Customer contact is still generally seen too much as a necessary evil. "A missed opportunity," thinks Floris Spangenberg of Spangenberg Group, a specialist in customer service. "Webshops that take customer contact seriously don't just look at what it costs, but what it delivers. A well-designed customer service is a valuable marketing tool."
Webshop owners are very good at running the webshop, but often find that effectively and efficiently setting up good customer service and speaking to customers professionally is a skill in itself, observes Spangenberg. "Reachability on the right channels, preferably also outside office hours and at weekends, does not make things easier for the small entrepreneur. That's when it can be interesting to outsource your customer service. Peaks and troughs in sales and contact moments often cannot be planned for, even by large organisations. Even then, it is nice if you can benefit from the economies of scale of an external customer contact centre."
A well-designed customer service will irrevocably pay for itself in the long(er) term, says Spangenberg. "On the one hand, with good customer service, you create additional sales opportunities. Many webshops record a peak in visits in the evening and at weekends. Make sure you are available at those times for (especially doubting) customers to win them over. Being reachable gives you sales opportunities and if you have contact with your (potential) customer, you can create cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Good customer contact can also contribute to optimising your services. You can use customers' questions to better tune your service to their expectations. This ultimately leads to fewer contact moments, better service and a more positive customer experience. You can quite easily tune your internal business processes to customer needs based on customer feedback. That not only saves money by reducing unnecessary customer contact, it also gives you a competitive advantage.
Nowadays, there are a huge number of channels on which you can set up customer service. Spangenberg recommends following a clear strategy. "Decide internally (but also partly based on customer feedback) which channels you would like to service the customer through. Many online shops tend to embrace all channels and then offer mediocre service on those channels. Better to choose a limited number of channels and offer perfect service on them. Because of the wide range of channels, we also see that customers often use several channels interchangeably, which actually increases the number of contact moments. For instance, they send an e-mail and then call after it. If you just make sure you are easily accessible on those channels that you can support qualitatively well and on your customers' preferred channels, you are doing well. Customers always prefer good service via a limited number of clear channels to a multitude of channels where mediocre and/or unclear service is provided."
SpangenbergGroup specialises in customer contact. "We have traditionally been an interim management and consulting firm and optimise customer contact for small to large international organisations," Spangenberg explains. "From as little as 25 customer contacts a day, it can already be interesting to outsource customer service. Incidentally, our greatest strength lies not only in speaking to customers professionally across all possible channels, but especially in thinking along and improving processes based on the customer experience. We generally get to the bottom of those pain points quickly, so that customers ultimately contact us much less. We just really enjoy helping companies optimise their services based on customer contact."
SpangenbergGroup's services are of interest to all organisations dealing with customer contact in both B2C and B2B. "We work with different teams. Depending on the customer profile, we work with dedicated or non-dedicated (or blended) teams. The latter is interesting for clients with low volumes, who still want to benefit from extended opening hours and can thus easily absorb peaks/downturns. A unique aspect of our service is that we log into our clients' systems whenever possible so that we do not have to do complex system integrations. In addition, we offer customer service in several languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. This is particularly interesting for webshops. We have many webshops operating in (parts of) Europe. We offer them carefree customer service in the languages and channels relevant to them all under one roof. Webshops that are primarily active nationally are therefore really much quicker to take the step beyond national borders."
We are SpangenbergGroup! And we can help you make your customer service a good customer service to make. Just good customer service where the basics are in order. Where customer contacts add value to the customer experience. We unburden you in the area we are good at (customer service) so you can concentrate worry-free on what you're good at. Sound good? Get in touch.
With over 25 years of experience in optimising customer contact and customer experience SpangenbergGroup can help you. The optimise customer service or outsource? Use the form or see our contact page.
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