importance of case study in customer service

Customer Service Case Studies: Real-Life Examples Of Service Scenarios.

Are you looking for real-life examples of customer service scenarios that can help you improve your own customer service skills? Look no further!

In this article, we will explore a series of case studies that highlight different aspects of effective customer service. These case studies will provide you with valuable insights into how to handle challenging situations, resolve issues, and create positive experiences for your customers.

Customer service plays a crucial role in the success of any business. It is not just about answering phone calls or responding to emails; it is about building relationships and exceeding customer expectations. By studying real-life examples, you can gain a deeper understanding of the importance of effective customer service and learn strategies to enhance your own skills.

In each case study, we will delve into different scenarios and examine how businesses successfully handled them. From resolving product quality issues to dealing with difficult customers, these case studies will showcase various approaches and solutions that you can apply in your own work.

Get ready to dive into these insightful stories that demonstrate the power of exceptional customer service!

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

• Effective customer service is crucial for the success of a business.
• Empathy and proactive customer service are essential aspects of providing excellent customer service.
• Prompt resolution of product quality issues, with notification and compensation for affected customers, helps maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Handling difficult customers with a calm and empathetic approach, offering alternatives, and empowering them to make choices can build trust and loyalty.

The Importance of Effective Customer Service

You can’t underestimate the impact of great customer service – it’s like a warm cup of coffee on a chilly morning, instantly making you feel valued and appreciated.

In today’s competitive business landscape, providing effective customer service is more important than ever. Customers have numerous options at their fingertips, and one bad experience can send them running to your competitors. That’s why empathy plays a crucial role in customer service.

When customers feel understood and cared for, they’re more likely to become loyal advocates for your brand. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. In customer service, this means putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and genuinely listening to their concerns.

By showing empathy, you demonstrate that you value their emotions and are committed to finding a solution that meets their needs. This not only helps resolve issues effectively but also builds trust and strengthens the relationship with your customers.

Proactive customer service is another essential aspect of providing exceptional support. Instead of waiting for customers to come to you with problems or complaints, proactive customer service involves anticipating their needs and addressing any potential issues before they arise.

This approach shows that you’re dedicated to delivering an outstanding experience from start to finish. By taking the initiative, you can prevent problems from escalating and create positive interactions that leave a lasting impression on your customers.

The importance of effective customer service cannot be overstated. Empathy allows you to connect with your customers on a deeper level by understanding their emotions and concerns. Proactive customer service demonstrates your commitment to going above and beyond expectations by anticipating needs before they become problems.

By prioritizing these aspects in your approach to customer service, you can foster loyalty, build strong relationships with customers, and ultimately drive success for your business.

Case Study 1: Resolving a Product Quality Issue

Resolving a product quality issue can be challenging, but did you know that 86% of customers are more likely to repurchase from a company that resolves their complaint? When faced with a product quality issue, it’s important for companies to take immediate action and address the problem effectively.

One notable case study involves a product recall due to safety concerns. The company promptly notified customers about the recall through multiple channels such as email, social media, and website announcements. This proactive approach not only ensured customer safety but also demonstrated the company’s commitment to resolving the issue.

To further enhance customer satisfaction during this challenging time, the company offered compensation to affected customers. The compensation included a full refund for the recalled product as well as additional discounts on future purchases. By going above and beyond in compensating their customers, the company not only mitigated any potential negative feelings but also showed genuine concern for their customers’ wellbeing.

In addition to addressing individual complaints, the company took steps towards preventing similar issues in the future. They implemented stricter quality control measures throughout their production process and conducted thorough inspections before releasing any products into the market. This proactive approach reassured customers that their concerns were taken seriously and instilled confidence in the brand’s commitment to delivering high-quality products.

By resolving a product quality issue promptly and ensuring customer satisfaction through compensation and preventive measures, companies can not only retain existing customers but also build trust with new ones. It’s crucial for businesses to recognize that effective customer service goes beyond simply resolving complaints; it requires taking responsibility for failures, implementing meaningful solutions, and continuously improving processes to prevent similar issues from arising again in the future.

Case Study 2: Handling a Difficult Customer

Navigating through challenging interactions with clients can be a test of your company’s ability to handle difficult situations. Dealing with angry customers requires a delicate balance of empathy, patience, and problem-solving skills.

One real-life example of a company successfully managing a difficult situation involved an irate customer who had received a damaged product.

In this case, the customer contacted the company’s customer service department immediately after receiving the damaged product. The representative on the phone remained calm and empathetic throughout the conversation, acknowledging the customer’s frustration. They apologized sincerely for any inconvenience caused and assured the customer that they would resolve the issue promptly.

The representative then offered several options to address the problem, including sending a replacement or providing a refund. By presenting these alternatives, they empowered the customer to choose what solution best suited their needs. This approach helped defuse tension and created an atmosphere of collaboration rather than confrontation.

Ultimately, by effectively managing this difficult situation and prioritizing customer satisfaction, the company not only resolved the issue but also built trust and loyalty with their client base.

Case Study 3: Going Above and Beyond for a Customer

Exceeding expectations and leaving a lasting impression, one company went the extra mile to ensure a memorable experience for a dissatisfied client. The customer, let’s call her Sarah, had purchased a high-end laptop from this company but encountered numerous technical issues soon after receiving it. Frustrated with the product’s performance and the lack of support she received initially, Sarah reached out to the company’s customer service department for assistance.

To address Sarah’s concerns promptly, the customer service representative assigned to her case took immediate action. Recognizing that resolving her technical issues alone would not suffice in restoring Sarah’s trust and satisfaction, they decided to go above and beyond what was expected. The representative personally followed up with Sarah daily to provide updates on their progress in fixing her laptop. They also offered additional compensation for the inconvenience caused by sending her a complimentary accessory package.

In addition to their exceptional level of communication, this company created a personalized experience for Sarah through small gestures that left an indelible mark on her overall perception of their brand. One example was when they surprised her by upgrading her laptop’s warranty without any additional cost. This unexpected act not only demonstrated their commitment to providing quality products but also highlighted their dedication towards ensuring customer satisfaction.

By going above and beyond in addressing Sarah’s concerns and surpassing her expectations at every turn, this company exemplified outstanding customer service. Their proactive approach not only resolved technical issues efficiently but also left a lasting impression on Sarah concerning how much they valued her as a loyal customer. Through personalized attention, generous compensation, and unexpected upgrades, they not only ensured Sarah’s satisfaction but also fostered a long-term relationship based on trust and loyalty. This case study serves as a powerful reminder that going the extra mile can make all the difference in customer satisfaction and retention.

Case Study 4: Turning a Negative Review into a Positive Experience

If your business has ever received negative feedback, it’s important to know how to turn that experience into a positive one.

In this case study, we will explore how a business addressed a customer’s concerns and transformed their perception from negative to positive.

By taking the necessary steps and going above and beyond, the business not only resolved the issue but also improved their reputation in the process.

The negative feedback received by the business

Despite your best efforts, your business was bombarded with a barrage of scathing feedback that left you reeling. Customers expressed their dissatisfaction with the quality of your products and the poor customer service they received.

These negative reviews not only affected customer retention but also posed a threat to your brand reputation. The negative feedback highlighted areas where improvements were needed. It pointed out flaws in your product design, manufacturing processes, and communication channels.

While it may be disheartening to receive such criticism, it presents an opportunity for you to address these issues and enhance the overall customer experience. By acknowledging the shortcomings and taking immediate action to rectify them, you can regain customers’ trust and loyalty while rebuilding your brand’s reputation.

The steps taken to address the customer’s concerns

After receiving the negative feedback, we quickly took action to address the customer’s concerns and improve our products and services. We understand that addressing customer complaints is essential for maintaining a positive reputation and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Our first step was to reach out to the customer directly, expressing our apologies for any inconvenience caused and assuring them that their concerns were being taken seriously.

To resolve the customer’s issues, we implemented a thorough investigation into the matter. This involved examining the specific details of their complaint, evaluating our internal processes, and identifying any areas where improvements could be made. By conducting this analysis, we were able to pinpoint the root cause of the problem and develop an effective solution.

Once we identified areas for improvement, we promptly made necessary changes to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future. This included updating our training programs for staff members involved in customer service interactions and enhancing quality control measures throughout our production process. We also communicated these updates transparently with all relevant stakeholders to ensure everyone understood our commitment to resolving customer issues.

Addressing customer complaints is not just about solving individual problems; it is about continuously improving our overall products and services. By taking immediate action upon receiving negative feedback, we demonstrate our dedication to providing exceptional experiences for every customer.

We remain committed to resolving any issues promptly while striving to exceed expectations in delivering high-quality products and top-notch service.

The transformation of the customer’s perception and improved reputation

Now that the steps have been taken to address the customer’s concerns, let’s discuss the transformation of their perception and the improved reputation of your business.

By promptly addressing the customer’s issues and providing a satisfactory resolution, you’ve demonstrated your commitment to customer satisfaction. This level of responsiveness not only resolves the immediate problem but also leaves a lasting impression on the customer.

As a result, their perception of your brand is likely to improve significantly. They’ll appreciate your willingness to listen, understand, and take action to rectify any issues they may have faced. This positive experience can lead to increased brand loyalty as customers recognize that you value their feedback and are committed to delivering exceptional service.

