Most businesses spend a considerable amount of time developing products or services that help solve particular customer problems. While this is an important part of any business’ success, if the customer experience leaves people feeling frustrated or disgruntled, a lot of that great work can quickly come undone.
How customers perceive your brand and business can either lead to loyal, repeat customers or halt interactions with your company altogether. In fact, Price Waterhouse Coopers reports that 73% of people find customer experience an essential factor in their purchasing decisions, while only 49% of consumers say companies provide a good customer experience.
So, how can you leverage this competitive edge and stack the positive customer experience odds in your business’s favour? Team collaboration tools are one way your company can stay competitive, provide more consistent and engaging customer support and create an experience your customers will remember for all the right reasons.
Let’s explore this further below.
So, what exactly are team collaboration tools?
One of the most common types of team collaboration tools are Unified Communications (UC). This brings email, voice calls, video conferencing, messaging apps, and other communication channels together into one platform.
Each touchpoint in the customer journey is an opportunity to show customers that you care about their time, money, and overall experience. The use of UC tools throughout this process can go a long way in helping make these touchpoints a positive experience that drives customer loyalty. Here’s how.
1. Creates a professional, uniform experience
Regardless of whether a customer phones, emails, or sends a text message – they expect a professionally presented service. With the help of UC tools, you can maintain interactions with your customer while more easily locating relevant files and notes, regardless of the time, location, device or who the customer had been previously dealing with.
2. Provides consistency in customer service
When a customer has a consistent customer service experience, it helps to build trust in your team and your offering. Complete UC platforms like Telstra IP Telephony (TIPT) converges voice, video and data services into one simple cloud collaboration solution. Because TIPT makes and receives calls over the internet rather than a phone line, you can provide a consistent experience to your customers across any compatible connected device.
3. Enables your team to communicate from more locations
With some UC tools, your team can use their mobile device like a desk phone, making and receiving calls from your business phone number – whether they are in the office or on the road. This means your team can jump between locations and devices without disrupting the flow of service to your customers. Paired with internal communication channels within the same platform, your team can be supported to help serve more customers, from more places, in less time.
4. Supports enhanced personalisation
When it comes to customers, being able to personalise their experience is not only memorable for the customer, it increases the chance of repeat business. UC tools mean you can meet your customers where they are – whether they prefer email, text, or a video call. UC tools also can help to identify customer needs and uncover trends in their buying behaviour since all interactions and data is captured in one, central knowledge base.
6. Improves efficiency of customer follow-ups
Team collaboration tools mean that information is less likely to be lost or misplaced since one team member can pick up where another left off. Plus, if you’re using a system that auto-refreshes and enables real-time updates, this can be key to reducing any lag time between customer follow-ups. You can also leverage inter-departmental communications to help serve the full breadth of your customer’s needs. This means you won’t skip a beat in your communications since everyone on your team is using the same system.
7. Adds to a wider company knowledge base
When you utilise team collaboration tools, it supports the flow of ideas and information across the business. This means that if a team member leaves the company, they don’t take valuable customer information or insights with them since it’s captured in a central location. Plus, when you can collect input from employees, customers and management in one platform, it enables your company to gather data, learn from the information and facilitate a better customer experience in the future.
8. Allows emerging technologies to facilitate new solutions
When your business already has team collaboration tools embedded into the way you do things, you will be better placed to take advantage of emerging solutions like AI (artificial intelligence) to help further personalise the customer experience. Not only could this help customers receive answers to common queries more quickly, it could also help free up your team members to deal with more complex enquiries or business opportunities.
How TBTC Brisbane South can help
A positive customer experience can generally be the result of solid internal processes and a sound IT infrastructure. Want to learn more about how to leverage team collaboration tools like UC to help power your communications with customers? Here at TBTC Brisbane South, we deliver unified communications solutions that are designed to suit the way you do business. Talk to us today and let’s get collaborating.
