The customer service department is all too often seen as a cost center. They’re often the last area of a company to get a technology update. Instead, they’re a critical area that builds customer value in the long and short term.

Companies are just starting to realize all the cost-cutting done in the last few years is hurting customer value and the bottom line. The tidal wave is just starting to turn around into realizing it’s time to invest dollars in creating long-term valued customer relationships. They’re also realizing that customer happiness is achievable. And often customer support that makes and breaks success, so investments there are paying off.

“Good customer service comes with focusing on the whole customer lifecycle journey. It plays a critical role in which brands will outlast their competitors. It makes or breaks relationships every minute, every day. If in distress help them immediately. It’ll have a huge impact on customer lifetime value.” — Kim Proctor, founder of Customers That Click

Kim Proctor has two decades of experience in building strong customer relationships. She once led a contact center of 30 agents. Now, she is sharing her knowledge to help companies improve client relationships, improve retention, and word of mouth.

Kim has put a lot of energy into customer-retention efforts. She has found that even companies who have made progress on delivering an improved customer experience still have an opportunity to reach even higher goals. In our interview with her, she explains four key factors in delivering a powerful experience.

Here’s Kim’s 4 tips on how to ensure a higher rate of customer retention:

• Deliver Consistent, Reliable Experiences — Before you can wow customers by delighting and exceeding their expectations, you need to focus on the golden basics. “Forget the bells and whistles. If you aren’t reliable every time they make contact with you, that’s what the customer will remember most.” Quickly respond to and resolve complaints. At the end of the day, that’s all the customer will care about.
• Capture Actionable Information — Surveys can be a valuable tool for your company, but response rates tend to be low. Proctor suggests that rather than sending out more surveys, you should capture and act on the information customers are already sharing with you. She finds that those companies who maintain a Customer Relationship Database that includes feedback gathered across the customer lifecycle (from initial Sales transactions to Support tickets and renewal), have the best potential for meeting customer needs and keeping them engaged.
• Track the Right Metrics — It is time to stop focusing only on “call time” or “number of tickets” or “customers acquired” and start focusing on the customer metrics that really speak to the health of your business. You should be tracking: “How many customers you gained and lost every month. Not percentages, but absolute numbers. Then find out why an account left; was it a preventable issue? What are the top reasons people leave? Track and trend customer issues and customer growth and attrition. When you build a valuable relationship, clients will renew / buy again and/or tell their friends.”
• Communicate Across Departments — Creating an internal environment that can deliver on a great customer experience is important. “Team members need to work across departments. Incentivize them to look at the whole customer experience and journey. For the most part, it won’t feel natural. It takes work to build a culture driven by customer listening and considering customer’s needs before decisions are made. Create cross-silo goals and metrics and review them weekly. This whole effort requires a leader to champion the work or it will fall through the cracks.”

Kim’s final advice for how to take your customer experience to the next level:
All aspects of the experience need to bridge together. “Now, because customer service is no longer limited to just interactions over the phone or by email, you’ll have to actually help customers in their preferred channel to truly engage them (i.e. Twitter, forums, etc).”

Technology is finally starting to catch up to the customer’s needs. To provide a seamless, intuitive experience, “companies will need to scrape data from sources like social media. Data about customers’ interests and what they share over their social profiles. This information will be pivotal to providing better products and customized support. From there, it is about extracting actionable learning to improve the customer experience.”

If you’re looking for more CX tips, please check out my latest Customer Experience Matters interview with Jeannie Walters.