It’s no longer enough to just provide customer service; businesses must excel in customer care. In today’s interconnected world, every interaction a customer has with your business is critical. A misstep can quickly escalate into a public relations issue, particularly with the rise of digital platforms for voicing grievances. The 2020 National Consumer Rage Study highlighted this shift, revealing a threefold increase between 2017 and 2020 in customers turning to digital channels, including social media, to express their dissatisfaction.
While striving for positive customer service experiences is essential, the reality is that negative experiences can have a disproportionately large impact. Even isolated incidents can tarnish a brand’s reputation due to the amplified nature of online reviews and social sharing. This is where prioritizing customer care becomes paramount. By making it a core business value, you actively mitigate risks, cultivate unwavering customer trust, significantly reduce customer churn, and ultimately, drive substantial improvements to your bottom line.
In a competitive marketplace, exceptional customer care distinguishes your brand. The Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2022 revealed a concerning statistic: a significant 54 percent of customers perceive customer service as an afterthought for most businesses. This highlights a major opportunity for companies to stand out.
54% of shoppers feel like customer service is an afterthought for most businesses they interact with.
Customer care, in contrast to basic customer service, embodies a proactive and empathetic approach. It conveys to customers that they are the central focus of the company’s operations. While negative reviews can be damaging, it’s important to remember that customers are also motivated to share positive experiences. BrightLocal’s 2022 Local Consumer Review Survey indicated that a substantial 67 percent of shoppers are willing to leave reviews after a positive interaction. This presents a powerful opportunity to leverage excellent customer care to build a strong and positive brand image.
While standard customer service can address transactional issues like product returns, true customer care goes further. It involves creating space for customers to express their frustrations, actively listening to their concerns, and patiently guiding them towards a satisfactory resolution. This approach builds a foundation of trust. Customers are more likely to develop loyalty towards brands that treat them as individuals with valid emotions, rather than simply as ticket numbers to be processed.
Cultivated customer trust is a valuable asset that enables brands to enhance the overall customer experience. A noteworthy 88 percent of U.S. consumers report that their level of trust in a company directly influences their willingness to share personal information. This data, when handled responsibly, can be used to personalize customer interactions and communications, further strengthening the relationship built on customer care.
Consumers today take their support interactions very seriously. Our CX Trends Report reveals that a significant 61 percent of customers would consider switching to a competitor after just one negative customer service experience. This underscores the critical importance of not just resolving issues, but doing so in a way that demonstrates genuine customer care.
While customer support is crucial for addressing immediate needs and ensuring customer happiness, customer care is the crucial element that fosters long-term loyalty. Building meaningful relationships with customers, going beyond simply addressing tickets, makes them far less likely to view occasional mistakes or minor inconveniences as deal-breakers. By prioritizing customer care, businesses can cultivate a resilient customer base that values the relationship beyond just transactions.
Who is Responsible for Customer Care?
Customer care is not a department; it’s a philosophy that should be embedded within every customer-facing role. However, customer care representatives are at the forefront of this effort. These individuals need a specific blend of personal qualities and honed skills to excel. A top-tier customer care representative should naturally possess:
- A genuine desire to help: This intrinsic motivation is the bedrock of excellent care.
- Friendliness and Empathy: The ability to connect with customers on a human level, understanding and acknowledging their feelings.
- Active Listening Skills: Paying full attention to customer concerns, going beyond simply hearing words to truly understanding the message.
- Quick Decision-Making: Empowerment to resolve issues efficiently and effectively, often on the spot.
- Problem-Solving Abilities: A knack for finding creative and effective solutions to customer challenges.
Beyond these inherent qualities, representatives should also deeply embody your company’s core values. This alignment ensures that every interaction reflects the brand’s commitment to customer care and its overall ethos. By selecting individuals with these skills and ensuring value alignment, businesses can build a strong team capable of delivering exceptional customer care.
Real-World Examples of Customer Care
Customer care transcends simply meeting expectations; it’s about exceeding them. But what does this look like in practice? Here are examples of brands renowned for putting customer care into action:
(This section could be expanded with specific examples, but as per the original article, it leads into a Zendesk specific example)
Zendesk CX Trends Report
Gain deeper insights into the factors driving success in your specific region, industry, and customer segment with our personalized report. Discover actionable strategies to enhance your customer care initiatives and stay ahead of the curve.
Best Practices for Exceptional Customer Care
To deliver outstanding customer care, representatives need the right tools, resources, and a supportive framework. Here are essential best practices for your team to adopt:
A cornerstone of effective customer care is context. Agents must have immediate access to a comprehensive history of each customer’s interactions with the company. Are they following up on a previous issue? Are they a long-term customer or a new prospect with initial product inquiries? This background information is crucial for personalized and efficient care.
Equip your agents with seamless access to all customer support channels and relevant information. When agents are readily armed with context and can communicate across various channels effortlessly, they can deliver fast, personalized customer care.
Imagine a scenario: a customer initiates contact via chat, sends a follow-up email, and then calls for immediate resolution. An agent demonstrating excellent customer care will avoid making the customer repeat information already provided in the chat and email. This seamless experience leads to customer satisfaction and a stronger bottom line. In fact, our CX Trends Report reveals that a remarkable 92 percent of consumers are willing to spend more with companies that ensure they don’t have to repeat information.
A conversational CRM with a unified workspace is essential. Solutions like Zendesk provide agents with instant access to a customer’s complete profile and interaction history within a single dashboard. Agents can maintain personalized, relevant conversations across channels—phone, email, social media—without switching between applications. This streamlined approach is fundamental to efficient customer care.
customer care
alt text: Customer care representatives utilizing a unified dashboard CRM to access customer interaction history for personalized and efficient support, enhancing customer experience and satisfaction.
