Before setting goals for your inbound call center, it’s important to determine what benchmarks and characteristics are important to you as a company—but you should also consider what characteristics and benchmarks are important to your customers. The best way to find out what these are? Ask them! Customer support company Intercom did just that in a recent survey, polling over 1,000 U.S. customers in a variety of age groups to determine what is most important to them when it comes to good customer service. Here are some of the biggest takeaways.

Feeling Valued is Most Important

 

In the survey, 75% of customers said that feeling valued by the company was their biggest priority in deciding whether or not to continue doing business with a company and 64% went as far as to say that they would take their business elsewhere if they didn’t feel valued. So much of making a customer feel valued comes down to the customer service agent and how they speak to and treat the customer—so their role should be treated accordingly.

Your Primary Audience Determines the Best Tone

 

The tone your agents use in phone interactions with customers can, and perhaps should, vary based on the age of the customer. According to the Intercom survey, 56% of Boomers prefer a professional tone from their customer service reps, while 61% of Gen Z respondents favor a more casual approach. Collecting demographic data from your customers can be helpful in determining which approach your customer service agents should take.

 

Knowing a Customer’s History Goes Far

 

The importance of showing customers that you know them and their order history did vary a bit across age groups—it was a key driver of feeling valued for 76% of Boomers, 72% of Gen X-ers, 59% of Millennials and 49% of Gen Z-ers. But even though the numbers dipped based on age, close to half of Gen Z respondents still found it important. So giving your agents the ability to access a customer’s history with the company and use this information during interactions with customers will likely go far in any scenario, regardless of the age of the customer.

 

Any Communication is Better Than None

 

There are going to be situations in which your agents are unable to solve a customer’s problem immediately. It may require follow up, further evaluation, or more specialized support. But no matter the situation, the customers in the survey revealed that keeping them in the loop is most important. According to the results, 66% of customers said they would leave a business if their issues were left unresolved, 65% would leave if a company failed to respond to them and 61% would if they were left waiting too long for a response. The moral of the story: Keep your customers informed, regardless of the situation. It will go far towards developing brand loyalty and creating repeat customers.

As you develop and train your customer service agents, it’s critical that you give them a call center platform like CallShaper that supports them just as well. To learn more, contact us today