Maintaining the level of personalized customer care your clients have come to expect is challenging in normal times. However, holding service levels steady while attempting to scale is an entirely different challenge. Leadership is looking forward, managers are shifting between the current state and future planning, and front-line team members are stretched thin. You’ll need to create a strategy to integrate the quality customer care your clients crave while taking advantage of the opportunity to expand.
1. Create Dynamic and Responsive Customer Journeys
You have a good idea of what your customer needs, but when you’re in growth mode, how you deliver it matters, too. Consider the data, tools, and team in place today and whether you have what you need to support greater demand. If not, it may be time to invest in technology to better understand your customers and meet their needs.
A customer relationship management system centralizes your customer information, including how they interact with your business. As a baseline, a CRM platform offers an efficient way to manage customer data and identify sales opportunities. Marketing tools like email, social media, and texting software for small business also integrate with CRM platforms.
Such platforms can make sense of customer behavior, providing the building blocks of customer journeys, which trace similar behaviors of customers through the buying process. With this intel, you can guide the decision-making process at the right time and deliver messages using the right tools. A customer browsing your catalog online might receive a sales promotion via text the next time they’re nearby one of your physical locations, for instance. If they stop in and use the promotion, the CRM will retain that information, enabling you to leverage similar tactics in the future.
2. Craft Voice and Brand Standards to Guide Technology
Technology is an essential partner to businesses of any size, but it can lack personality. What may be safe or neutral can feel cold and insensitive to a client used to human support. Combat the cold shoulder by collaborating with your marketing and communications team to craft your brand voice.
You may have an existing set of brand standards, but greater detail is often needed when customer journeys are automated. Review your recent call records and customer feedback to identify trends among successful interactions. Conduct interviews with client-facing colleagues to learn how they speak to find common themes about the customer experience.
Pinpoint successful greetings, sign-offs, and other language that resonated, documenting them in your brand guidelines. A formal customer relationship may have email automations that read like a letter. More casual, personal relationships are better served by communications that seem like a text message from a friend. Once your brand standards are finalized, provide training to ensure your people are equipped to use them as you grow. Reinforce their use as you create automations and monitor their performance to ensure you’re meeting client expectations.
3. Develop an Escalation Protocol for High-Touch Service
Well-built customer journeys that anticipate client needs are appreciated by even the most discerning clients. But when something goes awry, there’s no replacing the human element. This reality presents two challenges: detecting when something’s gone wrong and routing the issue toward resolution.
First, identify the most common client issues, their typical resolution path, and any required checks and balances. For shipping or delivery issues, this may be reporting a lost or damaged package. In this case, you might build a client-led report of the problem that they can do online or via text. Pre-authorize a dollar amount for which you will automatically credit the client, above which resolutions will need higher approval.
By thus reducing touchpoints, you save time for your clients and both time and money for your organization. When an issue needs the human touch, provide a fast lane toward well-trained, empathetic client service. Use your phone tree, text messaging software, or chatbot to guide the process, escalating issues to an associate when necessary. By offering an off-ramp from automation, you can provide high-touch, specific resolution to customers, no matter your size.
4. Monitor and Analyze Data to Drive Decisions and Future Investments
Embarking on any change can be daunting, but data can enable you to stay on track. Integrate a robust data collection and analysis effort into your growth strategy. Get a baseline on current satisfaction levels and high-ranking issues. The idea here is to get an idea of the current state before you implement changes.
Next, determine how you’ll track relevant data mid-change and after, especially if the options for the future are different. Add labels, tags, and any necessary tracking mechanisms to your team’s data collection arsenal. Keep communication open as you launch new tools to ensure you’re monitoring the right parts of the customer experience.
Have managers regularly report on key findings and red flags, especially if you’re mid-deployment. This can help you make adjustments to your growth plans when you have time to do so. Track metrics against prior performance and industry standards and with support from your CRM vendor. Their insight can help guide your business as it expands into new territory and new ways of serving your clients.
Deliver Personalized Service at Every Stage of Growth
Give your clients the high-quality service that’s helped position you for growth, even as you adopt new technology and processes. Identify your long-term clients and consider them a special audience to communicate with as you implement changes. With thoughtful preparation, training, and the right technology, you’ll continue to delight your clients as you grow.
