As much as businesses strive to keep their customers happy and satisfied, a big challenge is how to keep up with the ever-growing number of customer support issues and offer help whenever customers need it.
24/7 customer service promises round-the-clock support to all your customers, offering on-time solutions to their issues. This can significantly improve customer service, raise customer satisfaction, and improve customer loyalty to your business.
In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of offering round-the-clock customer service and how best you can implement it to optimize your customer service offerings and grow your business.
What is 24/7 customer support?
24/7 customer support is a customer service model where companies offer customer service solutions that are always available without interruption. When your business provides customer service support all day, every day, that is 24/7 customer service.
Companies adopt different approaches to carry out constant customer support. However, some aspects are common:
- Round-the-clock availability: Clients can request assistance at any time of day, including weekends, holidays, and late nights.
- Multichannel support: Businesses offer customer assistance through different communication channels such as live chat, email, phone, and social media. Customers can choose their preferred form of contact.
Companies that are always reachable for support often have higher customer satisfaction scores, reduced customer churn, and maintain a competitive edge over their rivals.
Should your business offer customer support 24/7?
Not all of your customers require around-the-clock customer support. If the majority of your clients only seek assistance within standard business hours, then bearing the expense of a 24/7 support service may be unnecessary.
How can you determine whether your business should offer 24/7 support? Ask yourself these questions:
- Do you offer time-sensitive products and services?
- Do your customers often request service after regular business hours?
- Do you operate in a time-critical industry such as healthcare or travel that needs to cater to clients even past regular business hours?
- Do you cater to clients from different time zones worldwide?
If your answer to most or all these questions is yes, then your business could greatly benefit from 24/7 customer service.
Benefits of providing 24/7 customer support
As much as implementing always-on customer service will require investment from your business, the benefits are usually worth it.
Enables you to serve global customers
Customers in different time zones don’t have to wait long hours for the support team to answer their messages. This gives them significantly more convenience if your product is necessary to their operations.
Providing 24/7 customer service allows you to access international markets and enhance the customer satisfaction and experience of your global clients, catering to a large and diverse customer base.
Helps you meet customer expectations
In this technological era, customers expect immediate assistance. Offering constant customer support ensures that customer pain points are addressed promptly.
A 24/7 help desk facilitates fast issue resolution and quick responses through live chat support and automated replies such as canned responses.
It also allows businesses to capture real-time customer feedback and data, leading to better understanding and quicker adaptation to consumer trends and preferences.
Enhanced customer satisfaction
Customers who reach out for help with your product or service and get a quick and useful response are likely to feel relieved, valued, and more confident in your brand.
By responding quickly to support requests, you reduce frustration and show customers that you care.
24/7 chat support availability assures your customers that you will always be present when they need help. This assurance gives your customers peace of mind, improves their satisfaction levels, and builds trust in your brand.
Sets you apart from competitors
Catering to customers anytime they need help can differentiate you from competitors who provide only the typical 9–5 customer support.
If local options are limited for potential clients, they’ll be looking for the provider who can serve them at the most convenient times.
Builds customer loyalty
Being available to address customer queries at any time can transform a bad customer service experience into a positive interaction, enhance the prospect of repeat business, and reduce customer churn.
The assurance that a brand will offer support whenever required fosters trust which is a critical element in cultivating customer loyalty.
Improves brand awareness and reputation
24/7 customer service contributes to maintaining an excellent brand reputation. Customers impressed by your ever-present customer support will likely recommend your brand to others and write positive reviews that improve brand perception.
What’s more, providing 24/7 customer support gives you a reputation for being a business that focuses on customer-centricity, reliability, and professionalism.
Boosts sales
Being reachable for 24 hours a day unlocks opportunities to convert leads into sales. Offering customers prompt and efficient assistance whenever they contact you gives some of them the information, they need to complete a purchase.
Whenever potential customers encounter an issue while considering a purchase outside typical business hours, prompt 24/7 customer support can help remove obstacles and reduce the chances of cart abandonment.
How can you provide 24/7 customer service?
To unlock the benefits of 24/7 customer support, you must implement strategies to ensure that it runs smoothly.
Optimize your self-service options
Research by NICE shows that 81% of consumers want more self-service options and thus prefer to interact with companies who provide them.
Create a comprehensive knowledge base that offers customers information they need in a well-organized and user-friendly manner to compliment your 24/7 customer support.
A well-designed knowledge base makes it easier for customers to solve problems independently at any time of day and helps support agents provide faster, more accurate solutions.
Aside from developing a knowledge base, you can improve other self-service options to deflect common support tickets and free up agents to focus on more urgent issues:
- Educate your users through platforms like YouTube, where they can find videos addressing common issues.
