Having a satisfied and dedicated customer base is essential to growing a technology business. While customer satisfaction surveys and reports are useful to quantify CSAT, what happens when numbers are low? How do you raise your CSAT score when it’s sub-par?
There are several tactics to retain the Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) customers you have, get additional MRR from existing customers, and minimize customer churn.
Send reminders, even if you’re the one waiting for a response
If a customer submits an issue and the agent needs more information from them in order to proceed, the agent will request that additional information and wait for the customer to respond. If there’s no response from the customer, often that ticket just stays open and never gets resolved.
In order to alleviate this, you can implement some best practice workflows that will automatically send reminder emails to the customer. These workflows can set up email reminders to check in with the customer saying “Hey, just following up, is this still an issue?”
A second email can go out a few days later, checking if this is still an issue with the statement: “If we don't hear back from you, we're going to auto-close your ticket in two days.”
When it’s time to auto-close the ticket, you can send another email: “Your ticket was closed due to no response. But if it's still an issue, just reply back and we'll reopen your ticket.”
This workflow takes the burden off the agent—they no longer need to follow up manually, but the communication is still going out to the customer.
Watch your Cadence of Contact
Automated email workflows are incredibly helpful, but be mindful of your timing because you don’t want to overdo it. You may think sending an email every day is effective, but to your customers it’s a nuisance.
Make sure you understand your customers well enough to gauge what cadence of communication makes them feel attended to, but not annoyed. Also, be sure the workflow is set up correctly to reflect their cadence preferences.
Keep Messaging Consistent
No matter how many different technicians or departments your customers communicate with, you’re all representing the same company, so your tone and communication style must be the same.
You also should have the same information on every ticket so that the customer can see all pertinent information in one place. This should include:
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- Customer details
- Issue
- Troubleshooting steps taken (and when)
- Third-party vendor (if needed)
- Technical summary
This helps your internal team stay organized. By simply viewing the ticket’s latest time entry, they can see exactly what's been done and what still needs to be done.
Utilize Different Media
Get creative in your communication style. If you can’t really convey the message in an email, record a quick demonstration video. Then send them a link with the message “here's just a quick two minute video to explain XYZ.”
The customer will appreciate that you took the time to help them out personally. This small investment of time can build a lot of confidence and good will.
Know the Whole Story
Before you engage with a customer, be sure you’re up to speed on the issues. Read the ticket in its entirety and fully understand their complaint before you respond. If you don't understand the issue after reading the ticket, you can say something like: “I understand this is what you're reporting, but could you give me a little more information on that so I’m clear?”
When there’s a problem, the customer wants to be heard and helped. Having your team ask them multiple times for the details of the issue can be really frustrating and make them feel overlooked. Think about the issue from the customer’s perspective and what you’d like your support experience to be if you were a customer. Then, try to deliver that level of support.
Put Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes
Don’t just think about the customer’s experience, put yourself in their shoes. Sometimes there is a disconnect with the customer and the customer service agent because the agent has a high level of knowledge and they're talking to someone who probably doesn’t have that level. Keep it simple, without insider or jargon-y terminology. Find the right balance and know where to meet their knowledge level.
Sometimes you can gauge their knowledge level by how they ask questions, or sometimes you can just say “I’m sorry if you already know this, but did you try XY and Z?” Establishing that sort of understanding and connection at first goes a long way, and makes the customer feel like they’re not just another ticket in the queue.
If There’s a Problem, Address it Quickly
Make sure you have a process in place that immediately addresses negative feedback. It may not be an enviable job, but it’s critical in order to deliver excellent customer service. Taking ownership and addressing an issue directly and effectively can keep your CSAT reputation intact with a customer who’s unhappy.
Reach out and talk to the customer–there’s a chance that it was simply a miscommunication. Listen to them and determine how to make it right. If it's something you can fix, then assure them you're going to fix it, and let them know how. Then, make sure it’s resolved as quickly as possible.
Putting each of these tactics into practice will not only help you retain MRR clients, but should also aid in improving your customer base satisfaction rates.
