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How Bad Data Impact Customer Experience

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Bad Data Is Bad For Business

Customer data is used to create customer profiles, which can then be used to drive advertising, marketing, growth initiatives – even store locations, and in customer initiatives, to improve customer service or the overall customer experience. Customer data is gathered internally, or purchased from third-party providers. If bad data is used in the algorithm, insights generated are unreliable, and any actions taken based on that data can negatively impact the customer experience.

Data needs to be consistent, relevant, and have both accuracy and integrity. Data that fails on any of these measures can be considered bad data, and impact the methods by which enterprises create customer profiles – making those profiles at best, skewed and at worst, completely invalid.

Bad data impacts customer experience with brand interactions, including:

  1. Poor Customer Service:

Bad data used for customer service may result in frustrating experiences for both the customer, who may be asked to provide information more than once and the customer service representative that is attempting to provide an individualized, responsive customer experience. It is unlikely that the customer will be satisfied at the end if they have to constantly correct the erroneous demographic, personal, or prior purchase information in the course of a customer service interaction.

  1. Ineffective Marketing:

A recent survey of marketers showed that 21% of their budget was wasted on insights generated from bad data. This affects the customer experience, as brand interactions that are deemed irrelevant, or just plain wrong, erode the consumer-brand relationship. Personalized customer service, when accurate and timely, can boost sales, engagement, and customer retention. Inaccurate personalization can negate those results just as easily.

 

How to ensure data quality

To ensure that data used in analytics is of good quality – and therefore the customer insights drawn from it are good as well – a company should dedicate resources, including employee time and equipment, to ensure that data is accurate before being used in analytics.

Purchase Clean Data

To ensure that the data purchased from an outside party is high-quality, you should know the following:

  • Data methodology: How was the data collected?
  • Data source(s): Where did it come from?
  • Data scale: How large is the raw data set?
  • Data parameters: What are the guidelines for data verification and accuracy?
  • Data freshness: What is the lag time between occurrence and reporting?
  • Data type: Is it factual, or inferred?
  • Data privacy and security: Does the provider follow strict guidelines for protecting the security and privacy of personal information?

When this consumer data is inaccurate, inconsistent, or lacks integrity across data sets, the insights that are drawn from the data will be inaccurate as well.  This negatively impacts business outcomes, including providing a positive, unified customer experience. To optimize the customer experience and ensure customer satisfaction, and strong brand relationships, consumer data must be high-quality, accurate, and cleansed.

Conclusion

With 9 out of 10 businesses competing mainly on customer experience, it’s the organizations that take customer experience seriously that will stand out from the noise and win loyal customers over.

One thing is for sure, to deliver a positive experience, you have to know your customers better than ever before. This means creating complete customer profiles that help you understand and measure your customers’ behaviour at every touchpoint, and across multiple channels. Once you know your customers well enough, you can use that knowledge to personalize every interaction. Customers these days have more power and choices than ever before. Thus, you are responsible for understanding and acknowledging their needs.

If you make sure their interaction with your company is smooth, pleasant and continuously improving, you will drive brand loyalty. If not, you’ll give your competitors the best gift you can – your customers.

HOW TO IDENTIFY A BAD CUSTOMER

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a customer shouting at the call centre agent

how to identify a bad customer

Customers are always right until they are wrong! So, how do you identify a bad customer?

Are you confused? You have heard that all customers are kings and that customers are always right, but if you have worked in customer service for long enough you know as well as I do that no human is always right. Some customers are confused, some are bossy and rude. Some customers are unbelievably selfish, and some just like to throw tantrums unnecessarily. Some people are just unfair and are looking to exploit your services. Therefore, to keep your service team effective, you should know how to recognize these people.

How to identify a bad customer

One important aspect of customer service is the ability to identify who really needs your service in order to maintain efficiency. More so, the truth is that you can actually improve your service by timely identifying this group of ‘bad’ customers and taking action. If a customer contacts you with a frequency far above the average, devouring too much of your team’s time, he might not be worth keeping. Of course, this doesn’t mean that anyone reaching out with requests is potentially a bad customer.