To further enhance customer satisfaction and foster brand loyalty, consider implementing these strategies:

• Personalized follow-up: Reach out to customers after resolving their concerns with personalized messages or phone calls. This gesture shows that you genuinely care about their experience and want to ensure their ongoing satisfaction.
• Proactive communication: Keep customers informed about any changes or improvements related to the issue they encountered. Sharing updates showcases transparency and builds trust in your ability to continuously improve.
• Loyalty rewards program: Offer incentives or exclusive benefits for loyal customers who continue choosing your brand despite any initial challenges they may have faced. Rewarding their loyalty encourages repeat business and strengthens long-term relationships.

By investing in improving customer satisfaction and building brand loyalty, you can create a positive reputation for your business while fostering long-term success in an increasingly competitive market.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key elements of effective customer service.

Effective customer service requires several key elements.

One interesting statistic is that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. This highlights the importance of providing exceptional service.

Effective communication plays a crucial role in customer service as it allows you to understand the needs and concerns of your customers, while also conveying information clearly and concisely.

Empathy and understanding are equally important, as they enable you to connect with customers on an emotional level, showing them that their satisfaction is your top priority.

By incorporating these elements into your customer service approach, you can create positive experiences that leave a lasting impression on your customers.

How can companies measure the success of their customer service efforts?

To measure the success of your customer service efforts, you can utilize various customer satisfaction metrics and conduct thorough customer feedback analysis.

Customer satisfaction metrics, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Effort Score (CES), provide valuable insights into how satisfied your customers are with the service they received. These metrics allow you to quantify customer sentiment and identify areas for improvement.

Additionally, analyzing customer feedback through surveys or social media monitoring enables you to understand specific pain points and address them proactively.

By consistently measuring these indicators and taking action based on the results, you can continuously enhance your customer service performance and ensure a positive experience for your customers.

What are some common challenges faced by customer service representatives?

Handling difficult customers and managing high call volumes can be incredibly challenging for customer service representatives. Dealing with irate customers can feel like trying to calm a hurricane with a feather, as their frustrations can reach astronomical levels. It requires an extraordinary level of patience and empathy to navigate through their anger and find a resolution that satisfies both parties.

Additionally, managing high call volumes can feel like juggling flaming swords while walking on a tightrope. The constant influx of calls puts immense pressure on representatives to provide quick and efficient assistance without compromising the quality of service.

However, despite these Herculean tasks, customer service representatives rise above the challenges by employing exceptional communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction.

How can companies improve their customer service skills and knowledge?

To improve their customer service skills and knowledge, companies should invest in comprehensive training programs that provide employees with the necessary tools and techniques to handle different scenarios. These programs can include modules on effective communication, problem-solving, and empathy to ensure that representatives are equipped to handle any customer interactions.

Additionally, implementing feedback systems that allow customers to provide their input and suggestions can also be beneficial. This feedback can help identify areas for improvement and enable companies to make necessary adjustments in their processes or training programs.

By prioritizing ongoing training initiatives and actively seeking customer feedback, companies can continually enhance their customer service skills and knowledge, leading to improved overall customer satisfaction levels.

What are some best practices for handling customer complaints and resolving issues?

When it comes to handling customer complaints and resolving issues, think of yourself as a skilled navigator guiding a ship through stormy waters. Customer feedback is like the wind, sometimes gentle and other times fierce, but always pushing you towards improvement.

Conflict resolution is your compass, helping you find the right path to address concerns and turn unhappy customers into satisfied ones. Actively listen to their grievances, empathize with their frustrations, and offer swift solutions that demonstrate your commitment to their satisfaction.

By taking ownership of the problem and going above and beyond to resolve it, you can transform a dissatisfied customer into a loyal advocate for your brand.

In conclusion, effective customer service is crucial for businesses to thrive in today’s competitive market. As demonstrated by the case studies discussed, handling product quality issues, difficult customers, and negative reviews with empathy and proactive solutions can turn potentially negative experiences into positive ones.

One interesting statistic that highlights the impact of great customer service is that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience (Source: PwC). This statistic evokes an emotional response as it emphasizes the value customers place on exceptional service. By investing in providing top-notch customer service, businesses not only create loyal customers but also have the potential to increase their revenue.

To ensure success in customer service scenarios, it is essential for businesses to empower their employees with proper training and resources. By equipping them with problem-solving skills, effective communication techniques, and a genuine desire to help customers, companies can build strong relationships and foster trust. Additionally, embracing technology solutions such as AI-powered chatbots or self-service options can streamline processes and provide faster resolutions.

In summary, delivering exceptional customer service requires a proactive approach that focuses on resolving issues promptly while exceeding expectations. By prioritizing the needs of customers and going above and beyond to provide personalized solutions, businesses can create memorable experiences that result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Remember, investing in superior customer service is not just about satisfying your current customers; it’s about attracting new ones who’re willing to pay more for an outstanding experience.

The eSoft Editorial Team, a blend of experienced professionals, leaders, and academics, specializes in soft skills, leadership, management, and personal and professional development. Committed to delivering thoroughly researched, high-quality, and reliable content, they abide by strict editorial guidelines ensuring accuracy and currency. Each article crafted is not merely informative but serves as a catalyst for growth, empowering individuals and organizations. As enablers, their trusted insights shape the leaders and organizations of tomorrow.

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• Customer Interaction

4 Customer Service Case Studies to Inspire You

Customer service case studies help attract new customers to your business by showing them how your company can help them. Instead of simply telling customers what you can do for them, you demonstrate it with storytelling and draw them in.

November 24, 2022

6 mins read

If you’ve researched any brand it’s more than likely you’ve come across a customer service case study. Real-life customer experiences are a powerful way to advertise a brand and showcase the real interactions customers have when approaching a company’s customer service department.

Instead of simply telling a customer what it’s like to benefit from a company’s customer service, they demonstrate genuine examples of customers who have submitted tickets to their customer service team. 

On the surface of it, one company can appear much like another without powerful customer service case studies to demonstrate its impact. Customers will be required to actually sign up to your service before they can experience your customer support for themselves. 

What is a customer service case study?

A customer service case study is a strategy to show the experiences of customers that have actually signed up to use your product or service and have actually witnessed your customer service for themselves. 

Potential customers who are researching what your company has to offer will benefit from the case studies of customers that have already passed through the buying decision. Instead of a company simply telling prospective customers what they have to offer, they will be able to demonstrate their service in reality. 

A customer service case study goes beyond being a simple testimonial, however. It’s factual evidence of customers who have implemented your company’s product or service and a demonstration of its ability to actually deliver results. 

Why are customer service case studies important? 

Without customer service case studies, your business will struggle to show how it is helping its customers. A case study shows your prospective customers how the business has performed in a real-life example of customer service, and helps them imagine what it would be like to do business with your company. 

Customer service case studies show potential customers how your business has helped customers to solve their problems and further their business goals. Although there are other ways to market your business, customer service case studies are a solid way to reach out to new prospects and convert them into customers. 

Successful customer case studies showcase successful examples of customer service that persuade your prospects to actually buy. They show prospects how well your customer service actually works and highlights your product’s value. 

How do you write a customer service case study?

There are a few strategies you need to follow when writing a customer service case study. Having a variety of different case studies will enable you to reach more potential customers which cover a range of situations and needs. 

1. Focus on your personas

You need to consider the type of the customer that you want to attract with your customer service case study. Mapping out your personas is an important part of your marketing strategy because it helps you identify prospects with unique wants and needs. Your customer service may appeal to different types of individuals and it’s crucial to target each one specifically. 

2. Tell a story

At their core, customer service case studies are stories about particular customers. Simply raving about how great your company is wil be boring for your readers, and you need to take them on a journey. Stories need to have obstacles to overcome, and your case study should show how your product or service is the hero of the narrative. 

3. Emphasize benefits

The benefits of your customer service will help to appeal to customers that have a specific pain point to solve. Instead of focusing on products or features it’s important to show how your service will help them. Your customer service case study is likely to be a representative example of a customer that has similar problems to other prospects, and it’s important to help prospective customers visualize using your service. 

4. Highlight the results 

Highlighting the results that your customer service will help your customers achieve means focusing on the before and after of using your service. Genuine improvements to your customer’s business will help to convince them that your product or service is the answer. Showing the results of your customer service helps customers see how they can save or make more money after choosing your business. 

4 interesting customer service case studies

Quick heal and kayako.

Here’s the first interesting customer service case study from Kayako. There was a company called Quick Heal Technologies which was a provider of internet security tools and anti-virus software. They had millions of global users, but they were struggling to deliver outstanding customer service due to a high volume of customer service requests. 

One of their main issues was the absence of a system to track requests from different sources. Agents were checking many different platforms for customer service requests, and lacked a vital overview of the customer experience. They were losing tickets and suffering from incomplete information. There were delays in the customer support experience and the existing system couldn’t manage its workflow. 

Enter Kayako, help desk software. Their Shared Inbox Solution brought together the different customer service platforms such as email, Facebook, Twitter, and live chat. Quick Heal agents were able to support customers seamlessly and minimize the number of tickets that were dropped. They could significantly reduce their ticket response times and accelerate the time to resolution. Agents were able to much more effectively collaborate and reduce duplication of effort. 