Beyond kindness and empathy, removing friction from the customer journey is a crucial aspect of customer care. To identify and eliminate obstacles, you need to analyze your customer interaction data effectively.
Simply having records of conversations across different touchpoints isn’t enough. You need to identify larger trends and patterns. A customer-centric data analytics software platform can aggregate this data into insightful dashboards. These dashboards can pinpoint pain points in the customer journey before they negatively impact your brand reputation.
Consider this example: you implement customer self-service options. A month later, your analytics dashboard reveals a 10 percent increase in support tickets and a decline in customer satisfaction. Surveys reveal that customers find the new self-service portal difficult to navigate. Armed with this data, you can promptly task your UX team with redesigning the portal. In this case, data analytics directly informed improvements to customer care.
Data also empowers your team to personalize each customer’s experience. By understanding individual customer preferences and needs, you can build high-quality, personalized relationships where customers feel genuinely understood and valued. This level of personalization is a hallmark of excellent customer care.
While data collection is beneficial, transparency is paramount. Be transparent with customers about what data you collect, how it’s used, and, most importantly, how it benefits them. Provide a clear and accessible company privacy statement and assure them that their data will never be sold to third parties. Open communication about data practices builds trust, a critical element of strong customer care.
According to our CX Trends Report, a significant 76 percent of customers expect immediate engagement when contacting a company. While speed is important, building strong customer relationships through customer care goes beyond just fast response times. It’s about providing white-glove treatment.
Empower your employees to spend extra time with customers who require additional support. Managers can foster a customer care focused environment by giving agents the autonomy to “surprise and delight” customers when appropriate.
Define parameters that align with your business goals. Perhaps agents can offer discounts to a limited number of customers monthly, or spend an extra 15 minutes with a customer needing extra assistance. Trust your representatives’ judgment to identify moments where going above and beyond will significantly enhance customer care and customer loyalty.
At its heart, customer care is rooted in customer empathy. An empathetic agent steps into the customer’s shoes and responds with understanding and compassion. When customers feel genuinely heard and understood, they are more comfortable articulating their needs, making it easier for agents to provide effective assistance.
Empathy in customer service begins with carefully choosing words to establish rapport. Phrases that demonstrate empathy include:
- “I hear you.” This validates the customer’s concerns and feelings.
- “Thank you for that feedback.” Even negative feedback, when acknowledged gracefully, can make customers more receptive to solutions.
- “You are 100 percent correct.” Even if a customer’s assessment of a situation is inaccurate, avoid being defensive. Acknowledging their feelings makes them feel heard, regardless of who is factually “right” or “wrong”.
Developing empathy within customer service teams requires dedicated training, but it’s an invaluable investment that yields consistently superior customer care.
Measuring the Impact of Customer Care
You now understand what customer care entails, its importance, and how to implement best practices. But how do you measure its effectiveness?
According to Chandler, a robust customer care strategy’s success can be evaluated by answering fundamental questions:
- Why do customers choose your product or service?
- Why do they remain loyal to your brand?
- Are they likely to switch to a competitor at the first opportunity?
She emphasizes using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that directly solicit customer feedback. This direct input provides granular insights into support interactions, enabling a thorough assessment of customer care effectiveness.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score
The Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score directly measures customer happiness with your brand’s products, services, and support experiences.
To measure CSAT for support interactions, deploy surveys immediately after interactions conclude. Ask customers: “On a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied), how would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received?”
Include open-ended questions such as: “How could we improve the customer support experience?” or “What is the primary reason for your rating?”. CSAT surveys can be efficiently delivered via SMS, email, or chat.
Consistently low CSAT scores, especially if customers cite feeling rushed, may indicate that agents lack the resources or training to provide adequate customer care. Auditing interactions can help pinpoint root causes, such as insufficient training or product knowledge gaps.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Convenience is intrinsically linked to customer care. The Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easily customers can achieve their desired outcome, whether it’s finding support contact information or connecting with the right agent.
To measure CES, survey customers post-interaction with the question: “On a scale of 1 (very difficult) to 5 (very easy), how easy was it for you to resolve your issue?”. Follow up with an open-ended question like: “What was the most difficult aspect of your experience?”.
Calculate CES by averaging all survey responses. A high CES score signifies a customer-centric approach where it’s easy for customers to get what they need. Low CES scores, coupled with feedback from open-ended questions, reveal friction points in the support experience, guiding improvements to customer care.
Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS®)
The ultimate aim of customer care is to cultivate unwavering brand loyalty. Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS®) evaluates your success in achieving this by measuring the percentage of customers highly likely to recommend your business. NPS surveys can be sent after individual interactions or to customers with a history of contact.
The core NPS question is: “On a scale of 0 (least likely) to 10 (most likely), how likely are you to recommend us to someone based on our customer service?”. Customers scoring 9 or 10 are “promoters” (loyal advocates). Those scoring 0-6 are “detractors” (unhappy customers). “Passives” scoring 7 or 8 are neutral and not factored into the NPS calculation.
A simple open-ended follow-up question is: “What is the primary reason for your score?”.
While measuring customer care isn’t as straightforward as tracking ticket resolution times, metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES provide valuable insights into how effectively your agents are transitioning from basic customer service to genuine customer care, and driving customer loyalty.
Customer Care: Making it Personal
Effective customer care is about tailoring the experience to each individual customer. It’s not just about providing a solution, but about understanding their preferred communication style and approach.
To make every customer feel valued, agents require context for every interaction to provide personalized service. Leverage a comprehensive support tool like Zendesk to centralize customer information and make it readily accessible to your team. By prioritizing personalization and equipping your team with the right tools, you’ll be well on your way to consistently delivering exceptional customer care and building lasting customer relationships.
**Net Promoter, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.