But if you have someone who constantly reaches out to you with questions that could have been answered by simply going through your website or knowledge base, if a customer is obviously too lazy to think for himself, he deserves the label of a potential ‘bad customer’. If a customer is constantly rude to your employees and is deliberately being difficult, they might not be worth keeping. Your employees are also a top priority, and their mental state would make or mar your business. A satisfied employee can help retain more customers, therefore politely let the rude customer go.

In the next blog post, we will be exposing more bad customers that you do not want in your business.
Stay tuned. Share your opinion with us. Thank you

COMMUNICATION IN CUSTOMER SERVICE

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communication in customer service

8 rules for good customer service

Business success depends on strong communication. In customer service, this is especially true. When reflecting on the importance of customer service experiences, recent studies have revealed their direct impact on a business’s customer retention and profits.

The result of a good customer experience: 7 out of 10 consumers are willing to spend more money with a company that provides great customer service.

The result of a bad customer experience: Over half of US consumers will abandon a planned purchase or transaction because of poor customer service.

When every interaction counts, it’s important to take a closer look at the basic dos and don’ts of communicating effectively with customers.

Learn the top five dos and don’ts of customer communication, some general best practices for your teams to keep in mind, and how to tie it all together to build loyalty.

Top dos and don’ts for communicating effectively with customers

  • DO: Build sincere relationships according to leading communication principles. Principles such as communicating professionally, openly, and honestly to attract, engage, and retain customers.
    • Example: If a customer asks a question regarding your product’s features, your team should be honest and sincere about those features and not overpromise on capabilities to secure a sale.
  • DON’T: Disregard your customers’ concerns or let them feel underappreciated. This can often lead to customers disengaging with your brand or being driven to other competitors.
    • Example: If a customer is worried about your product malfunctioning, your team should not brush their concerns off with a curt, “Don’t worry about it.” They should take the time to address those concerns until the customer feels comfortable and satisfied.
  • DO: Communicate proactively to customers, supplying as much relevant information upfront to provide a sense of authority and security.
    • Example: If a customer asks about your product’s use cases, your team should fully answer their question. Additionally provide any supporting documents, links, or information where the customer can learn more.
  • DON’T: Be vague when answering customers’ questions, leaving the customer confused and dissatisfied.
    • Example: If a customer asks, “How does your product work?” and your team doesn’t know, they shouldn’t answer with “I don’t know.” Instead, they should answer truthfully and to the best of their ability, supplying as much detail as possible. If they aren’t sure or did not supply adequate information, they should promise the customer that they will follow up with their teams for more information and then reach out to them once they acquire the necessary information.
  • DO: Automate essential client communication tasks for ease of use and efficiency.
    • Example: Business leaders can either employ a chatbot that can point customers to the right resources for their needs, proactively create a customer-facing FAQ page with the top asked questions and their subsequent answers, or provide employees with a list of the most asked questions and their responses so they are able to best help customers when interfacing with them.
  • DON’T: Omit customer-facing information and resources that provide them with important knowledge they need to make informed decisions about your business.
    • Example: When customers visit your site, they are conducting a search to inform whether or not they want to proceed along the customer journey. Key information, such as “About us” and “Contact us” pages, or a phone number, address, or social media handles should be found there. If your site is vague and omits this key information, they likely won’t pursue your product due to a lack of trust and transparency. Any self-serve information that the customer accesses and navigates without employee guidance should be written in a clear and concise manner, eliminating any chance for confusion or frustration. Using a digital writing assistant like Grammarly Business can help streamline these efforts by scanning content for grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity, conciseness, and tone within seconds and providing real-time suggestions for improvement.
  • DO: Acknowledge and address problems when they exist so that your clients’ needs are met and their loyalty increases.
    • Example: If a customer experiences an issue or problem with your product, your team should acknowledge their negative experience and work to find a solution that satisfies the customer. Showing empathy is the key to turning a negative customer situation into a positive one.
  • DON’T: Ignore customer complaints and concerns or get defensive when addressing them.
    • Example: If a customer takes the time to share their negative experience or issue with your team, they should never respond with aggression or annoyance. This makes it even more difficult to change that customer’s opinion about your business. This will immediately reflect poorly on the company as a whole—all because of one employee’s actions.
  • DO: Personalize communications with every customer, but ensure it maintains a consistent style and voice aligned with the company.
    • Example: If your team is writing to a customer, ensure that their tone and style are consistent with those guidelines set by your business. This is crucial to maintaining a consistent brand-aligned experience—in addition to proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Digital communication assistants like Grammarly Business can easily facilitate this process, detecting a passage’s tone and style in a matter of seconds, and providing suggestions for improvement.
  • DON’T: Write canned responses to customers that feel impersonal or insincere.
    • Example: Customers, whether they come to your team with issues or not, are unique and expect to be treated as such. Providing canned responses that show no personal touches or qualities will be off-putting to a customer. They expect to be heard, and canned responses do nothing to accomplish that.

