In today’s business, customer support has become a significant pillar of success. As more and more businesses are shifting towards customer centric approach, customer support softwares are gaining an upper edge.
91% of dissatisfied customers simply won’t do business with you again. Worse, only 4% will let you know. On the other hand, many more will tell others about their negative experience with you. Nearly 60% will take their business elsewhere if they believe they will be treated better.
In this article I shall talk about tools which are meant to boost your customer support with reference to the three plugins –
Email, facebook has been there for quite a long time now but the preferred way of communication with the customers have gradually been moved to ticketing system. Which makes sense, because such ticketing softwares have been designed to meet the need of a convenient customer support system.
Why helpdesk plugin is a must?
Because let’s face it, as your customer base grows, email or phone support no longer eases the effort. It might even cause unnecessary havoc when you mistakenly miss out any mail by the customer. Now-a-days phone support comes into play only when a customer’s issue couldn’t be resolved by any other medium.
The need of a helpdesk plugin is growing every day and every once in a while, new features are getting added to those softwares in order to make the communication between a vendor and a customer smooth.
Hardly would you come across a site which doesn’t have a customer support plugin!
WSDesk is one such customer support plugin, meant for websites running on WordPress (The most popular CMS). It is a ticketing-based support plugin which registers customer queries through a support form and stores them as tickets in its dashboard.
Each ticket is assigned to specific Support Agents based on several parameters set up by the store owner. Each ticket has a status associated to it like ‘Open’, ‘Pending’, ‘Solved’ etc. Several other statuses can be created.
The most important feature of WSDesk is its automation. It can send auto-replies, automatically reopens a ticket, automatically assigns tickets to specific agents etc. The automation in wsdesk is based on ‘conditions’ and ‘triggers’. It’s like when a combination of conditions is satisfied one or more triggers are fired.
The customer support softwares are created in such a way to make the entire process of raising and resolving the issue simpler. For more details, you can visit the documentation page.
With the growing popularity of social media and the increasing number of platforms getting added, customer support too can extend its reach and make themself available in the social media channels.
Checkout these top WooCommerce Plugins to Ensure the Best Customer Experience.
Customer Support through Social Media?
Somehow social media conversations seem much real-time to the customers than the ticketing system.
That’s where the two plugins mentioned above come into play. The following plugins would play well alongside WSDesk and enhance the customer support of your webstore.
Click to Chat for WhatsApp Chat
It’s a free plugin by HoliThemes which would allow your website visitors to contact you through WhatsApp chat.
Now, you may ask, that in the midst of a number of popular live chat plugins, what is the need of another in the name of WhatsApp for WordPress.
Well, it’s simply because WhatsApp is large! When it comes to instant messaging, WhatApp has left behind every other alike. The extent of WhatsApp has been such that for us informal term of ‘texting’ has become synonymous to WhatsApp!
And nevertheless, any familiar icon in your website would only instill some more trust to your users.
Here’s an example of how the icon would appear in the bottom right corner.
Moreover, while livechat messages would be stored only at your end, WhatsApp messages would also remain at the customer’s end until of course they wish to delete it themselves.
With over 1 Billion users WhatsApp is growing every single day. Moreover, it’s no longer limited to phones, it has expanded its base as Windows and Mac app.
The plugin is very easy to use. Just install it and set a phone number and you are good to go. The plugin even provides further customization options for the display of the icon. The icon design and its position can be customized in order to match your website’s theme. Here’s the customization documentation.
Quick facebook chat
It’s a free plugin by Beeketing and would help your customer message you on Facebook directly from your website. You might ask, WhatsApp is there, why is Facebook integration required now?
Here’s how the messenger chat window would appear –
Well, Facebook integration holds a different significance. I would say an integration with the Facebook plugin is even more important, because that gives your support a face and attaches a social image to it. When a customer gets to know that they are able to communicate you on facebook, their confidence on you would rise as they are assured of talking to a real person and not a chat bot.
And let’s accept it, the familiar #3B5998 color (hex code for the blue color of the Facebook logo) has become the most familiar color on web. Facebook account has become a kind of identity for every individual and business.
How is it relevant to marketing?
A 2014 NewVoiceMedia study revealed that U.S. businesses lose $41 billion per year due to poor customer service.
When I write about customer support enhancing tools, I can’t stop myself from drifting to marketing. That’s because it’s another face of the same coin.
Providing a world-class customer support is infact the most direct way of marketing. Quite proving my point is the fact that all the top companies have a well settled customer support.
When you do your best to provide top class support to your customers, you are basically promoting your brand because one satisfied customer can return with 10 others.
An angry customer’s post on your Facebook page can jeopardize all your marketing efforts.
That’s why the above-mentioned customer support tools would indirectly help you in your marketing efforts. Be it the familiar social media logos attached to your site or the professional ticketing system, all would help you build a reputation and selling you product or service.
Happy selling!
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