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Customers often stick with a brand that cares for them. They even don’t mind turning into advocates for a business that makes an effort to improve their experience.
Similarly, for most customers, getting help when needed matters more than anything else. And, maybe, that’s why the importance of follow-up in customer service is huge for any type of company.
Organizations that do regular follow-ups create a personal connection with customers, deliver value at each stage of the journey, and come across as reliable.
When your business follows up, it shows customers how much it cares. Following up brings an opportunity to understand and serve customers better.
Needless to say, follow-ups are easily the most crucial part of your marketing strategies with the potential to convert leads and bring happy customers.
In this blog, we will discuss what is follow-up in customer service and its importance for your business.
Customer service should never stop at the transaction stage itself. Neither should its focus be restricted to converting leads only. After all, its real value lies in providing great experiences and ensuring value at each stage of the customer journey.
Follow-ups have benefits galore for any business and the stats below show their importance:
Great customer service is not just limited to making a sale. It extends well beyond the transaction and encompasses everything that adds value to customers. And that’s why the importance of follow-up in customer service is matchless as it focuses on building a long-term relationship and converting prospects into loyal customers.
A follow-up encounter in customer service is truly invaluable and its importance goes far deeper than just achieving conversions.
Having the right strategy in place for a follow-up encounter in customer service is always key to delivering value. You also need to have customer service scripts to make those encounters meaningful.
For customers, a good experience matters more than anything else. And if their experience is good, they will stick with the business, spend more, and spread positive word of mouth.
So much so, 96% of customers say customer service is key in their choice of loyalty to a brand.
When it comes to improving customer experience, the key is always to ensure value with every interaction across the journey. The focus should also be on being available as and when customers expect as it helps remove their doubts.
That’s why follow-up can prove very helpful in improving customer experience with your brand. A follow-up call can achieve many goals together with overriding any negative experience customers may have with your brand.
Customers often trust a business it takes effort to know them. It’s therefore important to invest in long-term relationships to know your customers well.
And unless you know and understand customers well, you won’t be able to deliver a personalized experience through various customer touchpoints and across their journey.
Following up with customers is always a great strategy to foster relationships with customers. It makes them feel appreciated and special. When you do follow-ups, it’s also likely to win more loyalty from customers.
Meeting and exceeding customer expectations successfully is something that most businesses strive for but only a handful achieve that goal. Only those with a customer-centric mindset can fulfill customer expectations.
Follow-up is therefore the best available tool if you want to be one of those organizations that understand and fulfill customer expectations.
With follow-ups, you can know customer preferences and what they expect from you. And when you’re aware of what they want, it’s always easy to provide that and win their faith.
When customer expectations are fulfilled, there are more reasons for them to associate with your business buy a product, or avail a service.
Retention is always cheaper than acquisition. Acquiring a new customer is some five times costlier than retaining an existing customer.
It explains why the focus of your business should be more towards retention than winning new customers. After all, this is how you can boost profitability and revenue.
And when it comes to retention, follow-ups can prove very handy. Your service team can always approach a customer through mail or a phone call and understand their problems better.
With a periodic follow-up encounter in customer service, it is easy to know what customers expect and what they think of your business.
If used appropriately, customer service could well create new opportunities for sales. If a service team is ready to reach out to customers, or if it does reach out regularly, it can always help contribute to more sales.
Follow-ups are a great way to upsell or make a new sale. When your service team follows up with customers, it can ask about the level of satisfaction with the product or service. And in the meantime, the team could also recommend an additional item.
More so, your service team can always combine follow-ups and sales to add to the overall customer experience of the customers. This is how you benefit from the use of customer service etiquette and put your business on the path to success.
It takes more than one follow-up attempt to persuade customers and convert leads. Despite this, most customer service reps give up after one follow up which often causes a lot of lost opportunities for the business.
If your service team too follows this approach and knows how to talk to customers, it’s then surely underestimating the power of follow-ups. Because then it’s not using a tool that makes it extremely easy to nurture old leads.
Well, customers need some persuading to get converted and this is where follow-ups play their part. When you approach someone who earlier inquired, there is always a possibility of getting a lead.
Customers always want to feel special. As a business, communication is the best available tool to achieve customer delight and make them feel valued.
When you communicate with customers consistently, it serves two broad purposes – first, you are available to listen to their issues, and second, you can know their problems and deliver instant solutions.
Regularly following up with customers is one of the most effective ways to keep the line of communication open for both parties. This is how both parties will be able to benefit mutually from the association.
You’d be surprised to know how not many companies leverage the power of follow-ups. Yes, you heard it right, not many of them get in touch with customers regularly.
Where many businesses are making mistakes, you can simply seize the advantage and gain the trust of your customers. With regular follow-up calls and emails, you will find it easy to gain a competitive edge and win trust in the market.
Since customers love to feel valued, your attempt to reach out to them consistently can give them a reason to choose you the next time around.
Plus, making the extra effort to meet customer needs can also create better sales opportunities for the business over some time.
This clearly explains why brands that realize the importance of follow-up in customer service stay ahead of the curve and face the competition successfully.
There is a range of channels to establish connections with customers. Based on the industry, business type, and customer preferences, you can choose the right channel reach out to the audience, and fix their issues easily. And when you realize the importance of follow-up in customer service, you take the right step toward winning their trust.
When it comes to following up on customer services, the options are plenty, including –
Following up with customers is an art. If you do it right, there is a whole gamut of benefits to achieving. However, if you don’t get it right, it might end up harming your business in more ways than you could think.
There are certain follow-up best practices you need to follow:
For a business, the importance of follow-up in customer service is always big as it helps build trust and lay the foundation of a rewarding relationship.
With REVE Chat, you can benefit from the power of AI-powered chatbots and automate your service. This will help you reach users as and when needed the most.
By using bots, it’s always easy to send welcome messages, personalize the offer, and stay available round the clock for customized solutions.
Similarly, you can get the most out of live chat + chatbot together and deliver hybrid support which is key for effective follow-up.
Follow-up is always a crucial part of customer service endeavors. It allows you to win the confidence of your customers on the back of solving their issues.
With the right tools, follow-ups become easy and you find it easy to reach out to customers and give them the value they deserve.
With REVE Chat, start a free trial of some of the top tools for follow-up in customer service and change the way you solve customer issues.
So, you should never ignore the importance of follow-up in customer service and always make an effort to reach out to them and offer them timely solutions.
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Praveen Singh is a content marketer, blogger, and professional with 15 years of passion for ideas, stats, and insights into customers. An MBA Graduate in marketing and a researcher by disposition, he has a knack for everything related to customer engagement and customer happiness.
As a writer and analyst, he pours the heart out on a blog that is informative, detailed, and often digs deep into the heart of customer psychology. He’s written extensively on a range of topics including, marketing, AI chatbots, omnichannel messaging platforms, and many more.
Mr. Singh also has a passion for subjects that excite new-age customers, be it social media engagement, artificial intelligence, machine learning. He takes great pride in his learning-filled journey of adding value to the industry through consistent research, analysis, and sharing of customer-driven ideas.
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