These key dos and don’ts provide the groundwork for communicating effectively with customers. But how can you ensure they’re practiced and followed regularly?

Credit: Grammarly Business

Time flies

7 Tips For Effective Time Management

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Time management is the ability to use one’s time effectively or productively, especially at work. But this is easier said than done. There are a lot of things competing for our time and attention every minute as business owners and customer service professionals.

How do you determine what activity is worth your time? How do you make the best use of your time daily? Why is it important to manage time wisely?

Have a Priority List

A priority list is a list that contains your priority items — the measurable activities that brings you closer to achieving your personal and professional goals. Therefore, get a pen and paper or a Task Manager, write out all your daily or weekly activities and divide them into varying levels of importance.

  • Urgent and important: Do first!
  • Important, not urgent: Schedule
  • Urgent not important: Delegate
  • Not urgent not important: Don’t do!

Urgent: Urgent tasks require immediate attention. For example, customer service complaints, logistics, etc.

Important: These tasks contribute to your personal or professional long-term goals. You have to determine what is important to your business or career.

Why is it important to manage our time wisely?

  1. Prevents energy waste
  2. Relieves pressure
  3. More time for other things
  4. More opportunities
  5. Leaves time for rest
  6. Goals realization

How to Manage Time Effectively

  1. Set goals correctly. Make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
  2. Prioritize wisely. Set tasks based on their importance and urgency.
  3. Set a time limit to complete a task. Decide what time to allot to different tasks and be disciplined to meet your time target.
  4. Take a break between tasks to regain strength and focus.
  5. Organize yourself. Keep a schedule of your activities.
  6. Remove non-essential tasks/activities based on your priority list above. Don’t perform tasks that can be conveniently outsourced.
  7. Plan ahead. Have a to-do list.

The implication of poor time management is waste of time, energy, and other valuable resources. What more, the pressure of constant customer complaints and never meeting deadlines might adversely affect your health and productivity. Save yourself all these woes and learn time management.

CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE – 5 Things Your Customers Deserve

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Think about this: Amazon, Uber, Zoom, and Tesla Motors, what do these brands have in common? They were each, not the first to do what they do, but they did the consumers’ job better than their competitors. And, they consistently give their customers the best service experience they deserve.

They are all disruptors. Walmart disrupted local retail businesses when they came into a community. Uber disrupted the taxi-cab industry. Amazon disrupted the entire retail world, Zoom disrupted physical meetings and office space. And, Tesla disrupted the automobile industry.

So, are you starting in a career or business and it looks like there is nothing new to do? Like everything that could be done has already been done? There is yet a way to disrupt your market. Make an exceptional customer experience your brand identity. Customer service is often overlooked in companies, and, this could be a big opportunity to differentiate your business and attract and retain loyal customers.

