What is Customer Responsiveness?
Customer responsiveness is a measure of a company’s ability to react to and satisfy the needs of its customers. It is a key component of customer satisfaction, which is critical to every business’s success. In short, customer responsiveness is a critical aspect of business survival and success.
Customers have different expectations of wait times across different communication channels. On social media, 42% of customers expect a response within one hour. 90% of customers expect an “immediate” response when it’s a customer service question.
Companies that provide effective customer responsiveness in a timely manner tend to create positive support experiences for customers, which can build brand loyalty and encourage repeat business from new customers.
In this article, we will review how your local or small business can grow its customer responsiveness through five simple but effective measures.
Signpost can help your business answer all inbound calls and customer inquiries through our new live receptionist answering service. Never miss a call again with Signpost.
5 Simple Ways to Increase Customer Responsiveness
To succeed in today’s marketplace, companies must be responsive to the customers’ needs. Here are five ways your business can improve its customer responsiveness today.
1. Adopt automated marketing where possible.
Automation in marketing is a great strategy for increasing customer responsiveness times. It saves time on your end, because you do not have to constantly check for responses manually, and it saves time on behalf of your customers, because they don’t always have to wait for a human to get back to them.
For example, during the pandemic, home service businesses, such as roofers, could encourage online booking options for house visits and appointments. Automating this process can save time and also provide more convenience for customers.
2. Provide omnichannel customer support.
The world has changed, and customer expectations have changed along with it. Customers want to be able to get in touch with businesses on a variety of customer service channels, such as email, text, and chat. They want businesses to have websites where they can find the information they need quickly and easily. They also want businesses to be available via phone calls, where they can get answers right away.
If a business wants to attract the attention of new customers, providing omnichannel customer support is a great strategy for increasing customer responsiveness.
For example, imagine a plumbing company that has two offices, one in California and the other in Florida. The company has more work than they can handle, but it wants to provide better service to their customers. They decide to set up a chatbot function on their website so that people can get help immediately while they are browsing the site. Then, they install a phone service so that people who prefer to use the phone can call in and connect with the customer service team.
Treating customers as an extension of your team and developing a strong partnership allows businesses to provide excellent customer service.
3. Set performance goals and monitor individual customer response times.
This is a simple way to improve customer responsiveness. Give your service agents performance goals. For example, an electrician might promise that his crew will respond to an emergency call within one hour. Then the company’s management will monitor and analyze response times. If necessary, crews can be sent to retrain in problem areas.
This strategy has three elements:
Perform: Provide a clear performance goal—in this example, the goal is to respond within one hour—and monitor average response times to customer requests. If you have several crews, provide them with performance goals too (e.g., “respond to emergencies within 45 minutes”).
Measure: Collect customer feedback and use your own metrics to drive behavior improvement: Reward good performance with promotions and other perks, and punish poor performance by demoting or mandating re-training for service reps that fail to meet their goals. However, don’t forget to set realistic goals.
Publicize: Praise your high performing team members internally and publicly. Reward the best customer service provided by having an internal ’employee of the month’ system to promote morale.
4. Leverage technology and communication platforms.
Many service businesses have adopted powerful platforms that allow customers to interact with them whenever they want. Some companies have leveraged technology and communication platforms in order to provide their customers with the ability to access their services at any time. However, few companies have been able to successfully implement this strategy to increase customer responsiveness because they have failed to consider the needs of their customers.
The successful implementation of these platforms requires a comprehensive approach that considers the expectations and motivations of today’s more sophisticated consumers.
The key is listening to the wants and concerns of consumers, identifying those that would be valuable in the marketplace, developing a business plan, and then offering services or products that will meet those needs.
For example, contractors who give customers options to contact them when they want and how they want will help streamline communications.
It’s important that you find ways to keep your customer base happy so that they will keep coming back for more services. The most effective way of doing this is by offering flexible communication platforms that allow your clients to reach out when they need you.
5. Provide self-service options.
When you provide self-service options to your customers, they will often solve the challenge themselves, powered by your company’s support. This is a very simple concept. The more you allow your customers to do for themselves, the more proactive and responsive they will be in dealing with you.
If a company is able to empower their customers to act as their advertisers, then they can increase sales. You are essentially acting as a partner with the customer.
The great advantage of this kind of approach is that it saves time and money for both parties. It is also likely to be better for customers, as they will probably be able to find the answer more quickly than they would if they waited around while someone else tried to figure out what was wrong.
How can you apply this concept in the home service business industry? One example is a cleaning service providing customers cleaning products so that they can clean their own offices. Leaf-cleaners give customers bags so they can put leaves in their yard waste containers. You can even include a FAQ page or a self-help knowledge base on your website to enhance the online customer experience.
Treat your clients like partners, and this will not only boost customer loyalty, but can also grow referrals.
Connect with Every Customer with Signpost
Good customer service starts with being there for your customers.
In today’s omnichannel world, brands need a single platform that allows them to create a truly personalized customer service experience for everyone, including prospective and existing customers.
Signpost connects you with your customers in a way that provides real business value.
Signpost is an integrated marketing platform that helps business owners connect with every customer through a single, personalized experience. Signpost’s simple, yet powerful technology unites your customer data and provides you with the tools to send the right message at the right time, across all your digital channels. This helps you drive customer responsiveness.
Signpost can help your local business answer all inbound calls and customer inquiries through our new live receptionist answering service. Never miss a call again with Signpost.