Reflections on Customer Service

Odds are, if you’re a human being reading this post, you’ve experienced bad customer service at some point. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to have an internet service provider overcharge you. Or maybe you needed to port that number from one mobile provider to another? What about that time you spent hours on the phone with your insurance company? Did you need a refund from an e-commerce company, and ended up waiting days for a response?

Unfortunately, in today’s world a long drawn out customer service experience is often the norm. Whether it’s wading through an automated telephone support system to ask a two-second question or waiting a long time for an email response, customer support often does not meet our expectations It is not a stretch to say that new and old companies alike don’t even know where to start.

We at HiOperator have been working on this problem closely for the past couple of years. We’ve realized that this is an issue facing lots of companies. We’ve also learned a little bit along the way about the inbound customer care market that we thought would be important enough to share with you.

1. Often the biggest struggle for building out a strong customer support team is the cost, both monetary and time wise, for new companies to provide proper support to their customers. From training to onboarding, there is a lot of up front costs and time drain in building an in-house team. While typically companies try to reduce cost by outsourcing customer support, it is not the best solution. The market for outsourcing is fragmented, so it only makes sense for the biggest players who can demand favorable terms.

2. A solid customer care team is important to improving the bottom line. The best way to do this is to take the time to put some serious thought into each individual customer’s journey. Each customer interaction should generate such a positive experience that customers become extended brand ambassadors. This would ensure not only higher word of mouth referrals, but also repeat customers.

3. Customers are becoming more discerning and require a higher touch approach for companies to earn their loyalty and repeat business.

4. The demand for expert customer care has been growing steadily and is expected to increase substantially over the next decade.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and learn about your customer service experiences as a consumer or business owner. Reach out to us anytime at hi@hioperator.com!