7 Steps to Customer Success (and Outperforming Your Peers)

I politely asked the office manager at my family’s long-time veterinary practice to take responsibility for a rare mistake and to adjust our bill accordingly; we were informed, instead, by letter, that the practice would “no longer provide medical services to your pets, effective immediately.” So, I left a negative review everywhere I could, posted about it in local Facebook Groups, and wrote and distributed articles about the ways our old vet failed and our new vet succeeds at demonstrating customer centricity. I can’t imagine it’s been good for (the old vet’s) business… 

Now, what about you? Are consumers saying bad things about your customer support? That’s a problem in our metaverse-era society dictated by online reviews, user-generated content, and online influencers. Ninety-six percent of consumers will leave a brand after one bad customer service experience, and 92% will also call you out for it on social media. 

Although you could focus all your energy and investments into perfecting your branding or your product, you’d be better off acknowledging: no matter what you (or any other brands) do, there will always be customer complaints — and the most effective solution is to develop and optimize your customer complaint process and customer review strategy.

Why Customer Reviews and Customer Support Matter

Can we all agree the key to business success is satisfying our customers? Satisfied customers are repeat customers. And satisfied customers share their positive experiences with friends, family and followers, online and off, creating new customers. 

But do you know how important customer experience and customer reviews are? Few do, without this compelling research:

• 96% of consumers will no longer shop a brand after experiencing bad customer service
• 68% of consumers are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand known to offer good customer service
• 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service
• 78% of consumers will do business with a company again after a mistake if the company’s customer service is excellent
• 83% of consumers feel more loyal to brands that respond and resolve complaints 
• Investing in new customers is between 500% and 2500% more expensive than retaining existing ones

But that’s not all. If you prioritize the customer experience you provide, you’ll immediately position yourself ahead of your competitors. According to our own research at Customer Engagement Insider: 

• Only two in 10 consumers (21.65%) believe companies provide transparent communication
• Almost half of consumers (40.72%) say they receive some communication or empathy — but no “solutions” — when experiencing product delays

How to Maintain — and Grow — Your Customer Relationships

Companies that do CX correctly don’t stop at call centers and chat bots; they:

• Strategize cross-functionally for customer success and the highest customer lifetime value
• Incorporate UX as well as sales, tech and customer support into their 360-degree digital marketing strategy
• Demonstrate authenticity, transparency, consistency and empathy at every touchpoint

How? By:

• Asking questions and listening
• Conducting customer service surveys
• Measuring customer satisfaction scores
• Developing and utilizing a voice-of-the-customer program
• Providing easy access to self-service portals
• Leveraging the information obtained to improve products, services, marketing and sales messaging, and the UX and CX they provide
• Identifying and addressing gaps and opportunities in processes and cross-departmental coordination

When you look at digital marketing holistically, you can see how the user experience unfolds:

1. An online user sees a digital ad or an organic social media post from the brand or one of its customers or influencers; or, an online user conducts a Google search based on their pain points, needs or goals
2. The user clicks to visit the brand’s website, creating a new site user and session
3. The user clicks through the site and, only if the site is designed for optimal UX, completes a form for gated content, a newsletter subscription, a free demo or to speak with a representative, converting the user to a lead
4. The prospect/lead data is captured by Google Analytics and the brand’s CMS, CDP and CRM, triggering an email drip campaign 
5. The lead’s behaviors trigger automated sales emails
6. The lead returns to the brand’s website to make a purchase, seek additional information or contact the company through chat, email or phone
7. If the lead is not prepared to make a purchase, the CX the brand provides dictates whether the lead goes cold or eventually converts to a paying customer
8. Once a purchase has been made, the brand is able to obtain additional data on the customer’s preferences and behaviors, better equipping the customer success and technical support teams to provide the best ongoing customer experience
9. Any conversations between the customer and support teams are documented and incorporated into the brand’s data warehousing, enabling the marketing team to continue to develop the customer relationship and potentially create a brand evangelist who can promote on the brand’s behalf, recruiting new prospects to the brand’s site and social media accounts

Of course, not every new user will follow this path. Customers, website users and random haters will all make complaints — often, very publicly. How you handle these complaints will make or break your business. So, launching a brand without a customer complaint process in place is like a singer trying to perform for their audience without the backup band or instruments. Fans may appreciate the acapella, but it’s not what they paid for.