Springboard and Help Scout

The next customer service case study is about Springboard, a platform which provides online resources and personalized mentors to help students build their dream careers. Their aim is to make a great education accessible to anyone in the world. 

So far, they have worked with 250 mentors to train more than 5,000 students over 6 continents. Their success has depended on their ability to create an open environment where students feel comfortable requesting feedback and discovering course information on their own. 

Springboard needed a solution that could help them build relationships with their students, even if it’s over email, and they decided that Help Scout was the answer. They chose Help Scout because it means they can have human conversations rather than treating their students like a ticket number. 

They make use of Help Scout’s help desk features to find key insights into students’ conversations, as well as their Docs knowledge base which provides answers to common questions. As a result, students are able to more effectively learn and overcome problems when they arise. 

We’ve got another customer service case study from an airline – in this case, JetBlue. They really know how to make their customers smile with small gestures and ensure they can win customers for life. 

One customer called Paul Brown was flying with JetBlue from the smaller terminal at Boston’s Logan airport. He realized that he couldn’t grab his usual Starbucks coffee because there was no Starbucks at the terminal. On a whim, he sent a tweet to JetBlue asking them to deliver his venti mocha, and to his surprise they obliged! Within minutes JetBlue customer service representatives had delivered the coffee to Paul’s seat on the plane. 

This example of customer service shows that JetBlue is willing to go the extra mile for customers and will ensure that the company can continue to attract more customers.

Gympass and Slack

Gympass is an international platform that gives companies and their employees 50% to 70% off a global network of fitness studios, digital workouts, and mental health and nutrition services. It was founded in 2012 and has experienced steady growth, now worth more than USD $1 billion. Users of Gympass have access to 50,000 gyms and studios in more than 7,000 cities, so they can work out while they are on the move. 

The problem with this growing company was communication across the globe. The company was overly reliant on emails which led to silos and employees missing out on vital information. The solution to this problem was Slack, a communications platform which is made accessible to all new employees so they have everything they need right from the start. 

Now, teams at Gympass work across a range of 2,000 Slack channels which are open to 1,000 employees. They can share documents, messages and information, keeping connected across locations and facilitating new projects like event planning. It’s enabled Gympass to build a strong culture of collaboration and ensure that every employee can find the information they need. 

Wrapping up

Customer service case studies help attract new customers to your business by showing them how your company can help them. Instead of simply telling customers what you can do for them, you demonstrate it with storytelling and draw them in. Showing your customers benefits and outcomes support them to make the decision to purchase. 

Before they actually have a trial of using your product or service, it’s hard for customers to know what it would be like. Case studies can give a valuable preview into what it would be like to work with your company and highlight customers that have already achieved success. 

Catherine is a content writer and community builder for creative and ethical companies. She often writes case studies, help documentation and articles about customer support. Her writing has helped businesses to attract curious audiences and transform them into loyal advocates. You can find more of her work at https://awaywithwords.co.

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Customer Experience

5 Case Studies to Improve Your Customer Service

As more and more customer transactions occur virtually, the quality of online help desks and customer service support is becoming an essential differentiator for companies. An estimated  73% of consumers say a good experience is critical in influencing their brand loyalties.

Customer satisfaction directly impacts the bottom line, too, as 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue.

Apart from the stats, it is important to look for examples of company success stories improving customer service and productivity. Having high-performance customer service is essential for any company, regardless of industry. Check out these five case studies that will help you improve this process in your business.

How Quick Heal optimized their customer service, extending support hours and responding to inquiries faster

Quick Heal Technologies is a leading provider of internet security tools and anti-virus software, serving millions of users worldwide. Like many fast-growing companies, they experienced bottlenecks in their customer service process due to the high volume of requests.

• No system to track requests from different sources. 
• Agents could not maintain a global view of the customer request, negatively impacting customer service.  
• High incidence of lost tickets and incomplete information.
• Customers were not happy with the support delays.  
• The existing system did not manage its workflow.

Quick Heal researched several options yet didn’t find a solution with the right blend of factors. That’s when the team signed up for a free trial of Kayako. Before the free trial even ended, Quick Heal decided that Kayako was the right solution.

Kayako’s Shared Inbox Solution creates a frictionless experience by unifying interactions from different sources like email, Facebook, Twitter, and live chat. The Shared Inbox Solution means QuickHeal agents can serve customers more efficiently while preventing dropped tickets and lost conversations.

Kayako Benefits for Quick Heal:

• Reduced ticket response and resolution times
• Improved collaboration and reduced duplication of effort
• Extended support hours
• Consolidated conversations from multiple sources

“Without Kayako, we would not be able to manage all of the incoming ticket requests in an organized manner nor provide the quality of support we stand for. Kayako is far more efficient than our previous help desk system.” Sushant Dashputre, Assistant Manager of Technical Support at Quick Heal

Are you ready to deliver Friction-Free Customer Service? Capture your customer’s entire journey in a way a support ticket or traditional help desk never could. Discover Kayako Single View

Increasing NameCheap’s agent productivity through a self-service knowledge base

Namecheap is a leading domain registrar and technology company that offers domain registration, hosting packages, and related services. Customer support is vital to Namecheap, especially because they serve many repeat customers. Scaling personalization in support is imperative to avoid customer churn.

• No optimized workflow for the high volume of requests led to customer complaints.
• Due to a complicated and overwhelming process when responding to customer tickets, Agents became stressed. 
• Low productivity for service agents.

Namecheap began to look for a reliable, unified customer service software solution. They had difficulty finding an option that fit all their needs. The Namecheap team then learned about Kayako and decided to try it.

After Namecheap integrated Kayako into their website, they saw an immediate improvement in agent productivity. They implemented a Self-Service Portal with tools like macro-libraries of responses, automated replies, and a self-help knowledge base to help customers get helpful answers anytime they need help.

Kayako’s SingleView gives agents a complete visualization of the entire customer journey, from initial purchase to most recent customer service inquiry for individualized customer questions needing personalized support. Kayako enables Namecheap to scale personalized customer service, the holy grail for companies with a high volume of repeat customers.

Kayako Benefits for Namecheap:

• Improved self-service knowledge base.
• Streamlined ticket management.
• Boosted productivity.
• Increased customer satisfaction.

“One of the things we most value about Kayako is how carefully they have thought about real-life support processes. In all aspects, Kayako provides us with value in buckets.” Nata Trusova, Director of Customer Support at Namecheap

How Envato manages multiple customer bases in one place and resolves tickets faster

Envato is a world-leading online community for creatives. The company’s steady growth since 2006 outpaced its existing resources for support requests. Envato tried building their own help desk and quickly saw that a DIY solution would be prohibitively expensive in terms of time and money.

They began to search for an existing customer service software solution that could meet their needs and fit their budget.

• Existing support system not keeping up with the volume of requests. 
• Support requests were hard to track, sometimes going to individual emails. 
• Envato managed multiple customer databases and needed a way to coordinate them.

Using Kayako’s SingleView dashboard, Envato could access multiple customer databases in just one place. SingleView provides a complete view of the customer journey so that customer service agents can provide personalized support to every customer.

Using features like Kayako’s ticket parsing rules, Smart Routing and internal collaboration tools helps Envato efficiently give customers accurate answers every time. With Kayako, the Envato team handles more requests in less time while increasing the quality of customer service. Best of all, Kayako is a scalable solution that can grow with Envato.

Kayako Benefits for Envato:

• Resolved tickets faster.
• Managed all customer databases in a single system.

“Kayako has allowed us to extensively customize our help desk. This really meant that we can just make our help desk work in the way we want, rather than coming up with an elaborate system to fit into the technical requirements of other help desks. It has functionality that other support providers have not been able to match.” Jordan McNamara, Community Manager, Envato

Increasing Texas Tech´s customer satisfaction with a communication and collaboration platform

Texas Tech University is a top institution focused on advancing higher education, research, and health care. With more than 10,000 employees and over 36,000 students, their support team was overwhelmed with the volume of service requests.

• Support staff, students, faculty, and many other stakeholders were frustrated because the system couldn’t handle the high volume of support requests. 
• The situation reflected poorly on their brand as a top higher education institution. 
• Staff was trying to manage support requests using a shared Outlook account.
• They had no way to collaborate internally on support requests.

After comparing different options, Texas Tech chose Kayako because it offered  Kayako Collaborators Feature they needed to coordinate internal communications and to serve customers with faster responses.

Their team quickly implemented Kayako’s out-of-the-box features and immediately saw improvement.

“Once we implemented Kayako, we immediately noticed an increase in the quality of communication and collaboration, especially between our support and development team. Our customers also praised the improved communication.” Kevin Eyck, Enterprise Server Administrator, Texas Tech University

Kayako’s integrated self-service feature helped Texas Tech reduce the number of live-agent.

tickets by assisting customers in helping themselves. Texas Tech also leveraged Kayako’s customization options, using a custom LoginShare and integrating it with the intranet and applications used on their campus.

Kayako didn’t just help Texas Tech improve the support experience for the customer; it also enhanced their internal team’s productivity.

With Kayako, Texas Tech University handles all of its support requests quickly and easily resolves customer problems. Customers also benefit from the improved processes for ticket management and communication.

