What is virtual customer service?

Gone are the days when you had to visit a specific place hoping to get a refund or solve other customer problems. And that’s good because, according to research, 89% of customers are willing to abandon brands following a poor customer experience.  

However, thanks to virtual customer service, more and more companies are keeping their fans, 

Customer service is an essential part of building strong relationships with your purchasers. Offering them multiple options to contact you via tools like email, live chat, virtual call center, or messages over social media is a great investment in this relationship and the performance of your business. 

6 benefits of virtual customer service

A well-running Call Center ACD will increase your sales and customer happiness, build loyalty towards your brand, and even reduce the number of canceled subscriptions. Together, this can positively affect your monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

If you are in it for the long term, there’s no reason for you to underestimate this part of your business. A majority of buyers will only consider brands that care about them. But if you’re still on the fence, here are 6 more reasons to adopt virtual customer service.

1. Cost-efficiency

Virtual customer service will save you a lot of money in multiple ways. Starting with reduced operational costs – because you don’t need to pay fixed salaries or office rent. That includes the necessary hardware, benefits, and other expenses.

You can hire a talented individual (or a company) with a whole customer service team for the best benefit-cost ratio. By employing external professionals, you save time on head-hunting and training. But virtual customer service has benefits across your company, too.

2. Improved response times

Virtual customer service brings an end to long and stressful waiting times. With features like call forwarding, routing, escalation, automation, and a simple management interface, you’ll be able to keep track of everything and solve all inquiries easily. Customers just love fast replies. Research shows that 42% of consumers contacting you on social media expect a response within 60 minutes.

Handle multiple chats and other customer request streams, or use various smart features like auto-replies. Good virtual customer service is here to serve you and will notably improve your processes. Be available 24/7 and let your users and clients contact you whenever and however they like.

3. Customer and agent satisfaction

Who wouldn’t be satisfied when everything works so smoothly? Such a great customer experience can’t lead to anything else. According to a study conducted by McKinsey, 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels. The benefit of such satisfaction will bring value in multiple areas.

Every customer agent is happy to work with a reliable and intuitive system that will let them focus on what’s important, too. Virtual customer service removes a lot of burden from their shoulders. And almost everyone appreciates a happy customer agent. 

4. Automate your processes

What is virtual customer service without a good range of automatization options? Workflow automation is an efficient way of streamlining business processes in your support or sales departments. A solid solution will even allow you to integrate multiple tools into one.

5. Personalized customer experience

Improve your brand image with personalized marketing and customer service. 93% of companies with this approach see significant revenue growth. Not only can you adjust all the features to optimize your workflow, but you can also make it look nice. An advanced tool will let you change the look to your liking, so it reflects your company values and culture. 

6. Scaling is easier

With the help of virtual customer service, you can hire local representatives and create a solid international team. It will also help you deal with fluctuations in customer demands and reduce employee turnover. Your remote team will be able to work independently and be more effective.

How to adopt virtual customer service the right way

Poor customer experience can cost you a lot. Businesses worldwide lose billions of dollars due to a lack of an engaging customer journey. A great product must go hand in hand with great virtual customer service. It might be the most crucial part of your success.

Reap the obvious benefits and boost your customer’s satisfaction. It will help you build a loyal base of customers that will be happy to return. You can include reliable virtual customer service in your strategy with separate steps. For example, turning your call center to a virtual one with features like Automatic Call Distribution (ACD). This alone can reduce your transaction costs by an impressive 75%. 

Imagine how much time you can save by automatically routing calls to specific agents based on how “suitable” they are for the caller. Such automation will increase the satisfaction and efficiency of the whole customer experience. 

What should you look for in virtual customer service?

Even though the features you might need are specific to your business, there are some important general rules you should follow when looking for virtual customer service. 

Capacity and capability of the software – When choosing the right solution, consider your future growth, too. You might find out later that the smaller solution lacks some features and is insufficient for handling your inbound calls or messages.

Data privacy – Full protection of your data is a must nowadays. Check if the solution is compliant with ISO 27001 or other security certifications. Following security standards and practices to protect your information is vital. All data should be encrypted and stored safely on different servers.

Brand strategy of the business – Another good sign is when the brand strategy is to put customers at the center of the brand and make their values clear. They don’t pretend to be something else. All you need them to do is understand your challenges.

System customization – Even though most of the tools out there try to fit most of their customers’ needs, more customizable software will be less challenging to suit your requirements. And it’s always nice to have a personalized solution developed.

The support they offer – Will you be left alone to discover different levels of complexity of your new virtual customer service, or do they stick to their brand strategy and offer you some help? Settling on the type of support that suits you the most, having a demo of the tool and an adequate knowledge base is essential.

Use virtual customer service and make your business stand out

How can you make good use of virtual customer service? Make it as intuitive for customers as possible. Remember, they are the core of your customer service, and you should make it all about them. Listen to them and track their requests everywhere – let them know every time that you care about their feedback and take it seriously. 

Understanding your customers and learning from your data will go a long way. You should keep an eye on how your customer service is performing. Be human, use empathy and be kind. Show them respect and friendliness with politeness and phrase like „thank you“ and „we’re sorry to hear that“. 

Conclusion

Truly considering the numbers of various statistics and the variety of virtual customer service benefits is definitely a step in the right direction. For example, phones account for 68% of all support interactions, so having virtual customer service that can handle it efficiently will bring great value to your business. Embrace the needs of your customers with a capable and productive solution that is flexible enough to suit your requirements.