Blog Post

How to monitor multiple communication channels with fast response time

Customers expect businesses to respond in live chats, social media, and over the phone almost immediately and reply to emails within a few hours.
To meet customer wants and needs, companies need to implement a process management strategy to ensure fast response rates on each communication channel.
For businesses with a high load of requests, CRM, chatbots, and self-service options is a must.
The number of support agents should correspond with the load of requests, and each agent should manage multiple communication channels simultaneously.
With digitalization and automation, it’s vital to continue providing human support services in the first place.

Customers expect businesses to be present on the communication channels that they, customers, find convenient to use. What’s more, users expect companies to be available any time any day to address their inquiries.

For businesses, it comes quite challenging.

Not only need companies to ensure 24/7/365 customer support service but also deliver the very best user experience to every first customer. Taking into account that people expect almost immediate responses in live chats, social media, and over the phone and grant a few hours to get an email reply from the company, it gives companies a headache.

However, with the right approach, software, and process management, it’s possible to make customer support run like clockwork and deliver fast responses in each communication channel.

The Number of Support Agents Should Correspond with a Load of Requests

First and foremost, it’s crucial to analyze the existing customer support resources and identify whether the company has the right size of the support team. For example, if a company receives 100+ requests daily through different communication channels, two support agents are not enough. What’s more, if you operate a seasonal business, the size of the support team needs to be adjusted in response to the high and low demand periods. This poses an even bigger challenge.

If you need to expand the existing support team, scale up or down without much hassle, or build a customer support structure from scratch, customer support outsourcing is one of the most cost-effective, problem-solving solutions.

It’s easy to select a bundle that meets the company’s requirements to ensure fast response rates in multiple communication channels with any number of customer requests. A skilled consultant can help you to select the right customer support outsourcing model based on the number of inquiries and communication channels you support.

Support Agents Should Manage Multiple Communication Channels Simultaneously

Although it may seem a good idea to assign support agents to particular communication channels, i.e., John will be dealing with chats, while Alison will reply to emails, in reality, it doesn’t work as smoothly as in theory.

The load on different communication channels can vary a lot, and the company can have 3 email requests, 10 calls, and 30 chats per hour. Thus, while Alison will be replying to few emails without much stress, John will be overloaded with requests.

That’s why a smart move will be to assign 2-3 communication channels per employee so that they could collaborate and focus on the highest number of requests or the most urgent inquiries effectively.

Store Customer Data to Address Their Requests Faster and More Efficiently

It’s vital to store customer data to address their issues on multiple communication channels without asking about the details again and again. Imagine such situations:

A customer wrote on Facebook, then wrote an email to get a follow up on their inquiry
A customer joined a live chat a few days ago, and now they are in chat to get updates on the matter.

In both scenarios, the customer would appreciate it if customer support wouldn’t ask the same questions all over again and reply to the new request, being fully aware of the context.

Connect Different Communication Channels to One CRM

Following the previous point, to store and manage customer data effectively, a business needs a reliable CRM system. Without the right software that meets the needs of the business, it’s nearly impossible to manage multiple communication channels quickly and effectively.

For companies with a high number of customer requests through different communication channels, CRM is a must.

Tag Conversations to Sort Content

Conversation tags are life-saving when it comes to a high number of chat or email requests. By implementing tags, a company can:

Improve responses from support agents because, thanks to tags, they will know better what the request they are serving (especially it is not a first-time customer);
Get information about the most frequent questions in each communication channel, typical customer concerns, or buying patterns, and adjust customer support processes accordingly;
Automate assignment of support agents based on tags for more productive work;
Identify the urgency and priority of requests.

Here is a helpful list of tags a business can use to mark the conversations related to a particular topic for faster and more productive processing:

Lead
Demo
Trial
Opportunity
Issue
Repeat-buyer
Feature_req
Facebook
Twitter

Human Canned Responses

Indeed, canned responses save time and should be used by customer support to reply to common requests. However, no one likes robotic answers.

Thus, it’s worth spending some time to transform the tone of voice used in the customer support templates to more friendly and human. This will increase the customer satisfaction rate and maintain the fast response rate at the same time. Win-win!

Chatbots

Chatbots is an extremely helpful solution for companies dealing with a high load of requests on multiple channels. By setting up a chatbot on Facebook or live chat on the website, a business can unload support agents from the most typical questions.

A great plus – a chatbot replies almost instantly, and users won’t have to wait for the reply from a support agent. It is a perfect option for dealing with simple requests, such as checking the order tracking number, finding out about the working hours of the company, the location of the offline store, the periods of discount sales, etc.

Self-Service Possibility

There are customers who want to communicate with human agents only, and there are those that prefer dealing with their requests by themselves without contacting customer support. To meet the wants and needs of both auditories, a company should think of self-service features on the website.

It includes not only the chatbots mentioned above but also order tracking functionality, extensive knowledge base instead of a short Q&A, trying on visual products with AI technology, etc.

Don’t Forget to Praise Your Support Team

And, most importantly, don’t forget to motivate, praise, and support your support team. Customer support members are at the front of the company, dealing with numbers of requests and ensuring fast responses and great customer satisfaction in every conversation. They definitely need your care and appreciation of effort.

Final Remarks

It is a major challenge to monitor multiple communication channels with fast response time, especially if the company has a high number of requests daily. However, with the determined approach, optimal human resources, effective management, and the right software, it is possible to ensure fast responses and ultimate customer satisfaction in all the communication channels the company uses.