Each interaction your customers have with your company’s representatives gives them either a positive or a negative view of your company. In other words, your customer service is either promoting your brand or driving your customers away. If you’re not sure how your customers perceive your customer service, it’s time for a customer service consulting firm.
What Exactly is Customer Service Consulting?
Customer service consultants use their expertise to dive deep into your operations, analyze your current customer service, identify areas for improvement, and develop plans so you can achieve your service goals.
As a consulting firm that has helped hundreds of companies, we’ve identified three main ways customer service consulting can help you:
- If your brand promises exceptional customer service, it’s critical to ensure that it is. Whether it’s tech support, consumer affairs, front desk personnel, or inside sales, ensuring that every interaction is exceptional is crucial.
- If you have complicated situations at your company that you need your service staff to handle masterfully, that’s another opportunity for a customer service consulting firm to measure and improve your performance. That could be rate increases, supply chain difficulties, an unusual number of questions about a new product or service, or something else. Our Customer Service Evaluation shows you how you score in your current handling and how to do better and improve that score!
- If for your company, every customer relationship is vital, investing in customer service just makes sense. This is especially true for B2B companies, where the relationship between the customer and company is akin to a partnership and both sides mutually influence each other. If you’re interested in B2B, read the whitepaper here.
There are other scenarios when customer service consulting is needed, but most of our customer service consulting falls into one of these three categories.
Why You Need a Customer Service Consulting Firm
The quality of customer service impacts everything from how your customers perceive your brand to sales.
Bad customer service hurts companies’ bottom lines—by a lot. According to a 2016 Accenture study, the cost of customers switching companies due to poor service is $1.6 trillion. With the rise of social media and review sites, customers will leave your brand if they don’t like your customer service, leaving negative reviews for the entire internet to read.
Customers today are unhappier than ever with the service they receive. In 2023, nearly three-quarters of Americans said they had a product or service problem in the past year —more than double the number of problems in 1976.
A survey by Forrester Consulting found that customers are most frustrated about:
- Different customer service agents giving different answers (41 pct)
- Customer service agents not knowing the answer (34 pct)
- Respondents being unable to find an answer on a website (31 pct)
The good news is that this is preventable. And good customer service is one of the best ways to earn customer loyalty. Nearly 90 percent of customers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience, according to Salesforce. And 68 percent of customers say they will pay more for a brand that’s known for its good customer experience.
The Four Key Dimensions of Customer Service
No matter what your use case is, all customer service interactions can be broken down into four core dimensions: Differentiation, Information, Connection, and Efficiency.
- Differentiation: Does your customer service set your company apart in a way that makes customers remember you? Whether it’s an expert touch or a memorable sign off, differentiation is key.
- Information: Do your associates answer questions clearly and proactively? Are their answers complete, yet easy to understand? Do they frame your company in the best possible light?
- Connection: How well do your customer service staff engage your customers? Do they use listening and affirming words? Do they personalize interactions?
- Efficiency: Do your customer service associates show that they value your customers’ time? Are they transparent about wait times and reasons for holds?
Each dimension should be present in every customer interaction, but they are weighted differently based on your company’s goals and customer needs.
The Four Dimensions in Play
For a customer service consulting firm, it’s important to grasp how the four dimensions stack up in different industries.
For a construction company handling customer service calls, the quality of information is the most important: customers want to know what products are in stock, when they can pick them up or have them delivered, and specifics about products and applications. Customers care less about how friendly the representative is.
Sometimes information isn’t the most important element of customer service. For example, if Starbucks serves you cold coffee, connection and efficiency are most important. The barista should say, “I’m so sorry that happened,” and rectify the situation immediately.
What’s the Customer Service Consulting Process Like?
Here’s how the customer service consulting process works at Interaction Metrics:
- First, we mystery shop you and your competitors to gauge the current state of customer service at your company. When we can, we augment this with your call recordings, chat documentation, etc.
- Based on our findings, we create a set of criteria surrounding the four dimensions of customer service and use these criteria to do customer service evaluations. Depending on the company and what the customers need and expect, each of the criteria are weighted differently.
- Then, we score real calls between customers and representatives using the criteria and present the results in a Power BI dashboard so you can see real-time data and make informed decisions.
- Lastly, we do a customer service survey to see how customers perceive the company and if the changes and training we’ve implemented are having an impact.
Customer Service Surveys Pinpoint Next Steps
A Customer Service Survey is like a direct line to your what your customers really feel and think, giving your company the chance to zero in on what’s working and what needs a tweak.
This helps you make smart, informed decisions that enhance the customer experience. Plus, when customers see that you’re genuinely interested in their opinions and are committed to making changes, it builds trust and loyalty.
