Customers today have many options to engage with a business and share their experiences with others, giving them greater control over their journey with a brand. As a result, companies need to be more proactive with their customer service approach to keep their customers satisfied and returning. Fortunately, you can deliver a consistently top-notch customer experience by adopting some customer service best practices. In this document, we’ll share ten best practices to maximize the effectiveness of your customer service program. Original Blog: https://biz30.timedoctor.com/customer-service-best-practices/

1. Source: Time Doctor’s Blog - How to Work Smart with a Task Tracker
Source: Time Doctor’s Blog - “10 Customer Service Best Practices to Boost Business Success”
10 Customer Service
Best Practices to
Boost Business
Success

2. 10 Customer Service Best Practices to
Boost Business Success in 2022
Customers today have many options to
engage with a business and share their
experiences with others, giving them greater
control over their journey with a brand.
As a result, companies need to be more
proactive with their customer service approach
to keep their customers satisfied and returning.

3. 1. Set Customer Service Standards
Setting standards for your customer service
program creates a solid foundation for your
customer service program.
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Companies should have clearly defined and well
documented service standards that their agents
should know.
You can specify the maximum waiting time for a
customer in a queue or set a limit on the minutes
spent per issue.
These benchmarks will guide your customer service
team by setting achievable and measurable targets.
Over time, your customers will
come to expect this service quality
that distinguishes you from your
competitors, boosting brand loyalty
It will also ensure that your customers receive a
certain level of service every time they reach out to
you.

4. 2. Take Note of Customer Expectations
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Take regular customer feedback post interactions to gauge their satisfaction
levels via customer surveys and questionnaires.
Facilitate customer focus groups and events to engage with them directly.
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According to a Delloitte report,
customers who have a
positive experience with a
brand are likely to spend
140% more than those with
negative experiences.
Businesses often set their service standards by considering what their competitors are
offering.
By designing your customer support program around customer expectations, you’ll be
able to deliver effective services and retain your customers over long periods.
Here are a few practical tips on how you can stay abreast of the evolving customer
expectation and deliver on them:
Identify and define your target customers.
Measure and track customer experience metrics.
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Analyze your customer feedback to understand their needs and take the
necessary steps to address their grievances.

5. 3. Measure Customer Experience KPI’s
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Net Promotor Score (NPS)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Measuring these KPIs will help you
see faulty patterns in your customer
service program and take timely
measures to correct them
Once you clearly understand your customers’ needs and have set the
service benchmarks accordingly, it’s time to track your performance
against these standards.
By measuring customer experience KPIs (key performance indicators) and metrics,
such as:
Customer Churn Rate
Customer Retention Rate

6. 4. Focus on Customer Retention
Retaining your existing customers is much cheaper than acquiring new
ones. Customer service plays a crucial role in retaining a customer and
could help improve the bottom line for the company.
As per a 2017 study, loyal customers spend 67% more than occasional or new
customers. Here are a few pointers to help you boost your retention rates:
Tools like Time Doctor allow
managers to set distraction
alerts and productivity ratings
for each app and website.
If a user is absent or spends too
much time on non work-related
sites, they get a pop-up notification.
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Develop a proactive customer service approach to take anticipatory
measures to resolve potential issues that prompt a customer to
disengage.
Customer loyalty stems from trust. Focus on building trust and
fostering a meaningful relationship with your customers
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Manage customer expectations and only promise that you can
deliver.
4
Use social media platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, etc. to connect
with your customers and encourage them to share their experiences
with your brand.
5
Create a robust system for quick and effective resolution of customer
complaints.

7. 5. Make an Excellent First Impression
Businesses may overlook the importance of making a positive first impression in
the customer journey.
Whether on a phone call, live chat, or through email, making a good first
impression could go a long way in forging lasting associations with your
customers.
This also prompts them to
spend less time on
distractions like social
media.
These software encourage employee accountability and
help you manage your time.
Employees get a clear picture of their time spent on each task,
helping them balance skilled tasks with other work.
Minimize the time it takes for a customer to reach your customer service agents.
Adopt a welcoming tone and use the customer’s name in your greetings.It’s also a
good practice to develop a greeting script for consistent communication.
Train your customer service representatives to actively hear out customer query and
be empathetic towards an angry customer.
Collect basic customer info through IVR (Interactive Voice Response) so that
agents can provide a quick and customized service experience..
Analyze negative feedback from a new customer to identify potential concerns.
Maximize the efficiency of your customer service reps by consolidating all
incoming interactions in one place by using a software for customer support.

