Customer Service is very critical in today’s business world and involves offering support to your customers before and after they buy and use your products or services. It is the direct connection between your customers and your business and offering amazing customer service is important if you want to retain customers and grow your business.
According to Bain and Company, a top management consulting firm, an increase in customer retention of merely 5% can equate to an increase in profit of 25%. This is because repeat customers are more likely to spend more with your brand — 300% more, to be exact — which then results in your business having to spend less on operating costs. Aside from the benefits a great customer service experience brings to businesses, it is a demand by customers, and customers expect businesses to have great customer service and attend to their needs promptly. In fact, according to new data gathered after the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of those surveyed (58%) said their customer service expectations are higher today than they were a year ago.
Despite the demand for great customer service by customers and its accompanying benefits to businesses, most businesses fail to prioritize and make the necessary investment in customer service to improve their experience and build strong relationships with customers.
In a recent Twitter Space conversation by Tech Nova GH, CEO of KudiGo Inc, Kingsley Abrokwah, raised this issue and how business owners have failed to integrate technology to improve their customer service. Technology has transformed industries providing convenience and better and more improved ways of doing things of which the customer service industry is not left out. Face-to-face video communication, real-time messaging, chatbots, and artificial intelligence (AI) are service technologies assisting customer service teams in achieving customer success, and adopting these service technologies as a business can help manage the increasing demand for outstanding customer service.
One of the growing service technologies in the customer service industry empowering businesses is chatbots. A chatbot is a computer program integrated into various platforms that fundamentally simulates human conversations. It uses artificial intelligence to hold real-time conversations with customers, build brand credibility and boost engagement. Chatbots can handle the queries of thousands of customers instantly and are available 24/7.
The use of chatbots can help businesses maintain a great level of consistency in answers and improve customer experience with the brand. For businesses, chatbots can save up to 30% in customer support costs and can help businesses save on customer service costs by speeding up response times, and answering up to 80% of routine questions will improve and provide a great customer experience.
A number of financial institutions and SMEs have started adopting chatbot technology to provide self-service support for customers to solve less complicated problems on their own while their customer service team focuses on solving more difficult product or service problems. In our current Ghanaian tech ecosystems, two startups – Chatbots Ghana powered by mNotify and KudiGo Inc. – are empowering businesses to integrate chatbot technology in their business operations and improve customer technology.
Adopting customer service technology in today’s competitive business world is inevitable. It is either you do so or lose your customers to your competitors. Customer support is more than just providing answers; it’s an important part of the promise your brand makes to its customers and one of the best way you can keep your promise is by investing and integrating customer service technology in your business operations.
