Good customer support is one of the things that can make or break a business. If people do not feel that they have been served properly, they may not want you to serve them again at all. However, as a company grows, customer service becomes a much more daunting task, mostly because there are so many needs to be met. Rather than allow the situation to devolve into a problem, many companies choose to leverage technology advantages in order to improve customer support. Let's talk about some of the ways in which this can be done.

Utilize Social Media Effectively

Although this isn't really the intended purpose of social media, it can be used as a means to facilitate better customer service. These platforms give people a way to interact directly with company representatives, so don't hesitate to leverage that tool to your advantage. If nothing else, it serves as an "overflow valve" when your normal complaint channels are down or busy.

It is probably a good idea to have more than one social media page for your business. There hasn't been a lot of research on this subject, but some studies have been conducted. As you can see by looking at this one, companies with more social media channels dedicated to customer service seem to enjoy better reputations. This goes back to what we were saying initially: When people feel ignored, it has a small but significant effect on a company's reputation. Over time, the cumulative effect of all that dissatisfaction adds up to a lot of lost business.

Move Away From Email-Based Customer Service

For a long time now, email has been the standard method by which customers interact with companies. Along with telephone helplines, This is the most common way in which people get in touch with a customer service representative. However, the landscape is changing and it pays to stay ahead of those changes.

The problem is that email-based communication simply takes too long. When you send an email, you could be waiting days or even weeks before you get the first response. With that being the case, it is easy for them to wonder if anyone will respond at all. It all comes down to this: While people are waiting for a return email, they may begin to feel that your company is unresponsive.

Use Plenty Of Audiovisual Aids

When you are trying to appeal to the customer's emotions, that is relatively easy. However, when you are trying to inform the customer, it can be hard to keep their attention. Nobody wants to read a huge wall of text just so that they can understand what some company is telling them. Like it or not, people respond better to audio and visual stimulation.

There are entire companies that focus on this aspect of customer service, which gives you an idea of how versatile these audio visual technology solutions can be. For instance, a video wall can be used to display any information that the customer might need. Likewise, these kinds of tools can be used to help your support staff. When they are able to keep track of all service-related information on a single video wall, they will be able to deliver more efficient customer service.

Use AI As An Aid, Not A Replacement

Some people seem to think that AI-based customer service is the way of the future. However, we would caution intelligent business owners to avoid this sort of thing until the technology has become more reliable. Although AI technology has come a long way, it still can't replace real people. When speaking of a "troubleshooting" type of job like this, it is not realistic to think that a bot can adapt to every situation.

What you want to do here is use AI to help your customer service reps to do a better job. Using bots as assistants is much more practical than replacing your staff with them. They can keep track of detailed information more efficiently than most humans, and that is very helpful. Nevertheless, most of the actual human interaction should be person-to-person. Nobody likes dealing with an AI, so don't force them to do so.

Conclusion

This is not a complete list, of course. There is an almost limitless number of ways in which you can leverage technology to improve your customer service initiatives. This is just a sample of some common methods. We hope that you will be able to use this important concept to create a well-oiled customer service machine that is second to none.