Kayako Benefits for Texas Tech University:

• Reduced the number of support tickets.
• Improved internal collaboration.
• Gained self-service capability.

How Kayako helped CoinStop reduce average response time and implement omnichannel customer support

Coinstop is a trusted provider of cold storage cryptocurrency hardware wallets. After launching in 2016, Coinstop experienced extremely rapid growth.

They soon struggled to manage and respond to all of the support inquiries and questions from potential customers. The Coinstop team began searching for a customer service software solution that was easy to use and implement.

• Rapid growth was putting a strain on the existing bare-bones support process.
• Coinstop must spend time educating customers as well as selling to them.
• Customer service practices did not scale with the company.
• Coinstop was providing customer support using a single email account. 
• Manually responding to hundreds of emails per day wasn’t a productive use of time. 
• There was no way to track the progress of support requests, they couldn’t standardize responses across the various agents, and they found themselves asking repetitive questions that frustrated their customers. 

Coinstop needed a help desk and live chat software to organize and optimize their support. They chose Kayako customer support software because it offers the best experience for both support agents and customers.

Using the Kayako dashboard, agents can interact with customers across multiple social platforms, email, and live chat. Agents can see the customer’s history from all channels, not just chat or email.

Everyone on the Coinstop team has immediate access to all the information they need to provide quick, personalized support to customers with Kayako’s SingleView.

Kayako Benefits for Coinstop:

• Reduced average response time.
• Managed a higher volume of tickets with the same number of agents.
• Improved collaboration between departments.
• Implemented omnichannel support.

“You need one place to browse every single conversation you have had with each customer. Kayako is very well organized. You can tie everything into it, including emails, social media, and team members.” Christopher Pavlesic, Co-Founder of Coinstop

Are you ready to increase your team’s efficiency? Provide a better employee experience and speed up internal support with Kayako HelpDesk. Discover Kayako Self Service

Common Challenges, Custom Solutions for Customer Service Help Desk

As you can see, companies across a spectrum of industries often share similar challenges with customer service. Do you have questions about improving your customer service process? Join world-class customer support teams like the companies in these case studies using Kayako to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Book a Demo today.

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• Start your free trial or take the tour to learn more about Kayako
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6 Interesting Customer Service Case Studies to Inspire You

July 18, 2023

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An 11-year-old boy’s experience with LEGO customer service changed the company’s brand perception. It’s not only brought in more customers but also justified their lead position in the market. Here, we will discuss a few more interesting customer service case studies.

One good service can not just help one customer but also influence future customers. Reading others’ stories will help you understand ways to overcome new challenges.

I will start with some popular ones.

Popular customer experience case studies

Customer service is not just limited to providing product-related support anymore. We have passed the line way back. As the market gets more critical, everyone is running a few extra miles. Even the top companies in the field are not compromising anything. 

Let’s start with JetBlue’s customer service case study.

JetBlue sets an example of how you can use social media to provide excellent customer service. They have multiple teams at different levels that are active on Twitter. And there are many examples of it.

Here is one: Paul once tweeted that he couldn’t find Starbucks at the gate while boarding the flight. JetBlue immediately responded with an alternative, which was free for him.

Another challenge that JetBlue faced was the winter storm in early January of 2017 . They had to cancel a lot of flights at that time. And because of this, thousands of people were impacted.

The challenge here is that JetBlue cannot change the weather or ensure a safe flight during a storm. But they can provide up-to-date information.

So, they started to tweet updates about the storm and the flight schedule the whole time. As a result, even though the passengers were frustrated, they were happy with JetBlue’s service.

Zappos has a good reputation for providing the best customer support. And it has a lot of interesting customer service case studies. One particular service case created a lot of buzz in the market.

Zappos’s service agent talked with a customer for 10 hours in one call. And, surprisingly, Zappos took it in a positive way. The call wasn’t even about any service. 

This long call started with where and how that customer lives. Then, eventually, it turns into clothing and fashion-related conversation. Finally, the customer ended the call with the purchase of a pair of UGG boots.

It breaks all the records and wins a long-running battle. Which one is better, automated calls or live agents? And without a doubt, it’s the personal touch that steals the crown every time.

This customer service case study is a bit more heartwarming. 11-year-old James Groccia has Asperger’s syndrome. He was looking at an expensive LEGO set for his birthday. It’s the exclusive Emerald Night Train set.

James saved money for two years. The money came from his birthday gifts and his participation in research. But he was heartbroken when he found out that it was unavailable.

His mother looked everywhere possible. On Amazon, eBay, or any other platform, it was either out of stock or too expensive. Eventually, with the help of a social worker, James wrote to LEGO.

It was a huge surprise to James that LEGO wrote back. And not just that, they surprised him with the exclusive Emerald Night Train set just before his 11th birthday.

It wasn’t easy for LEGO as well. It was a discontinued set and a collectible. They had to track it down for him. This extra mile not only made that customer happy but also established a brand perception that cares about its customers.

WPManageNinja’s customer service case study

While we were looking for customer experience stories, we talked with our Support team head, Mr. Kamrul Islam , here at the WPManageNinja office. He shared a few interesting case studies with us.

“I made a full website using your table builder plugin.”

Our support team faces and solves a lot of interesting cases every day. So, from a lot of stories, we have chosen three interesting stories to share with you in this blog. And, we are not going to be technical here at all.

So keep reading.

Story #1: Fluent Form

Let’s start with a simple one. One of our clients creates a ticket with an issue through our Fluent Support helpdesk system . 

Ticket created from customer’s end

I am a Fluent Form user. And I want to create a booking form using your form builder.

Thanks a lot for contacting us. Let us get into it and see what we can do for you. We will get back to you ASAP.

Booking system plugins are typically used for appointment booking. However, our support team needs to find a way to use our form builder plugin to accomplish this task.

But instead of saying, “This is not possible,” to our client, they get to work. Started figuring out a workaround for this. For obvious reasons, a form builder cannot provide a booking system facility, but the team finds a way to use it as a basic date booking system.

Our support team used two date-picker blocks from our Fluent Form builder and used different blocks to pick the starting and ending dates. Our team got in touch with the customer and gave him the solution.

But the customer knocked again.

Ticket continue

I am happy with the solution, but I’m facing an issue. I picked one date from the “Start from” calendar drop-down, but I can still see the previous dates are active in the “End at” drop-down. I want it disabled.

Here is a screenshot.

We can certainly help you out with this. We will get back to you shortly with a solution. We really appreciate your patience, and thanks a lot for being with us.

As our support specialist stated, they provided a solid solution. They had to write some custom code to implement a new feature in the client’s system.

That customer not only gave us a 5-star rating for our service but also became one of our loyal customers.

Story #2: Ninja Table and Fluent Form:

Speaking of adding custom features, it’s one of the regular jobs for our support team. Support agents, from time to time, write custom codes to fulfill customer requests.

Once, we got another ticket about a dynamic integration between two of our products. And the request came in multiple layers.

Hi, I am ruining a multi-user-based site, and recently I purchased the Ninja table for my site. I bought this to list my users information in a single table. But after a few tries, I failed to do it. Can you help me?

Thanks a lot for connecting us. We can help you with your issue. We will get back to you ASAP with a solution. Thanks a lot for being with us.

Our support agent needed to create a table from the site’s SQL data that contained user information.

It was an easy fix. Ninja Table has that feature built-in. Our expert agent wrote a few lines of script to pull users’ information. It created a table from SQL data.

The tickets continue.

Now I can see all the users’ information in a single table. But now I want to display only logged-in user information in the table. The rest of the user’s information should be hidden for that user.

Sure, we can do that for you.

So, the support agent created a custom shortcode to embed the table on the display page. That custom shortcode restricted other users’ information to the logged-in user.  

But the client came to our support team again.

Hi, I’m very happy with the output. But now I need one more thing from you. I need another column in the table with a form link in it. If a customer clicks on it, it will open a new page with the form on it. And I need it to be prefilled with the information from the table. I don’t want my customer to fill out the form again.

We can certainly help you with this. Our engineers will get into it and get back to you soon with a solution.

Our support team has two challenges in solving this ticket.

• A table created using SQL data has a limitation. You cannot add a new column to the table without touching the SQL data. Altering SQL data is not a good idea at all. So, adding a new column in the table with a form link is difficult.
• Pull the data from the table to prefill a form with logged-in users data. And then make the prefilled input box uneditable.

Our team starts with the first challenge. We cannot create a new column without altering the SQL data. But then they figured out a way to replace particular data with the desired data. And in this case, the desired data is the form page link.

So, they used a column from the SQL data set that did not have important information. Using the custom scripting, they replaced the SQL-pushed data with the form page link. Part one is solved.

For the second challenge, our team used Fluent Form. They integrate the Fluent form with the Ninja table. With the help of some custom scripting, they were able to pull the data from the table into the form’s input box.

The client was really happy with the outcome. Just because of this service, the client bought all of our products. And there is no need to mention that the client became one of our advocates.

Story #3: Ninja Table

Customers can show you totally different use cases for your product. This particular story is the best example of this statement.

Hi, I am using your Ninja Table plugin on my site. I need to link a Google Sheet with the plugin. Is it possible?

Thanks a lot for connecting us. We have a built-in integration facility for Google Sheets in the table settings.