This is because of the ever-changing nature of customer expectations. Successful companies must adapt to meet these evolving needs, and customer service surveys provide direct insights into what customers value now.
Why Measurement Is the Key
When you’re deciding which customer service consulting firm to work with, ask what metrics they’re measuring. Do they have a system of measurement?
Cold, hard, differences in data impress your CEO and get buy-in from the board. Without measurement, you can’t make objective, data-backed decisions. If consulting isn’t based on scientific methodology, it’s just guesswork!
A team of expert analysts ensures your measurement system is replicable and objective. Here’s how our measurement process works at Interaction Metrics:
- Make a hypothesis: take the time to think about what you don’t know and what you’re looking for
- Quantify Results: using precise measurements, you can see emergent themes and present them to company leadership
- Take action: based on your findings about your initial hypothesis, you can make business decisions with confidence
Your metrics, methods, and goals should complement and inform each other. And take a hybrid approach to measurement, because every method has its pros and cons. Surveys are easy to implement, but they often reveal shallow insights because customers don’t think deeply about the details of their experience.
A hybrid approach will give you deeper insights. Service evaluations combined with customer interviews will identify where you lose customers and reveal customers’ deep thoughts.
What’s the Role of AI in Customer Service Consulting?
AI chatbots are becoming an increasingly popular tool to handle basic customer service interactions, offering quick, efficient responses to customer inquiries at any time of day.
While they can’t replace the human touch entirely, AI chatbots can handle routine tasks like answering frequently asked questions, processing orders, or guiding customers through simple troubleshooting steps.
And while AI can be a valuable tool for analyzing customer service conversations, you still need analysts who understand the difference between “It’s fine!” and “It’s fine, I guess,” to properly score your customer service interactions.
Which Departments Benefit from Customer Service Consulting Firms?
Customer service consulting isn’t just for customer service! Multiple departments can benefit from customer service consulting.
Customer Service/Support: Consulting agencies can streamline customer service processes, improve representative training, decrease response times, and introduce technology solutions to improve the customer experience.
Marketing: Marketing departments benefit from customer service consulting by understanding customers’ preferences, feedback, and behaviors. Consulting firms can help align marketing strategies with customer expectations, develop targeted messaging, and leverage customer service data to inform marketing campaigns.
Sales: Consulting firms can help sales teams understand customers’ needs and pain points, improve communication and relationship-building skills, and identify opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.
Operations/Logistics: Efficiency is one of the core components of customer service, and it can have an outsized impact on operations and logistics. A customer service consulting firm can help improve supply chain management to meet customers’ expectations and minimize disruptions.
Human Resources: Human resources departments can benefit from customer service consulting by improving employee training. Consulting firms can help HR teams identify skill gaps, develop customer service competencies, and foster a positive work culture that prioritizes customer satisfaction.
Customer Service Training: Hands-On Improvement
Occasionally, clients already know they need to improve their customer service. Often, it becomes apparent once we perform a customer service evaluation or a satisfaction survey.
If you want to deliver stellar customer service, your representatives need customer service training that exemplifies the highest standards and offers examples.
Our Customer Service Trainings educate employees on how to:
- Create peak moments
- Conclude interactions on a high note
- Connect with customers compassionately
- Communicate clearly and effectively in a wide range of scenarios
- Demonstrate your brand through customer service
Whether you choose an hour-long workshop or a half-day coaching session, we will start by discussing the core qualities of the customer experience and break the interaction into the four fundamental principles of customer service. We’ll explore different customer personas and situations and deconstruct examples of good and bad customer service.
Then, we’ll demonstrate model answers with The Playbook, reworking specific scenarios with your representatives. We’ve written Playbooks with hundreds of Model Answers and can help your representatives with any potential scenario.
Our Model Answers are more than scripted responses. They demonstrate to your associates what great customer service looks like in specific customer situations.
Last, we’ll do interactive exercises and co-critique interactions to increase customer service awareness. We’ll also brainstorm ways to incorporate the Model Answers into customer service.
Is a Customer Service Consulting Firm Worth It?
Investing in your customer service strategy is a game-changer for any business. When you make customers feel valued and heard, they don’t just stick around—they become your biggest fans and tell their friends, too. Plus, standout service sets you apart from the crowd, letting you stand out in a competitive market.
Over time, happy customers lead to more sales—so putting money into upgrading your customer service isn’t just smart; it’s essential for building a brand people love and trust.
If you’re wondering whether your customer service could be improved, send us a call recording, email exchange, or chat transcript. For free, we will give this interaction an objective assessment. This way, you’ll get insight into our processes and how we think.
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Want to learn about our customer service surveys, evaluations, and workshops? Get in touch!
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