The Customer Complaint Process

A customer complaint process consists of the customer complaint management procedures taken to investigate, respond to and provide solutions for customer complaints.

5 Keys to Capitalizing on Customer Complaints

While the primary goal of customer support must be to minimize customer effort, support experiences are also valuable opportunities for learning, as well as strengthening and extending your customer relationships. Like a social media post or email, support conversations are part of the customer journey. 

Follow this advice so you can make the most of each and every chat, call and email:

1. Don’t merely resolve the immediate issue — use it to prevent the next one. While many companies believe they can anticipate and ‘forward-resolve,’ they rarely do due to excessive focus on call times. Instead, customer experience teams need to consider the entire customer support process, as customers gauge the effort they expend based not only on how a call is handled but how the company as a whole manages evolving service needs and experiences.
2. Focus on empathy. Sophisticated consumers expect more than personalization — they want to feel understood and valued, across all their interactions with the brand. Twenty-four percent of repeat support calls stem from emotional disconnects between customers and reps, but with basic instruction they can learn to not only listen but hear and respond accordingly.
3. Minimize channel switching — by improving self-servicing. We all think we want choice, and to some extent we do, but when we have too many choices, most of us feel overwhelmed. If a customer is confused or angry already, the last thing you want to do is aggravate the issue by hiding solutions in far-off places. Ask yourself: wouldn’t switching from a brand’s social media to their website, and from their website help center to their online chat, make you feel exasperated and increasingly alienated? Needless to say, that’s not what you want. So, instead of providing support everywhere in every way, use your zero- and first-party customer data from your owned properties to determine the type (or types) of support each of your audience segments prefers. Then, create pathways on your website and other properties so that help is readily available. And always ensure there’s a live human who can step in as needed.
4. Learn from your mistakes. Most of us record our customer calls. Many have some form of internal dashboard where we input customer feedback. But how many of us actually use that customer feedback? As George Costanza and Kenny Bania famously say on Seinfeld, “That’s gold, baby.” So, why aren’t we leveraging it to inform our future strategies, tactics and behaviors? With what your customers tell you, you may be able to implement dramatic improvements not only to your support processes and digital properties but to the products, services and people that/who make your brand.
5. Replace productivity with positivity — and empower your support reps. Average handle time doesn’t matter if the customers hang up, dissatisfied or worse. Even if you “fix” the immediate problem, you haven’t succeeded if the customer doesn’t feel heard, respected and valued. And they’ll likely turn to a competitor. Even worse, they may also take to social media to trash your brand, your product or your customer service. So, abandon your reliance on “productivity,” update your KPIs, and reward customer success experiences that not only resolve issues but strengthen relationships.

7 Steps to Successful Customer Complaint Management

To convert your complaints into opportunities, follow these seven steps:

1. Assess the problem

1. Determine the source of the complaint by listening and asking questions; what product, service or experience led to the issue, and why?
2. Develop an understanding of the customer’s perspective; ask yourself: how would I feel if I were in their situation?
3. Confirm you understand the type of resolution or restitution the customer seeks
4. Develop a checklist of concerns
5. Identify possible solutions, and how those solutions can be provided

2. Assess the customer

1. For customers who are openly angry, stay calm and respond firmly and politely
2. For high-value customers who expect premium support, don’t make excuses and move as quickly as possible toward resolution; also, consider creating a VIP folder and workflow to streamline identification and response
3. For repeat callers, avoid showing frustration and work toward nurturing them into repeat customers (they are clearly invested already)

3. Assess your products, services and/or processes

1. Identify the impacted departments, employees, policies, processes, products, services, accounts, marketing materials and legal/compliance requirements
2. Gather files, correspondence (letters and emails), statements and any meeting or telephone call notes, and share details with impacted parties
3. Request and review materials from the impacted parties so you can better understand the product, service or process under review
4. Clearly outline all areas of dispute between the customer and your company
5. Clearly outline all areas that need further investigation
6. Allocate the appropriate amount of time for the investigation

4. Weigh the evidence

1. Identify any internal processes that may have led to the customer complaint
2. Identify any online technical errors that may have led to the customer complaint
3. Identify any product/service defects
4. Identify any breakdowns or malfunctions in manufacturing, shipping and other areas managed by third parties
5. If necessary, reconvene with the customer and/or internal and external stakeholders to gather additional information
6. If necessary, seek legal advice