At this point, the WP Manage Ninja team sent a step-by-step video tutorial to show how to do the integration. and the client was happy with this.

But shortly after that, clients connected with our support team again with multiple queries.

I need your help to customize the table. I want to make it look different from a regular table. Specifically, I want to hide the header and border and resize the columns and rows. I also want to know if I can apply custom styling to the data from the Google Sheet and if an image inserted in the Google Sheet will appear in the table. So somehow, I don’t want it to look like a table.

Thanks again for connecting with us. All of your requests are possible. However, it would be helpful if we could have access to the site table on your site. This would allow us to provide you with a better suggestion.

The client shared a link to the site with the support team. The whole team was a bit confused.

Hi again. Thanks a lot for sharing the site link with us. But we may need a little more information about the site. And please specify where you want to put the final table. Also, can you please give us a link to the actual table?

I gave you the link to the table.

We are very sorry; you just gave us a site link. We cannot see any tables here.

That is the table.

May you please elaborate? What do you mean by that?

I made a full website using your table builder plugin.

After some inspection of the site, our agent realized our client had made a fully functional website using our table builder plugin. We were just amazed by this type of use case.

The client also linked the table with a Google Sheet, which we helped them with previously. This means that they do not need to log in to the WordPress dashboard to change any data.

The client can simply make changes to the Google Sheet from their phone, and our table plugin will automatically update the data on the site.  

This is so far one of the most unique and clever use cases we have seen for any of our products.

Takeaways customer service case studies

Up until now, we have shared six different customer service case studies. But these are not just stories. These case studies tell us what excellent service is. It teaches us how we can go the extra mile and how it can impact our customers.

Essential qualities of the best customer service reps

So, here are a few takeaways from these case studies:

• Be responsive. Respond to the customer, even if it’s a tweet. Be quick and efficient.
• Be helpful. Go above and beyond to help customers. This could mean tracking down a discontinued product, giving a refund, or even just sending a handwritten note. Personalization matters in customer relations. A good gesture could be to send customers gratitude notes that have been carefully crafted to suit their tastes. You can design cards , for instance, which gives you ample room for creativity and personal touch. Even when they don’t know it’s not required. This could mean offering advice, making recommendations, or just listening.
• Be transparent. Be honest with customers, even when it’s not good news. Customers always appreciate a direct response, even when they are angry.
• Be personal. Take the time to get to know the customer’s individual needs. This will help you provide more personalized service. Which will make them feel special.
• Be human. Don’t hold your personality back; let your human side shine through. Show that you care about the customer and their experience. This could mean using humor, being empathetic, or just being yourself. The personal level of connection is effortless. This will make your service seamless.
• Go the extra mile. Go above and beyond to help customers. This could mean tracking down a discontinued product, giving a refund, or even just sending a handwritten note. Whether you need to write custom code, provide training, or even just be a sounding board, let it be.
• Be creative. If you can’t find a solution, that’s fine. Go out of the box and come up with a new one.
• Be patient. Sometimes, it takes time to find the right solution that works. Be patient with customers and stay with them until they’re happy with it.
• Be open-minded. Customers may use your product in ways that you never intended. Be open to new ideas.
• Be impressed. Be amazed by the imagination and creativity of your clients. When you see customers using your product in a unique way, make sure to let them know how impressed you are.

Final thoughts

Being a tech support specialist or service agent is a challenging job, no doubt. A customer can come up with any type of issue. Hance, the service providers have to be sound enough to deal with any surprises.

The service-dependent industries are constantly facing a variety of cases every day. That’s why customer service case studies are a must-read for support and service providers. And, on the other hand, these stories can bring in new customers.

Start off with a powerful ticketing system that delivers smooth collaboration right out of the box.

Md. Ariful Basher

Hi, this is Abir, a web designer and full-time content writer passionate about psycho-thrillers and sci-fi. I focus on creating captivating content and visually stunning websites, ensuring a top-notch customer experience. Also, a food enthusiast!

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Your guide to creating customer case studies (+ some show-stopping examples).

Teams are constantly looking for ways to stand out in crowded markets. Customer case studies may be just the differentiator companies have been seeking to give them that competitive edge. Not only do customer case studies showcase the types of pain points that a product or service can address, but they also highlight the results and successes real-life users have seen.

To put it simply, a customer case study is a real-life, detailed story that spotlights a customer’s opinions and achievements based upon the usage of a product or service. 

Typically, customer case studies follow this format:

• Introduction: Setting the stage with situational context 
• Challenge: Evaluating the problem at hand
• Solution: Providing an overview of how the product or service was used
• Benefits: Highlighting the key advantages
• Results: Recapping the aftereffect once the product or service was implemented

Similar to how competitive comparison landing pages provide trust and credibility for a brand through real-life recommendations, customer case studies deliver the same effect. These studies are people-focused, factual, and stray away from the promotional lingo that prospective customers have seen time and time again during their product search. After all, what prospect wouldn’t want some insight on the successes users have seen thus far? 

Now that you have a better understanding of what a customer case study is, let’s dive into why they are important from a competitive standpoint and explore some tips on how to incorporate them into your marketing strategy.  

The importance of customer case studies 

Competition is heating up more quickly than ever before and is not expected to cool off anytime soon. Our 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence Report found that 53% of businesses say that the majority of their deals are competitive–an 8% increase from last year. 

Sales teams need the help of marketers more than ever before to combat the growing number of industry rivals. To be successful in prospective calls, in particular, they need to be equipped with loads of marketing collateral, battlecards to guide them through objection-handling, and more. Customer case studies may be that piece of collateral they didn’t realize was missing from their stack to help seal the deal. 

According to Eccolo Media’s 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey Report , customer case studies rank as the fifth most influential content marketing type in the purchase process for both small technology businesses and large enterprises. That’s an impressive ranking when it's being compared to assets such as product brochures, emails, and white papers. In fact, 42% of respondents said that in the last six months of the survey, they had consumed customer case studies as a way to evaluate a technology purchase. 

As I’m sure you can see, there’s no doubt that customer case studies can help you stand out from your competitors. Let’s take a look at some examples that you can model yours after. 

Successful customer case study examples

While some customer case studies come in the written form (typically distributed as a PDF), other organizations opt to turn it into a video–or do a combo of both. 

Check out these examples from Zoom, Hootsuite, and AT&T below:

1. Zoom featuring Groupon

In this example, Zoom opted for a video case study. It opens up with a multimedia services manager at Groupon discussing the company’s pain points and then goes into how Zoom helped solve them. The video is professional, to-the-point, and highlights how Zoom has provided Groupon with a standardized platform that meets the needs of its video-first culture.

As you can see above, Zoom also has an entire web page dedicated to case study videos–all highlighting different industries but with the same end-goal–streamline companies’ telecommunications needs. It’s clear that the page can resonate with a variety of audiences and that’s the key to success.

2. Hootsuite featuring The British Museum

This case study example from Hootsuite is a combination of both text and video. When you first open the page, it provides some context at the top describing who is being spotlighted and why ( The British Museum ). The page then immediately dives into a video. Following that video are the following sections: “What They Did," “How They Did It," and “The Results." This approach appeals to prospects looking for both a quick synopsis (the video) or more in-depth information (the written portion).

Looking at the example above, the page ends with some impressive statistics bolded to grab a reader's attention and a quote provided by a member of the customer’s leadership team. Prospects will walk away with a comprehensive understanding of how the platform could benefit them and the types of results customers have achieved.

3. AT&T featuring Birkey's Farm Store

AT&T chose a more traditional route for a customer case study with Birkey’s Farm Store –a PDF format. This format ensures that all of the information is organized, clearly displayed and that the key elements are emphasized. This format allows for a visual representation of data and easy scanning for important details. For those in a time crunch, chances are they’ll prefer this format–just be sure you’re engaging readers through graphics, bolded text, colors, etc. 

Historically, customer case studies were in written form but as technology evolves, videos have come into play, stealing the spotlight. While there is no right or wrong format to use (it truly does depend on a reader’s preference), it is important to note that HubSpot estimated that over 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content. My vote goes to a combination of both like the Hootsuite example!

5 tips for creating a customer case study

Now that you’ve checked out some examples of what a good customer case study looks like, let’s dive into some tips on how to be successful in creating one. 

1. Determine your target persona(s) upfront

Before putting pen to paper, pinpoint the groups within your target audience that your case study should resonate with. Catering your studies to specific personas will ensure that the right audience is reached and that it is relevant to your readers.

2. Connect with your team

Be sure to connect with your company’s customer success and sales teams to hear what customers they think are best to target. After all, they will have great insight since they are the day-to-day contacts. You’ll want to choose customers with whom you have strong relationships and who, of course, have seen great results based upon implementing your solution. While the case study would be “free advertising” for them, there’s no doubt that they’d be doing you a favor by going out of their way to help you bring this asset to life.

3. Create case study interview questions

Once you’ve got your customer(s) selected for the case study (and they’ve agreed to participate), take some time to draft out universal interview questions. Ideally, these questions can be used in the future and are general enough to translate to all industries that would be spotlighted on your page.

