For many businesses, the COVID-19 epidemic was a game-changer, forcing them to look for new methods to stay adaptable and productive in the face of unexpected obstacles. Mohnish Jaiswal, Vice President of Operations at BYJU’S, and Anand Venkatraman, Vice President and General Manager at Freshworks, discuss how the epidemic has prompted customer-facing departments like sales and support to cooperate more effectively while working remotely.
Customer expectations and multi-channel interactions resulted in a spike in customer care calls
The surge in customer assistance volumes after WWII was due to variables that existed even before the epidemic, such as customer expectations of brands. The emergence of many avenues for interacting with companies, such as social media platforms, had an impact on volume. Companies that we’re able to transfer this volume across numerous channels, including social media, and establish an ecosystem of self-service solutions while embracing automation as a vehicle for consumer engagement were able to successfully navigate the issue.
How important is customer service in retaining users?
According to Byju’s VP Mohnish Jaiswal , his team realised they’d have to contact students quickly, and made student support a strategic priority. He attributes this to a dynamic workforce that allowed them to scale despite working remotely. “Our app downloads increased in a month, and daily engagement levels reached 100 minutes”, he noted.
Byju’s findings also lead him to realise that more interactive learning solutions are needed. They then teamed with NGOs and launched live classes with unrestricted access to their content in several languages.
According to a Gartner report, 72 percent of customers are willing to spend more for a better experience, and 72 percent would prefer one brand over another if they were given special attention. 89 percent of organisations worldwide continue to compete significantly on customer engagement. He pointed out that because every product or service is available with a single click, the cost of poor service is extremely significant.
In a crisis, having a digital-native brand is advantageous
Anand Venkatraman went on to describe how digital-native businesses leverage data from consumer interactions at every stage of the process to improve their service. Despite the latter’s substantial industry knowledge, data-driven insights give digital-native brands an advantage over traditional enterprises.
Collaboration between customer-facing departments is on the rise
Good customer support is a key differentiator for competing brands and helped many businesses win over their customers despite a taxing business environment, says Freshworks’ Anand. He stressed how artificial intelligence/machine learning capabilities can be instrumental in helping brands understand the customer better with chatbots.
“These tools can also be helpful in bringing even new customer support agents up to speed by giving them an idea into what customers need and how they should interact with them”, Anand reasoned.
Why is it important to choose the correct customer service platform?
Cross-selling is five times more expensive for brands than acquiring new customers. According to Anand, the correct customer platform helps firms solve concerns more quickly and accurately. Brands can no longer afford to engage clients over the phone for more than 30-40 minutes at a time when a response time of more than 5 minutes is considered a delay.
