or how urgent emails are. Ultimately, it's too easy for emails to slip through the cracks, which can lead to disappointed customers and potentially churn. Enter shared inbox tools -- software that allows multiple people to access one single inbox while helping them stay productive and collaborate efficiently. The outcome is better team organization, which ultimately means less customer frustration.
Customer loyalty is critical for your business' success. It costs five times more to acquire new customers than it does to retain current customers. And existing customers are 50% more likely to try a new product of yours, as well as spend 31% more than new customers. Whether or not you currently have a loyalty program that encourages your customers to return and conduct more business with you, the above statistics clearly show the importance and impact of a successful customer loyalty program. In this guide, you'll discover everything you need to know about customer loyalty.
Global Company Closure Holidays in 2022 [+How Reps Can Prepare]
You might not think it, but holidays play an important role in customer service. Take Christmas, for example. I celebrate Christmas while my roommate celebrates Chanukah. To me, it would be odd — and probably a bit frustrating — if someone scheduled a call or meeting with me on Christmas. But, for my roommate, that's another workday for him. While he understands it's a global holiday, he still expects businesses to be available should he need help from their customer support team. While your business doesn't need to throw an office party for every holiday that's going on around the world, it should know which ones your customers are celebrating. That way, you can adapt your marketing, sales, and customer service strategies around those dates and create a better customer experience during the holidays. This is a great way to boost customer delight, too, because holidays are often stressful for some people, and the more friction you can remove, the more grateful they'll be. Want to make sure your office calendar is up to date? Read on to learn about various company closure holidays observed around the world.
If you work in customer service, you might think user surveys are the same thing as customer satisfaction surveys like NPS or CES. However, user surveys are slightly different -- these are the types of surveys that SaaS (Software as a Service) companies use to learn about their audience, improve product features, and reduce and prevent churn. In this post, let's review what user experience surveys are, how your SaaS company can use them, and how to conduct one.
Every week, we ask HubSpot's support team to answer questions about customer service. Have something you want to ask? Submit it below!
What is customer value?
"Customer value measures a product or service's worth and compares it to its possible alternatives. This determines whether the customer feels like they received enough value for the price they paid for the product/service."