Your customer(s) will also be appreciative of your preparedness. It’s important to make the process as easy as possible for them and coming in prepared with a list, will ensure that your conversation is focused and strategic. After all, your case study needs a beginning, middle, and an end–make sure you gather enough information to put it all together into a full story.

4. Utilize statistics

Although your customer’s “results” won’t be revealed until the end of the case study, don’t shy away from using stats throughout it–in fact, it’s encouraged! Statistics stick out to any viewer and can be helpful for those trying to sway decision-makers. For example, when setting the scene, describe how many employees and locations the customer has and make those numbers stand out. Although it may seem minute, these stats can help readers determine whether their company is similar and the results achieved are comparable.

5. Build out a case study web page 

It’s important to showcase your case studies in a strategic, organized, and easily accessible way (scroll back up to the Zoom example as an example). Create a designated case study hub on your website. When building out this page, it’s important to have a plethora of customer case studies–that way there will always be a case study that a prospect can relate to. Be sure that all types of industries you work with are represented and that your page is broad enough to appeal to the masses.

Incorporate case studies into your marketing plan

Marketing teams are always looking for ways to express the benefits of a product or service authentically and creatively. This type of non-promotional collateral can make a major impact on the number of leads generated and can add a new level of credibility to your brand name. It paints a picture of the types of success a prospect could have and that’s the recipe to success for any deal getting closed.

Not only do customer case studies showcase the value of your product or service, but potential customers are provided with a better sense of how real customers leverage it to excel their business. And as a bonus, it’s free publicity for your customers – that's a win-win in my book! 

If you have any other tips for creating a successful customer case study, let us know in the comments below!

See why Gong, Mastercard, and ZoomInfo trust Crayon to help them win more competitive deals.

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Home > 4 Customer Service Instance Student to Inspire You

4 Company Service Case Studies to Inspire Yourself

Catherine Heath

• November 24, 2022

Include a Nutshell

Table of contents.

When you’ve researched any brand it’s more than likely you’ve come across a customer service case study. Real-life customer experiences are a powerful way to advertise a brand and showcase the real interactions customers take when approaching a company’s customer service department.

Instead of simply telling a customer what it’s like to benefit from a company’s customer service, they demonstrate genuine examples of customers who have submitted transportation to their consumer service team. 

Over this face of it, one company can appear much like additional without powerful case studies to demonstrate its impact. Customers will be essential to actually sign up to your service before her ca learn your customer support for themselves.  5 mini case student about understand and serving the customer

What is a customer service case study?

A customer favor case study is a strategy to show the experiences of customers that hold actually signed up up use your product or service also have act witnessed will customer service for themselves.  Potential customers judge your marketing and feature our based on the limited details they have. In other talk, people have a wahrnehmen void. They don’t show your products since what they really are, they use a sliver in resources to make a snap judgement. Here’s where marketers come in. With deeper understanding of customers’ wants, requirements, furthermore motivations, we can feed aforementioned most effective sliver of intelligence about the right propose to the customer. In this article, we share examples of companies that were able to better understandable customers to provide messages the offerings which resonated.  Read on to examples from a SaaS, a bags company, online motorbiking getting dealer, and pet protection web.

Potential our anybody are researching what your company has to offer will benefit from the box studies of customers that have already passed through the buy decision. Place of one company simply telling prospective customers what they have to offer, they will be able on demonstration its support in reality.  Learn how organizations of all frame use AWS to increase agility, lowers costs, and get innovations in to scenery.

See for yourself

A patron service case study goes beyond being a simplicity testimonial, however. It’s factual exhibits of customers who have implemented their company’s product otherwise service and a veranstaltungen of its ability to actually supplying results.  Here be four view of customer service case studies that will show you the way to attract more customers at thine business.

Why are customer service case studies important? 

Without customer serve box research, my business will battling until show how it belongs support own clients. A case investigate shows yours prospective customers how the business has performed in a real-life example of customer service, and helps them imagine how it would remain like to do store with your company.  Customer News - ServiceNow

Customer service case studies display potential customers wherewith your business has helped customers to solve their problems and further their business goals. Although there are other ways to market you businesses, consumer service case studies are ampere solid way to range leave up new prospects and convert them under customers.  Use these stairs to write a case study perspectives becomes actually read, with marketing case survey browse and a free template!

Successful customer case reviews showcase successful examples for consumer customer that persuade insert prospects to basically buy. They show prospects how well your customer favor actually works furthermore highlights your product’s value.  5 Hard Studies to Improve Your Customer Service — Kayako

How do you write a consumer service case study?

At are a few plans you need to follow when written a customer service sache study. Having a variety of differing case studies desire enable you to reach more potential customers that cover a range of situations and needs.  Case Study Library

1. Focus on your personas

You needs to consider the type of the customer that they wish to attract includes your customer serving case study. Mapping out your personas is an vital part on your commercialization strategy because it assists you identify prospects with unique wants and needs. Your user server may appeal to different types of individuals and it’s crucial to target per an specifically. 

2. Tell a report

At its core, customer support case featured are stories about particular customers. Simply raving about how great your company is wil be boring for your reading, and him need to take them on a journey. Legends need to have obstacles at overpower, and your case survey should see what your product or support is to hero of the narrative.  Case Studies | HubSpot

3. Emphasize benefits

This benefits of your customer service will help to appeal on client that have a specific my dots to solve. Instead the focusing on browse other feature it’s important toward indicate whereby your service will help them. Your customer servicing case study is likely to be a representative case of an your that holds similar problems to other prospects, and it’s important to help prospective clientele visualize using own service. 

4. Highlight the results 

Highlighting to results the your customer service wants help your consumers zuwege means focusing on the before and after of using your services. Genuine improvements to your customer’s business will help to convince them that their product or service is the answer. Showing that results of owner customer services helps customer see how them can save or make more money after choosing thy business.  Stop Testing to Delight Your Customers

4 interesting purchaser service case studies

Quick heal and kayako.

Here’s the first interesting customer service case study from Kayako. Where was a company called Speed Heal Technologies which was a provider of internet security tools and anti-virus software. They had millions the universal users, but they were struggling to deliver outstanding customer service due to a highest volume of customer service requests. 

One of their main issues was the absence of a system to track requests since different sources. Agents were checking many differents platforms for customer service requests, and lacked a vital overview are the customer experience. She were losses tags or suffering from incomplete information. There were delays in the our support experience and of existing system couldn’t admin its workflow.  4 Customer Service Situation Studies until Inspire They

Enter Kayako, help my desktop. My Shared Inbox Solution brought together the different customer service sources as as email, Facebook, Twitter, or live chat. Quick Heal agents were able to support customers seamlessly and minimize the number of tickets that endured dropped. Their could significantly reduce their ticket response times and accelerate the time to resolution. Agents were able to much more ineffective unite and reduce duplication on effort.  7 Examples of good customer service practices

Springboard and Help Scout

Of next customer service case study belongs about Springboard, a platform which provides online resource and personalized mentors into helping learners build their dream your. Their aim is to build a great education accessible to anyone inbound the world. 

So far, they have worked with 250 mentors to schlepp show than 5,000 our over 6 centers. Them success has depended on his ability to create an open environment where current feel comfortable apply feedback and discovering course information on their own.  You're is good group. Discover how organizations rely on ServiceNow to make the planet work. Find See Case Studies.

Springboard essential an solution ensure could how them construct relationships over their collegiate, regular if it’s over email, and they decided that Help Scout was the answer. Your chose Help Reconnoiter because it means they can have human conversations rather than treating their students like a ticket number.  Great customer service is essential in 2022 ✓ Learn why user are willing to spend 17% more with companies that release superior customer experiences.

They make use is Help Scout’s help counter face to find key insights into students’ conversations, as well as their Docs knowledge base which provides response to common questions. As a result, students are able to more effectively learning and overcome problems when they arise.  Customer Success Stories: Case Studies, Videos, Podcasts, Innovator stories

We’ve got another patron service case study from an airline – in this case, JetBlue. They really know wherewith to make their customers beam with small gestures and ensure they can win customers for life. 

One customer called Paul Brown was flyer with JetBlue from the taller terminal at Boston’s Log airport. He realized that he couldn’t grab her usual Starbucks coffee because there was no Starbucks during the terminal. On an whim, it sent a tweet to JetBlue asking them to deliver his venti cappuccino, and to his surprise few obliged! Through minutes JetBlue customer service representatives had delivered the coffee to Paul’s seat on the plane. 

This example of customer service shows that JetBlue is willing to go the extra mile with customer the willing ensure ensure the company can continue to attract additional customers.

Gympass and Slack

Gympass is an worldwide platform that gives companies and their employees 50% to 70% off ampere universal network of aptness workstations, digital workouts, and mental health and nutrition services. It was founded in 2012 and has extensive steady growth, now worth more than USD $1 per. Average on Gympass have access to 50,000 gyms both studios in more than 7,000 cities, so they may labor out while they are with one move.  As more and more customer transactions occur virtually, the quality of online help desks and customer service supports is proper and indispensable

The issue with this grew company was communication across the globe. The corporate was overly reliant on emails what led to silos both employees missing outbound on alive information. The solution to this finding was Slack, a communications podium the is made accessory to all latest staff so they have everything they need right from the start. 