5. Provide solutions as quickly as possible

1. Apologize
2. Provide a clear, chronological explanation of what went wrong, as well as how you investigated the matter, how you came to your decision and how you’ll be preventing future occurrences
3. Offer a replacement product/service (or product repair), as appropriate
4. Add a goodwill gesture, like a future discount
5. Request a public review, if they’re satisfied with the resolution
6. Ask what you can do better next time, and what the company can do better to improve their products, their services and/or the customer experiences they provide

6. Fix the problem, whether it's a:

1. Faulty product or service
2. Unreasonable delay in product or service delivery
3. Inaccurate or misleading advertising or marketing
4. Poor customer experience
5. Failure to comply with legal requirements or regulations
6. Anything else

7. Log the experience so you can track resolutions and trends — and consider a customer support platform for:

1. More comprehensive customer insights
2. Advanced analytics and reporting
3. Improved internal cross-functional collaboration
4. Better customer support
5. Seamless scaling

The Top 9 Customer Support Platforms

You already know that by automating your employees’ more mundane responsibilities, you can free them up to focus on the message, and the big picture. Sometimes, though, CX tech is about more than automating and streamlining; it’s also about organizing, understanding and improving — and that’s where the customer support platform comes in. 

These are the nine best customer support tools:

1. Freshdesk
2. Help Scout
3. HubSpot Service Hub
4. Intercom
5. Jira Service Desk
6. LiveAgent
7. Salesforce Service Cloud
8. ZenDesk
9. Zoho Desk

Other support tools, like Sprout Social, specialize in customer success on social media. And social media, in case you missed it, is where it all begins. (Nearly nine in 10 Gen Zers and Millennials initially learn about products they’re interested in purchasing on social media.)

The Customer Review Strategy

Consumers don’t care what you think about your brand or offerings. They want recommendations (and warnings) from their friends and their favorite influencers. In fact, 92% consider peer reviews and user feedback to be the most credible source of potential purchase information. And, importantly, our friends at CCW Digital have found that nearly nine in 10 are also open to sharing their positive experiences on social media.

So, whenever you see a review, respond quickly — and on brand! If the review’s negative, expedite more, without losing the brand voice. According to Yelp, if you respond within 24 hours, you increase the likelihood of the customer upgrading their review to a higher star rating by 33%. 

Of course, this alone will not help you build a library of glowing testimonials, amplify brand awareness or build brand loyalty.

How to Ensure Your Customer Reviews Count

You can't create brand loyalty out of nowhere. It must be nurtured and instilled throughout the customer lifecycle, on social media, via email and text, and on your website. If you’ve provided consistent, personalized and empathic experiences from initial awareness through retention, you have the opportunity to exponentially amplify your reach — and boost your ROI — by empowering brand loyalists to promote you on and offline through customer reviews and user-generated content.

To ensure you’ve positioned yourself to benefit from brand loyalty, ask yourself the following questions: 

• Have you included social media follow and share buttons on your website and marketing emails?
• Do you engage with customers and prospects on social media, through chat, and in comments?
• Do you offer customers exclusive perks such as discounts and birthday gifts that keep them coming back?
• Do you offer customers additional perks exclusively for posting positive reviews?
• Do you have a referral program that makes it easy for customers to connect you with more prospects?
• Have you made your company easily accessible via email, phone and live chat?
• Have you developed and implemented an influencer program?
• Do you put out requests for and then post user-generated content?
• Do you have a process whereby you monitor, log, analyze and iterate based on influencer- and user-generated content and/or customer reviews?

Your answers to these questions, coupled with how you manage customer complaints, might be the difference in whether you succeed in our post-COVID, customer-centric, very online society.

Want to share this with your team? Here’s a printable (PDF) version.

Want to upgrade your customer support agent engagement and productivity? Download our exclusive report.

Image Credits (in order of appearance)

1. Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/dnL6ZIpht2s
2. Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/71CjSSB83Wo
3. Photo by Mohd Zuber saifi on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/pFwPM1_YI2M
4. Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/tPxHQIZU2OQ
5. Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/L4YGuSg0fxs
6. Photo by Julián Gentilezza on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/IWoHLg2-UQU