- Include in-app tutorials in your company applications.
- Build an online customer self-service portal that gives direct access to your company’s knowledge base and other resources.
- Integrate a help widget in your website to help customers find solutions quickly.
Offer live chat support
Live chat is a communication channel that lets your support staff interact with your customers in real time through your website or application.
Since many customers prefer live chat support over other channels, integrating it into your customer experience strategy ensures clients receive prompt solutions.
Additionally, live chat support allows support agents to handle multiple inquiries simultaneously, which can prove valuable during peak hours.
Empower your support team with modern 24/7 help desk software
Help desk software allows you to provide round-the-clock customer service to your clients, even when equipped with a small team and restricted resources.
It facilitates efficient customer communication, enabling you to interact with your clients quickly and automate repetitive tasks.
24/7 help desk software is equipped with ticketing systems that optimize workflows, making it easier for teams to manage and resolve ticket requests even during off-business hours.
Furthermore, help desk software also fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing between cross-functional teams ensuring consistent, high-quality service.
Modern help desk software also employs artificial intelligence features to:
- Respond to frequently asked questions (FAQs) around the clock to free up support agents for more complex problems.
- Automate processes like obtaining basic customer information or sending out initial responses.
- Analyze customer tickets and suggest relevant articles.
- Automatically classify and direct incoming requests to the most suitable agent based on urgency or area of expertise.
- Perform sentiment analysis to understand the context of inquiries and send automatic responses.
- Collect data through user interactions and browsing history to provide personalized experiences.
Additionally, help desk software can provide seamless integrations with multiple communication channels to provide seamless omnichannel support via phone, email, live chat, and social media.
Adopt the use of chatbots
Chatbots are automated digital assistants that use artificial intelligence to interact with customers through text or speech. Chatbots can enhance your customer service efforts by providing 24/7 chat support to clients.
These tools provide answers to common questions and offer initial support in the absence of human agents. They can be customized to offer tailored responses, direct customers to relevant resources, and escalate complex issues to human agents.
When deployed correctly, chatbots can streamline your workflow, increase productivity, and free your agents to work on more pressing problems.
Monitor social media
Social media can transform your customer service into an around-the-clock endeavor, serving as a constant monitor for consumer needs and sentiments.
Regularly share valuable content, respond to comments and inquiries promptly, and participate in relevant social media conversations to increase the visibility of your brand. Customers often turn to social media to voice frustrations or ask questions.
By actively monitoring brand mentions, companies can identify issues early, even outside of business hours. This allows for prompt intervention, addressing concerns before they escalate and fostering a reputation for responsiveness among your customer base.
Don’t forget to also share comments and customer stories on your website and social media where other customers can see them.
Expand your customer support team
While technology can minimize the expansion of your team, going from 8-hour to 24-hour live service is going to require more people, as is a growing of your company in general.
By increasing the number of customer service representatives, you can achieve reduced first response times because of the greater availability of agents to address customer inquiries.
Expanding your team also helps to reduce employee burnout by enabling you to organize your staff in rotating shifts and give them more flexible working hours. A well-trained team that gets adequate rest can deliver exceptional customer service around the clock.
Build online communities centered around your brand
Most businesses underestimate the power of active community forums. Community forums promote peer-to-peer support. A well-designed forum allows users to ask questions, share troubleshooting tips, and offer insights to each other based on their own experiences.
This collective knowledge pool reduces reliance on your support team. Active online communities evolve into valuable knowledge repositories.
Discussions and user-generated content create a searchable archive of solutions and best practices. Customers can access this information 24/7, finding answers to questions without needing to wait for a response from a support agent.
Outsource your 24/7 IT support
When you are starting out as a small business, outsourcing your customer service can be more economical than maintaining a round-the-clock internal team.
Delegating customer service to an external and more experienced team, you can avoid the expenses associated with hiring and training in-house customer service personnel.
This approach allows you to benefit from skilled customer service representatives capable of delivering customer service around the clock, without incurring the high costs typically associated with it.
Elevate your customer service with 24/7 chat support
Providing round-the-clock customer support helps meet customer expectations in today’s always-on business world.
By leveraging the right blend of technologies, strategies, and human resources, you will be well on your way to creating a customer-centric business that fosters stronger customer relationships and drives business success.
Remember, the goal is not just to be available, but to be helpful, efficient, and empathetic at all hours.
BoldDesk empowers businesses to offer round-the-clock support without the need for an army of support staff or unsustainable work hours.
Contact us to find out how you can use BoldDesk to provide 24/7 customer service to your customers and improve your customer service experience.
Schedule a live demo or ask for a 15-day free trial today to get acquainted with its features.
We hope you found this blog post insightful. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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