Now, teams at Gympass jobs across a range of 2,000 Slack channels which can open to 1,000 employees. She can share documents, messages the information, keeping connected across localities and facilitating new projects please incident planning. It’s selected Gympass to build a strong culture of collaboration and ensure that everybody employee can discover the information they need.  Printing: R1007L The notion that companies must go above additionally out in their my service activities is so entrenched that managers infrequently examine it. But ampere study a better better 75,000 people interacting with contact-center representatives or using self-service channels found that over-the-top efforts make little differential: All customers really want is adenine simple, quick solution to their report. The Corporate Executive Board’s Dixon the colleagues describe five loyalty-building tactics that every company should adopt: Diminish the necessity for repeatedly dial by anticipating and dealing with related downstream issues; arm reps to address the neural side of customer interactions; minimize which need for customers to schaltung service tv; elicit and use feedback from resentful or struggling customers; additionally focus on problem solving, not speed. The authors also introduce the Customer Effort Score also show that it is a betters predictor of faith than customer satisfaction measures or the Per Event Score. And things

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Before they actually have an trial of using your product or maintenance, it’s hard for customers to know what it would be like. Case studies can give a valuable preview into something to become be same to work with your company and highlight customers that have already achieved success. 

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What Makes a Good Automated Response Email?

How to How AI in Customer Services

How into Improve Customer Experience

How to write a case study — examples, templates, and tools

It’s a marketer’s job to communicate the effectiveness of a product or service to potential and current customers to convince them to buy and keep business moving. One of the best methods for doing this is to share success stories that are relatable to prospects and customers based on their pain points, experiences, and overall needs.

That’s where case studies come in. Case studies are an essential part of a content marketing plan. These in-depth stories of customer experiences are some of the most effective at demonstrating the value of a product or service. Yet many marketers don’t use them, whether because of their regimented formats or the process of customer involvement and approval.

A case study is a powerful tool for showcasing your hard work and the success your customer achieved. But writing a great case study can be difficult if you’ve never done it before or if it’s been a while. This guide will show you how to write an effective case study and provide real-world examples and templates that will keep readers engaged and support your business.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is a case study?

How to write a case study, case study templates, case study examples, case study tools.

A case study is the detailed story of a customer’s experience with a product or service that demonstrates their success and often includes measurable outcomes. Case studies are used in a range of fields and for various reasons, from business to academic research. They’re especially impactful in marketing as brands work to convince and convert consumers with relatable, real-world stories of actual customer experiences.

The best case studies tell the story of a customer’s success, including the steps they took, the results they achieved, and the support they received from a brand along the way. To write a great case study, you need to:

• Celebrate the customer and make them — not a product or service — the star of the story.
• Craft the story with specific audiences or target segments in mind so that the story of one customer will be viewed as relatable and actionable for another customer.
• Write copy that is easy to read and engaging so that readers will gain the insights and messages intended.
• Follow a standardized format that includes all of the essentials a potential customer would find interesting and useful.
• Support all of the claims for success made in the story with data in the forms of hard numbers and customer statements.

Case studies are a type of review but more in depth, aiming to show — rather than just tell — the positive experiences that customers have with a brand. Notably, 89% of consumers read reviews before deciding to buy, and 79% view case study content as part of their purchasing process. When it comes to B2B sales, 52% of buyers rank case studies as an important part of their evaluation process.

Telling a brand story through the experience of a tried-and-true customer matters. The story is relatable to potential new customers as they imagine themselves in the shoes of the company or individual featured in the case study. Showcasing previous customers can help new ones see themselves engaging with your brand in the ways that are most meaningful to them.

Besides sharing the perspective of another customer, case studies stand out from other content marketing forms because they are based on evidence. Whether pulling from client testimonials or data-driven results, case studies tend to have more impact on new business because the story contains information that is both objective (data) and subjective (customer experience) — and the brand doesn’t sound too self-promotional.

Case studies are unique in that there’s a fairly standardized format for telling a customer’s story. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for creativity. It’s all about making sure that teams are clear on the goals for the case study — along with strategies for supporting content and channels — and understanding how the story fits within the framework of the company’s overall marketing goals.

Here are the basic steps to writing a good case study.

1. Identify your goal

Start by defining exactly who your case study will be designed to help. Case studies are about specific instances where a company works with a customer to achieve a goal. Identify which customers are likely to have these goals, as well as other needs the story should cover to appeal to them.

The answer is often found in one of the buyer personas that have been constructed as part of your larger marketing strategy. This can include anything from new leads generated by the marketing team to long-term customers that are being pressed for cross-sell opportunities. In all of these cases, demonstrating value through a relatable customer success story can be part of the solution to conversion.

2. Choose your client or subject

Who you highlight matters. Case studies tie brands together that might otherwise not cross paths. A writer will want to ensure that the highlighted customer aligns with their own company’s brand identity and offerings. Look for a customer with positive name recognition who has had great success with a product or service and is willing to be an advocate.

The client should also match up with the identified target audience. Whichever company or individual is selected should be a reflection of other potential customers who can see themselves in similar circumstances, having the same problems and possible solutions.

Some of the most compelling case studies feature customers who:

• Switch from one product or service to another while naming competitors that missed the mark.
• Experience measurable results that are relatable to others in a specific industry.
• Represent well-known brands and recognizable names that are likely to compel action.
• Advocate for a product or service as a champion and are well-versed in its advantages.

Whoever or whatever customer is selected, marketers must ensure they have the permission of the company involved before getting started. Some brands have strict review and approval procedures for any official marketing or promotional materials that include their name. Acquiring those approvals in advance will prevent any miscommunication or wasted effort if there is an issue with their legal or compliance teams.

3. Conduct research and compile data

Substantiating the claims made in a case study — either by the marketing team or customers themselves — adds validity to the story. To do this, include data and feedback from the client that defines what success looks like. This can be anything from demonstrating return on investment (ROI) to a specific metric the customer was striving to improve. Case studies should prove how an outcome was achieved and show tangible results that indicate to the customer that your solution is the right one.

This step could also include customer interviews. Make sure that the people being interviewed are key stakeholders in the purchase decision or deployment and use of the product or service that is being highlighted. Content writers should work off a set list of questions prepared in advance. It can be helpful to share these with the interviewees beforehand so they have time to consider and craft their responses. One of the best interview tactics to keep in mind is to ask questions where yes and no are not natural answers. This way, your subject will provide more open-ended responses that produce more meaningful content.

4. Choose the right format

There are a number of different ways to format a case study. Depending on what you hope to achieve, one style will be better than another. However, there are some common elements to include, such as:

• An engaging headline
• A subject and customer introduction
• The unique challenge or challenges the customer faced
• The solution the customer used to solve the problem
• The results achieved
• Data and statistics to back up claims of success
• A strong call to action (CTA) to engage with the vendor

It’s also important to note that while case studies are traditionally written as stories, they don’t have to be in a written format. Some companies choose to get more creative with their case studies and produce multimedia content, depending on their audience and objectives. Case study formats can include traditional print stories, interactive web or social content, data-heavy infographics, professionally shot videos, podcasts, and more.

5. Write your case study

We’ll go into more detail later about how exactly to write a case study, including templates and examples. Generally speaking, though, there are a few things to keep in mind when writing your case study.

• Be clear and concise. Readers want to get to the point of the story quickly and easily, and they’ll be looking to see themselves reflected in the story right from the start.
• Provide a big picture. Always make sure to explain who the client is, their goals, and how they achieved success in a short introduction to engage the reader.
• Construct a clear narrative. Stick to the story from the perspective of the customer and what they needed to solve instead of just listing product features or benefits.
• Leverage graphics. Incorporating infographics, charts, and sidebars can be a more engaging and eye-catching way to share key statistics and data in readable ways.
• Offer the right amount of detail. Most case studies are one or two pages with clear sections that a reader can skim to find the information most important to them.
• Include data to support claims. Show real results — both facts and figures and customer quotes — to demonstrate credibility and prove the solution works.

6. Promote your story

Marketers have a number of options for distribution of a freshly minted case study. Many brands choose to publish case studies on their website and post them on social media. This can help support SEO and organic content strategies while also boosting company credibility and trust as visitors see that other businesses have used the product or service.

Marketers are always looking for quality content they can use for lead generation. Consider offering a case study as gated content behind a form on a landing page or as an offer in an email message. One great way to do this is to summarize the content and tease the full story available for download after the user takes an action.

Sales teams can also leverage case studies, so be sure they are aware that the assets exist once they’re published. Especially when it comes to larger B2B sales, companies often ask for examples of similar customer challenges that have been solved.

Now that you’ve learned a bit about case studies and what they should include, you may be wondering how to start creating great customer story content. Here are a couple of templates you can use to structure your case study.

Template 1 — Challenge-solution-result format

• Start with an engaging title. This should be fewer than 70 characters long for SEO best practices. One of the best ways to approach the title is to include the customer’s name and a hint at the challenge they overcame in the end.
• Create an introduction. Lead with an explanation as to who the customer is, the need they had, and the opportunity they found with a specific product or solution. Writers can also suggest the success the customer experienced with the solution they chose.
• Present the challenge. This should be several paragraphs long and explain the problem the customer faced and the issues they were trying to solve. Details should tie into the company’s products and services naturally. This section needs to be the most relatable to the reader so they can picture themselves in a similar situation.
• Share the solution. Explain which product or service offered was the ideal fit for the customer and why. Feel free to delve into their experience setting up, purchasing, and onboarding the solution.
• Explain the results. Demonstrate the impact of the solution they chose by backing up their positive experience with data. Fill in with customer quotes and tangible, measurable results that show the effect of their choice.
• Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that invites readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to nurture them further in the marketing pipeline. What you ask of the reader should tie directly into the goals that were established for the case study in the first place.

