The 10 biggest challenges facing today's customer service manager

Challenge # 1: Being available on all of your customers' preferred communication channels

The number of channels through which your customers can reach your company has increased enormously in recent years. As a result, customers increasingly expect your business to be available on their favorite communication channels such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

Managing all these service channels separately is a huge challenge. However, we still advise to be available on as many channels as possible as this increases customer experience and customer satisfaction. With a smart customer service tool you can keep track of conversations across all messaging channels in one dashboard.

Challenge #2: Providing service when your customers need it

Being available on many channels also has a large side effect. Because your company is present on more channels where messages can be sent, it is much easier for a customer to start a conversation with your company. Service requests will come in at any time of the day, even outside office hours and on weekends. Nowadays, customers no longer take the opening hours of your company into account when they send a message. In fact, they expect even that your company can be reached at any time!

Of course, for most companies it is impossible to have employees available 24 hours a day to respond to incoming messages. Fortunately, today there is a very cost-effective solution for this challenge: a customer service chatbot. A chatbot helps you to shorten the average response time and at the same time significantly reduce service costs by reducing the pressure on customer service.

Challenge #3: Managing the ever-increasing number of calls

The more channels you manage, the more conversations there will be initiated. Not only is it a challenge to answer to every message quickly, but also to keep an overview.

A chatbot can also help with this. The chatbot informs your customer that the message has been received and immediately helps to find the answer. If that is not possible, the bot will forward the conversation to an employee. By using a chatbot, important or complex messages are therefore filtered from the rest.

Challenge #4: Maintaining a low response time on all channels

How can a customer service team effectively manage multiple messages at the same time? While it may seem chaotic to manage multiple channels, it doesn't mean it has to be. No company can handle every incoming message at the same time unless it has a huge team of customer service representatives.

Scaling up a customer service team is also not within the reach of every company. That is why it is important to look at other solutions. By using the right software, your company can manage every incoming message without reducing average response time or scaling your team. In this way you also immediately save money in the long term.

Challenge #5: Adding value to any conversation at a rapid pace

Your customer service exists to add value for your customers. However, every company has to deal with repetitive questions and this can negatively affect the motivation of your employees. Yet answering these questions adequately is also necessary.

This is another reason to consider a chatbot in your customer service. One of the advantages of a chatbot is that it can easily manage recurring questions for your department. This saves your customer service employees valuable time. This allows them to spend their time on more complex matters, which is both more fun and more challenging.

Challenge #6: Staying in control of your service quality

People make mistakes. It is inevitable. They rarely make mistakes on purpose, but as a result of processes. It is important to identify the most common mistakes to avoid customer dissatisfaction, your reputation to maintain or running the risk to lose money.

By automating as many processes as possible, you can fix as many errors as possible. This includes pre-completing webshop forms or automated conversations. In concrete terms, this latter automation will promote the self-service of your customers.

Challenge #7: Keeping your conversations personal

Many companies and brands have a hard time responding to all incoming messages. They struggle not only with response time, but also with the content of their response. It is important to prevent you with standard answers to your questions to the customer responds.

How do you go about this?

The first step is to gain insight into the questions and needs of your customers. A Customer Data Platform helps you to understand your customers. This software stores all important data in one place. With this data, your employees can speak to customers better and more personally.

The next step is to write good and personalised content for a chatbot or a script for your customer service. This improves your communication by making it more personal and has a positive effect on the average response time.

Challenge #8: Maintaining the relevancy of your service

Being in touch with your customers automatically provides you with an important data source. However, many companies are not yet able to make optimal use of this data. The diversity of channels through which data comes in is a major challenge to collect this data effectively and analyse it as a whole. So it's important to centralise this data by connecting all customer data sources to one customer data platform.

By using a Customer Data Platform you have access to all data, tools and functions to take your customer service to the highest level on all channels.

Challenge #9: Managing Continuous Improvement

How you get the most out of every conversation with your customers? Are there any patterns or recurring questions to find? It can be difficult to connect all customer data and behavior.

You can unify and simplify this data by organising it into uniform customer profiles. These profiles show where and when individuals interacted with your brand and whether they are customers. This way you get to know your customers better and reach them with tailor-made trips.

Challenge #10: Scaling while maintaining quality

As your business grows, your customer service grows. With an increasing demand for customer service, your NPS can be put at risk. With 50% growth, can you still offer the same customer experience or is the service level of your company being questioned?

Many customer service managers have these questions. Again, we want to emphasise the benefit of customer service chatbots. With this you offer your customers 24/7 support and several customers can be served at the same time. This drastically reduces the number of emails and phone calls your employees have to handle. A win-win situation!

Take on these challenges and improve!

As you have read, the above challenges are easy to overcome with the right tools. Gaining insight into your customers is essential to properly organise and improve your processes. In addition, there are many advantages to using a chatbot for your customer service.

All tools you need as a customer service manager are available in Mobile Service Cloud. With Mobile Service Cloud you have access to all channels and automations to take your customer service to the highest level. Our clear conversation dashboard and chatbot will significantly reduce the pressure on your employees and allow you to maximise your NPS and ROI.