Companies big and small are struggling to keep their customers through these difficult times. This point has been further exaggerated by the hesitation in various industries who have experienced major shifts. Last week, I attended a webinar from HubSpot that addressed strategies they have implemented to address their customers’ needs through this economic crisis.
Here is a recap of my key takeaways from the webinar and action items you can implement with your team to reenforce your client relationships.
The webinar provided a treasure trove of great information and followed the principles outlined in the Digital Utopia Methodology. Align the 3 P’s in your business - People, Process, and Platform - with your marketing, sales, and especially in this case, service teams.
Treating customers well matters
HubSpot surveyed their customers, and the top responses to what makes someone want to work with a company were how well they treated their customers AND how well they treated their employees.
- The #1 factor in working with a company during a crisis was its ability to adapt to meet the customer’s needs.
- During a crisis, how the company treated their employees jumped up to the #2 most important factor
1. Empower your Customer (Platform)
How can you use the platform your business is built on, like HubSpot, to empower your customers? Are there optimizations you can prioritize to create a frictionless customer service experience? Some ideas on how to do that:
- Prioritize new support channels - like chat! Chat usage has gone up 29% post-COVID
- Give your customer self-service support options - spend time making your FAQs and knowledge base robust.
- 1 channel shouldn’t block access to others. IF someone is in line for a chat, give them other options if they don’t want to wait. Make your customer service team accessible.
3 keys to Frictionless Service
- Common needs can be addressed on your website.
- Identify all possible dead ends between self-service vs assisted service.
- How frictionless is the transition to assisted service?
2. Manage Expectations (People)
This is the “people” aspect of a successful customer retention strategy. Your customers should not have to guess how long it will take to get help or what kind of help you can provide your customers.
- How long it will take to talk to someone if it’s not immediate. Generate an FUE (follow up email) that sets the expectation.
- Let the customer know if there are alternate channels of communication.
- Let them know what type of requests can be accommodated. Be transparent to your customers about what you are able to accommodate.
- Let them know if there is documentation that can be accessed first.
3. Empower your Team (Process)
Are there processes that you can put in place to give your team the power to make decisions that delight their customers? Empowering your team also means that you are empowering your clients.
- Remove barriers - give your client-facing teams autonomy to make decisions for their customers. The front lines know what is best. Autonomy does not mean without guidance. Have weekly stand-ups, develop a guide & flow for customer service, streamline the approval process.
- Foster creativity - HubSpot created an a la carte menu of retention tools (discount, downgrade, delayed payments). They are constantly testing ideas and gathering feedback from both their customer-facing teams AND their customers.
Other things that HubSpot does to empower their teams and help make smart decisions for their customers:
- Weekly stand-ups
- Flag relevant feedback and distribute to relevant team members
- Implemented a voice of the customer program
- Send out regular NPS surveys
- Slack channel with marketing, customer service, and leadership
- Developed a customer roadblocks program
Some things that we have done at Digitopia to make servicing our clients easier for everyone on the team:
- Daily team check-in where we share what we’re working on that day and if we are stuck on anything. This keeps things moving forward for every client.
- We have been flexible in our client meeting schedule to accommodate new work from home schedules - and children’s nap times.
- Consistently keep our brand promises at the forefront - be easy to work with, never leave clients in the dark, and provide strategic insights.
Create a frictionless customer experience
Creating a frictionless customer experience through your platform, process, and people will help move your business forward through these uncertain economic times. A detailed FAQ section is a manageable first step to making that happen.
Download our free FAQ Audit to ensure you’re following best practices to create a frictionless user experience.