8. If you offer omnichannel contact center services, you may be
engaging customers through different channels such as:
6. Create a Customer Data Repository
This activates the shipment process.
The customer receives the product.
The order is closed.
er i
Live and recorded phone calls, emails and
instant messages.
Social media feeds.
Chatbot and IVR interactions.
Surveys and questionnaires.
This is where a centralized customer database could be a
game-changer. It can help you boost your customer service efforts
by making them more targeted and effective.
For customer relationship(CRM) tool can efficiently store,
manage and access all customer information in one place.
Your customer support software can integrate with the
CRM and fetch relevant info for the support reps in
real-time.
It reduces the processing time for a returning customer as
agents will have the essential information at hand, resulting
in faster resolution.
Advanced software can even run powerful speech and text analytics
on the database to identify customers with higher chances of making
purchase decision, boosting sales performance.
The tool can either look for customers purchase history
or scan previous interactions for specific phrases and
words like “interested” “I am looking for” etc.
Advantages:

9. 7. Engage Your Employees
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Project and Task Report: This shows how much
Time an employee spends on individual projects
and tasks.
This’ll allow you to juggle
multiple projects, streamline
tasks across various platforms,
and save time - with one tracking
software.
A popular saying in the customer service industry is that “the key to happy
customers is happy employees.”
Customer service professionals may feel stressed out and demotivated due to the
unpredictable nature of the job and unrealistic expectations from the employer.
Invest in employee training and skill development as a competent
employee will high on confidence and motivation.
Develop an employee feedback system that prioritizes incremental
growth.
Recognize and reward top-performers in your team
Manage employee workload to prevent burnouts. Use an effective
workforce management system to do that.
Provide career growth opportunities to employees to motivate them
to give their best.
Avoid putting undue pressure on your employees by measuring
unnecessary metrics.
Prioritize employees mental and physical well-being through an
effective wellness program.
Following these simple
tips will keep your
customer support team
motivated and reduce
turnover, which is usually
quite high in the customer
service industry.

10. Employee engagement goes hand in hand with employee empowerment.
Even the best talents will fail to deliver expected results without the proper
infrastructure and tools for the job.
To maximize their team’s potential, companies should give them a solid
platform to learn and apply customer service skills effective. Let’s check out a
few simple ways to do that:
8. Empower your employees
Introduce comprehensive customer service training to sharpen their
domain knowledge and soft skills like active listening, conflict
resolution, note taking problem-solving etc.
Assign experienced agents as mentors to new hires to teach them
the ropes of customer service and ways to tackle difficult
customers.
Build an effective and robust infrastructure for efficient customer
service operation. An outdated telephonic system can hamper
employee workflow.
Fortunately, you can easily avoid this with time
tracking tools.When you track the amount of time
spent on different tasks under each project, it
becomes easier to eliminate any time-consuming
activities.
Invest in a scripting software tool and knowledge base to guide your
employees during customer interaction. It’ ll also ensure consistency
across interactions.
Create an employee self-service portal for routine functionalities like
applying for leaves or requesting schedule changes.
Customer service jobs are time-sensitive
and employees usually work with stiff targets
and deadlines. That’s why they must
manage their time well to excel at their job.

11. 9. Leverage Customer Journey Analytics
The US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Divison
recovered over $1.4 billion in unpaid wages from 2017
to 2021
Customer journey analytics uses quantitative data to help
you identify key obstacles in delivering a great customer
experience.
But companies and employees continue to work
beyond their work schedules.
33% of the employees agreed to work on the
weekends on average while more than 48% work
well beyond work hours. These are all major FSLA
violations.
Businesses can use analytics tools run that through customer data
across channels to uncover customer preferences and behaviour
patterns and improve quality of their customer service.
With customer service software businesses can identify certain trigger words
or actions that are associated with poor experience and negative feedback.
Based on this you can correct your interaction scripts and workflow to
eliminate such instances.
Analytics gives you crucial financial insights to help you ensure
customer satisfaction while optimizing your inputs.
Analytics can identify some common questions. Create FAQ page or
use automated chatbots to answer these queries and for basic
troubleshooting without engaging a service rep.
It can improve the overall
resolution time and boost customer
satisfaction.

12. 10. Follow up with Customers
1
Project and Task Report: This shows how much
Time an employee spends on individual projects
and tasks.
This’ll allow you to juggle
multiple projects, streamline
tasks across various platforms,
and save time - with one tracking
software.
Companies should make it a point to follow up with customers
after their issue has been resolved or the sale is closed. This simple
gesture could leave a lasting impression on the customers and
promote brand loyalty.
Gain significant
competitive
advantage
Following up with customers
after sales builds good
relationships can help you
gain a significant competitive
edge.
Promote
Brand Loyalty
Following up with customers
for their issues is a simple
gesture which leaves a lasting
impression and promotes
brand loyalty.
Engage with
your customers
Create follow-up
touchpoints and engage
your customers - thank
them if they need more
assistance or request
feedback.

13. 5 Key Benefits of Using TimeDoctor
Time Doctor is a powerful time and performance tracking tool used
by large companies like Ericsson as well as a small business like
Thrive Market to boost productivity across the board.
Here’s a glimpse into how Time Doctor could help your business:
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Accurately track and analyze the time a customer service agent spends
interacting with the customers and performing other work duties.
2 Distraction and idle time alerts can help your employees
self-correct unproductive behaviour.
See real-time reports to assess an employee’s productivity.
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4
Easily create optimized work schedules to maintain
optimum staffing levels.
5
Quickly pay your team by mapping time data with
an integrated payroll management system.

14. Establish Accountability
Escalate Issues Faster
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