Building customer loyalty with great support

Every customer service interaction has the potential to build loyalty and trust with a customer, even the password reset answers you provide. The key is being proactive.

If a customer needs help resetting their password, you could just send them instructions. Better yet, you could take a deeper look. Maybe this person has been inactive for 90-days. Along with resetting their password, you can ask why she is re-engaging with you and offer to help accomplish her ultimate goal. What started as a surface-level need to get a new password unravels into solving a more meaningful problem for a customer.

We asked consumer and business-to-business companies known for amazing customer service (98%+ customer satisfaction scores) how they build trust with customers. Proactive behaviour was the common thread.

The path to resolution

Eric Komo is the customer success QA specialist and trainer at Leadpages, a business that helps marketers build comprehensive campaigns to win more leads with engaging landing pages and targeted Facebook ads. He preaches “paving the path to resolution”.

“Our customers go nuts when we’ve written back to them and linked to a video to help them set something up or fix an issue and to their delight, it’s a video from the agent, saying their name, in their account.”

>He also pushes his team to “anticipate the customer’s next question”.

Be proactive

Moriah Thomas at BARK, makers of BarkBox, the leading subscription service for dog-lovers, also stresses solving problems with a proactive mindset.

This could mean letting customers know about an issue in their warehouse before the customer receives their monthly box. Another example is when a customer reaches out about a shipping issue. If a BARK Happy Ambassador notices this customer has the type of dog who is tougher on their toys, then he or she will recommend different durability options for the customer’s dog in that same interaction.

Numbers tell the tale

We analysed what agent behaviours are most positively correlated with positive customer satisfaction ratings based on MaestroQA’s quality assurance dataset. In this dataset, tickets with customer satisfaction (CSAT) conversations are assigned a score based on several behaviours such as agent accuracy, empathy, and more.

The behaviour of ‘going above and beyond’ is most strongly linked to CSAT.

This falls in line with Zappos’ number one core value of delivering WOW through service and strengthens Eric and Moriah’s proactive philosophy.

As you look at your own support conversations, ask if you are:

• Answering the question behind the question

• Educating the customer with additional context

• Solving problems unbeknownst to your customers

As Zendesk’s CEO, Mikkel Svane says,“You have to be the first person to go across the dance floor and ask someone else to dance. You have to be the person to engage with your customers.”