How to reduce customer service costs

Reducing customer service costs doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality—in fact, with the right strategies and technology, companies can provide a better customer experience while lowering overheads.

In this article, we’ll explore effective ways to cut customer service costs through technology, streamlined processes, and smarter resource management, all without compromising the customer experience.

Check out our top tips below and keep your customers happier for less.

Personalisation

Winning your customers’ loyalty isn’t easy. But starting with personalisation is a must because it’s no longer a “nice-to-have”, it’s now an expectation. According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect personalisation and 76% are frustrated if they can’t find it.

Personalisation can directly influence buying behaviour. Not only are consumers more likely to purchase from a brand that offered personalisation, but they’re also are more likely to repurchase. 91% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that provided relevant offers/recommendations. And 78% of consumers are more likely to repurchase and recommend businesses that provided personalised experiences.

Here are some ways you can offer a personalised experience:

• Tailoring messaging to your customer’s needs.
• Providing relevant product/service recommendations and targeted promotions (e.g. based on purchase history).
• Sending messages linked to key moments and triggers.
• Celebrating your customer’s milestones (e.g. birthday, anniversary etc).
• Sending relevant post-purchase follow-ups.

Related: SMS for customer service: Best practices and message templates

Give customers a chance to self-serve

From product-related queries to pricing quotes and order updates, there are many reasons why your customers might need to reach out to you. But answering every single query individually is expensive and time consuming. And in many cases, not even necessary.

That’s why you should encourage self-service. This will help your customers find answers to their questions more easily and quickly. And your customer support team will gain more time back to help resolve the more complex queries/issues.

Here are some example self-serve options:

• A product knowledge base
• Interactive training, explainer or demo videos
• FAQs
• Chatbots
• A community forum

Automate repetitive tasks

Automation can help boost internal efficiency and reduce dependence on manual tasks. For example, you may find that customers frequently call to make payments. Rather than relying on your support team to take payments over the phone, offer a self-service option within your interactive voice response (IVR) system.

Another example is intelligent call routing, which can automatically assign the most qualified customer support representative to the case. This can help ensure your customer’s issue is addressed quickly and efficiently. And what’s even better is that you don’t need to allocate human resource to manage this process – it can easily be automated.

Use chatbots

The top factor consumers think contributes to a great customer experience is speed of response. In fact, 38% of shoppers expect a response to their queries or complaints within 3-5 hours. So, it doesn’t matter whether it’s outside of business hours – your customers don’t like having to wait for a reply. 

Chatbots are perfect for these scenarios as they can be available 24/7 and serve multiple customers at once. They’re great during business hours too as they can act as your first line of support, taking details and presenting customers with relevant resources that might help them before escalating the issue to your customer service team.

Tip: Analyse your customer data and see if there are questions that customers commonly ask. These questions can help you plan the conversational flow of your chatbot.

What good customer service looks like and how businesses can adapt

A prompt response from a friendly support rep that’s available round-the-clock – this is just one example of great customer service. But if you’re going to go beyond meeting your customer expectations, there’s more work that needs to be done.

In our eBook, The cost of frustrated customers, we present the latest data from our global customer engagement survey and explain how businesses can exceed expectations. Dive deeper into what makes today’s consumers tick and how your business can keep up by downloading your copy.