For The Best Customer Service Experience, Do These:

  1. Know Your Customers – Who is your ideal customer? What does your customer need? How can you meet that need? Do your research and analyze your target audience. Beyond the service, you want to provide, know enough about them to become a part of their lives.
  2. Design a customer-centered service experience – Your customers are at the centre of all you do, not you. Alongside the product or service you are offering, deliberately put your customers at the centre of your activities by designing a customized service experience. Therefore, if you know them as explained above, this should not be difficult to do.
  3. Respond quickly to every customer inquiry or comment – Know when to read the script and when to use your humanity. Do not ever keep your customers waiting. Never!
  4. Stay in Touch – Adequate use of social media will give you top-of-the-mind awareness with your customers. Be conveniently accessible to your customers and stay in touch. Social media is an extension of brand marketing for you, therefore, use it sufficiently. Something as simple as a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program can help you keep track of your customers, what they have bought in the past and any issues they have had.
  5. Celebrate them – Give a human touch to your brand by interacting with your customers’ experiences and achievements. Celebrate their moments with them, and, thank them for patronizing you.

In conclusion, let them know that you are not just after their money, you sincerely want to make their lives easier. 93% of customers are liekly to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service.

Customer Mission Statement: Put The Customer At The Center Of What You Do

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The customer should never be an afterthought. Your customer’s requirements and needs should be at the core of everything that your business does, so always work in this way, thinking first and foremost of your customers rather than what you perceive the business needs. That is the same with your marketing approach: it should be about how to engage with your target audience.
Putting customer firstThe fact is, users, understand when they have been put first, and understand very well when they have not. If you value what your customers think and say about you, and want to build repeat business, it is essential that you are recognized as a business that has a customer focus, which means everything from great customer service, to doing everything possible to fix things if and when they don’t work out (which happens).
Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep
It is imperative that you deliver on your promises, every single time. A broken promise cannot be recovered from, so just don’t do it. What kind of promises can you make?
Well, you can promise to always put the customer first, and work to this end, but you may not be able to promise that you always deliver the best price, because there is always someone somewhere who may undercut you.
Be realistic in what you promise: customers are experts at spotting an empty promise from a mile away,” says Russell Gomes, a marketing analyst at Write My X and Brit Student.
Deliver With ConsistencyOne central aspect of good customer experience is being consistent in how you deliver. What customers want to see is an approach that they can become familiar with and rely upon.
No one likes surprises when it comes to business, and so prevent these from occurring by having a well-defined and trained approach to delivering on customer experience. That means defining roles and responsibilities from the very beginning, and training staff to work to that end, with a series of checks in place which prevents anything falling between the cracks.
Regularly Audit Your Customer Service Experience
The secret shopper approach is a popular means of gathering valuable feedback on customer experience, and is employed by hotels and restaurants around the world. It’s a tried-and-tested approach, but is by no means the only one when it comes to auditing your customer experience.
Regularly auditing and testing ensures that the systems you have put in place are working as seamlessly as possible, and tweaks can be made where necessary. Once again, this is all about having the commitment to deliver fantastic customer service.
Invest In Your StaffThis point has already been touched upon in the form of training, which is certainly an essential ingredient for delivering great customer experience. However, it is certainly not the only element.

 A staff member who feels valued, rewarded and motivated is much more likely to deliver the levels of customer service that you desire.
Was this helpful? Please comment and share!#csm cares!

Job brief for a customer service representative

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The following are duties and responsibilities for a customer service representative: 

A customer service representative, or CSR, will act as a liaison, provide product/services information and resolve any emerging problems that our customer accounts might face with accuracy and efficiency.

  • Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries
  • Generating sales leads that develop into new customers
  • Identifying and assessing customers’ needs to achieve satisfaction

The best CSRs are genuinely excited to help customers. They’re patient, empathetic, and passionately communicative. They love to talk. Customer service representatives can put themselves in their customers’ shoes and advocate for them when necessary. Customer feedback is priceless, and these CSRs can gather that for you. Problem-solving also comes naturally to customer care specialists. They are confident at troubleshooting and investigate if they don’t have enough information to resolve customer complaints.
The target is to ensure excellent service standards, respond efficiently to customer inquiries and maintain high customer satisfaction.

Responsibilities

Customer Service Responsibilities list:

  • Manage large amounts of incoming calls
  • Generate sales leads
  • Identify and assess customers’ needs to achieve satisfaction
  • Build sustainable relationships and trust with customer accounts through open and interactive communication
  • Provide accurate, valid and complete information by using the right methods/tools
  • Meet personal/customer service team sales targets and call handling quotas
  • Handle customer complaints, provide appropriate solutions and alternatives within the time limits; follow up to ensure resolution
  • Keep records of customer interactions, process customer accounts and file documents
  • Follow communication procedures, guidelines and policies
  • Take the extra mile to engage customers

Requirements

  • 1. Proven customer support experience or experience as a client service representative
  • 2. Track record of over-achieving quota
  • 3. Strong phone contact handling skills and active listening
  • 4. Familiarity with CRM systems and practices
  • 5. Customer orientation and ability to adapt/respond to different types of characters
  • 6. Excellent communication and presentation skills
  • 7. Ability to multi-task, prioritize, and manage time effectively.

Measuring Customer Satisfaction Without Surveys

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Measuring customer satisfaction doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

In fact, it’s fairly simple to incorporate customer satisfaction measurement into your current customer success strategy. Besides the use of surveys, brands can measure customer satisfaction by monitoring and analyzing other metrics such as social media sentiment (to see what customers are saying about the brand), frequency of complaints or enquiries, level response to loyalty promos (coupons or seasonal sales) and frequency of repeat purchases by the customers. 

Have you ever been upset about an interaction you’ve had with a company? It probably happens with more frequency than many of us would like to admit, and it could be in your personal life or with your business. What did you do about it?

Many people, of course, just chalk it up to how things are and don’t think much about it. There are others, however, who want to flex their level of displeasure and want to let others know that what happened isn’t right — and that it wasn’t fixed, either.Thanks to social media and the internet, you can now share what you feel and hopefully persuade others to avoid that same situation.

But therein lies the problem and the peril with social media. If you don’t manage your customer service interactions or you have a call centre that’s less than dedicated to doing a good job, your brand could very easily find itself with a negative situation that goes viral.

Many call centres haven’t really figured out how to adequately measure all the different forms of customer feedback and their level of satisfaction. They’re relying on old-school methods and measurements. But then all of a sudden, one person’s experience that went poorly becomes an experience that everyone is keen to avoid. It goes viral.This makes it important to understand how your customer service department is doing and how you can improve it. You must measure various pieces of the customer satisfaction puzzle. The specific solution isn’t necessarily the important part here.

The important part is stepping back and saying, “If we see that a segment of our customers is unsatisfied, what will we do about it?” Feel free to share and drop your comments on the comment segment below.

Meets your customer’s need with a designed experience

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What is necessary is to listen to your customers: understand their needs, expectations and jobs to be done, and design an experience that meets those needs. The same goes for your employees.

This is why you have to upgrade your user, not your product. Value is less about the stuff and more about the stuff the stuff enables. Don’t build better cameras — build better photographers.
Fabulous Customer Service’ sounds user-centered but it’s often just a company-centered focus masquerading as user-centered. The role of customer service is to support and enable users to not just feel better, but to be better.

You will achieve this if you understand that, Customers long to interact with and even relate to employees who act like there is still a light on inside. Customers who love you won’t be able to stop raving about you. But you have to earn the right to their story first.
The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people, so the truth is all businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.

Feel free to add your comment on the comment segment below and share as well.