Template 2 — Data-driven format

• Start with an engaging title. Be sure to include a statistic or data point in the first 70 characters. Again, it’s best to include the customer’s name as part of the title.
• Create an overview. Share the customer’s background and a short version of the challenge they faced. Present the reason a particular product or service was chosen, and feel free to include quotes from the customer about their selection process.
• Present data point 1. Isolate the first metric that the customer used to define success and explain how the product or solution helped to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Present data point 2. Isolate the second metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Present data point 3. Isolate the final metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Summarize the results. Reiterate the fact that the customer was able to achieve success thanks to a specific product or service. Include quotes and statements that reflect customer satisfaction and suggest they plan to continue using the solution.
• Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that asks readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to further nurture them in the marketing pipeline. Again, remember that this is where marketers can look to convert their content into action with the customer.

While templates are helpful, seeing a case study in action can also be a great way to learn. Here are some examples of how Adobe customers have experienced success.

Juniper Networks

One example is the Adobe and Juniper Networks case study , which puts the reader in the customer’s shoes. The beginning of the story quickly orients the reader so that they know exactly who the article is about and what they were trying to achieve. Solutions are outlined in a way that shows Adobe Experience Manager is the best choice and a natural fit for the customer. Along the way, quotes from the client are incorporated to help add validity to the statements. The results in the case study are conveyed with clear evidence of scale and volume using tangible data.

The story of Lenovo’s journey with Adobe is one that spans years of planning, implementation, and rollout. The Lenovo case study does a great job of consolidating all of this into a relatable journey that other enterprise organizations can see themselves taking, despite the project size. This case study also features descriptive headers and compelling visual elements that engage the reader and strengthen the content.

Tata Consulting

When it comes to using data to show customer results, this case study does an excellent job of conveying details and numbers in an easy-to-digest manner. Bullet points at the start break up the content while also helping the reader understand exactly what the case study will be about. Tata Consulting used Adobe to deliver elevated, engaging content experiences for a large telecommunications client of its own — an objective that’s relatable for a lot of companies.

Case studies are a vital tool for any marketing team as they enable you to demonstrate the value of your company’s products and services to others. They help marketers do their job and add credibility to a brand trying to promote its solutions by using the experiences and stories of real customers.

When you’re ready to get started with a case study:

• Think about a few goals you’d like to accomplish with your content.
• Make a list of successful clients that would be strong candidates for a case study.
• Reach out to the client to get their approval and conduct an interview.
• Gather the data to present an engaging and effective customer story.

Adobe can help

There are several Adobe products that can help you craft compelling case studies. Adobe Experience Platform helps you collect data and deliver great customer experiences across every channel. Once you’ve created your case studies, Experience Platform will help you deliver the right information to the right customer at the right time for maximum impact.

To learn more, watch the Adobe Experience Platform story .

Keep in mind that the best case studies are backed by data. That’s where Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Analytics come into play. With Real-Time CDP, you can gather the data you need to build a great case study and target specific customers to deliver the content to the right audience at the perfect moment.

Watch the Real-Time CDP overview video to learn more.

Finally, Adobe Analytics turns real-time data into real-time insights. It helps your business collect and synthesize data from multiple platforms to make more informed decisions and create the best case study possible.

Request a demo to learn more about Adobe Analytics.

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/b2b-ecommerce-10-case-studies-inspire-you

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/business-case

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-real-time-analytics

Why Customer Service is Important: 16 Data-Backed Facts to Know

Published: June 13, 2023

When you have a small budget for your business, there are probably several high-priority teams to consider when allocating funds.

The importance of customer service shouldn’t be underestimated, so your support team should be one of those teams. Investing in your customer service team now pays dividends in many ways later. Here’s why.

Table of Contents

• Importance of Customer Service

Financial Benefits of Excellent Customer Service

How customer service supports marketing efforts, customer service’s impact on brand image, the power of well-equipped employees, what businesses need to improve customer service, why is customer service important.

Customer service is important because it's the direct connection between your customers and your business. It retains customers and extracts more value from them. By providing top-notch customer service, businesses can recoup customer acquisition costs. This helps to cultivate a loyal following that refers new customers, serves as case studies, and provides testimonials and reviews.

Investing in customer service helps activate your flywheel because loyal customers will help you acquire new customers free of charge by convincing prospects to interact with your brand. Their positive testimonials will be more effective than your current marketing efforts—and cheaper, too.

45 Customer Service Scripting Templates

45 templates to help you determine your customer service responses.

• Live Chat Support Script Templates
• Phone Support Script Templates
• Social Media Support Script Templates
• Email Support Script Templates

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

A company with excellent customer service has a team that does more than answer questions and solve customer issues. Providing excellent customer service can save—and make—a lot of money for a business. In fact, improving the customer experience can increase sales revenue by 2-7% and profitability by 1-2%.

Here are some additional financial benefits of excellent customer service.

1. Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition.

According to our research team , the customer acquisition cost (CAC) —how much it costs to acquire a new customer—is higher for a company that doesn't invest a small percentage of its budget in customer service. Ultimately, investing in customer service can decrease your churn rate . Decreasing churn rate reduces the amount you must spend on acquiring new customers and decreases the overall CAC.

That’s because it’s more profitable to pour efforts into retaining existing customers in the long run. A massive amount of sales will come from existing customers , and only 20% of your current customers will be the source of 80% of your company’s profits .

Pro Tip: Crafting a good customer experience improves customer retention. An excellent onboarding experience and customized offers can go a long way in keeping customers satisfied and around overall. McKinsey says companies with experience-led growth strategies see 5-10% higher wallet share and 20-30% higher satisfaction and engagement.

2. Customers will pay more to companies with better customer service.

It’s hard to put a price on great service, and an extraordinary number of customers are willing to pay a premium to get it. Customers place a high value on how a customer service team treats them, and companies will directly profit from positive customer service encounters. Over 80% of customers reported that receiving value during a service experience makes them more likely to repurchase even when given a chance to switch to a competitor.

In an era where companies are learning to prioritize customer service, any company that doesn't do so will crash and burn. Moreover, one positive experience could make them stick to a brand, whereas one negative interaction could send them running to a competitor.

Pro Tip : To offer the good customer service customers stick around for, continuously solve for the customer. This looks like being quick to bring resolutions, you’re empathetic during conversations, offering omnichannel support options, and actually using customer feedback to improve your practices so you always have your customer in mind.

3. Customer service grows customer lifetime value.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a pretty important metric when you're running a business. CLV represents the total revenue you can expect from a single customer account. Growing this value means your customers shop more frequently or spend more money at your business.

But businesses have room for improvement in utilizing this vital metric— only 42% of companies can measure customer lifetime value.

Investing in your customer service team is an excellent way to improve customer lifetime value. If customers have a great experience with your customer service and support teams, they'll be more likely to spend money with your company again. Or, at the very least, they'll share their positive experience with others, which builds rapport with your customer base.

Customer service makes new customers more trustworthy of your business and allows you to upsell and cross-sell additional products with less friction. New users will trust that your sales team is recommending products that truly fit their needs, creating a smoother buying experience for both the customer and your employees.

Pro Tip: To increase CLV, focus on building long-lasting, beneficial relationships with your customers. Offering an excellent product/service and excellent support when customers need help makes them more likely to purchase and repurchase what you offer. Every single positive experience increases the likelihood of their return and extends the length of your relationship, creating a higher CLV.

4. Customer service can lead to more revenue.

Business leaders understand that budgeting and other business decisions are about the bottom line. But customer service can also bring in revenue and impact the bottom line.

A report showed that customer experience leaders across all industries have 2X greater revenue growth than their peers , and this has been consistent since 2016.

Additionally, American companies reportedly lose about $136.8 billion yearly because of avoidable customer losses. Therefore, a positive or negative customer experience directly impacts your company’s revenue and growth.

Customer service team members are on the frontlines, communicating daily with current and potential customers. As a result of this proximity, customer service can offer valuable insight that can help improve marketing outcomes.

1. Customer service employees can offer important insights about customer experiences.

It doesn't matter how you perceive your brand. What matters is how your customer perceives it.

For instance, if you work for an athletic wear company, you might associate your brand with fitness, health and wellness, and people who play sports.

However, your customers may purchase from you because they associate your brand with leisure, comfort, and attractiveness. So, you should align your marketing with those values as well.

Your customer service team can answer many of these probing questions for you. Rather than spending time and money surveying customers constantly, you can have your customer service employees simply ask these questions while interacting with customers. Their response can give you many insights into improving your products, marketing, goals, and employee training .

The more you improve the customer experience, the harder your employees will work. Research shows that companies that invest in customer experience also see employee engagement rates increase by an average of 20%.

2. Proactive customer service creates marketing opportunities.

Consider adopting proactive customer service if you're looking for a cost-effective way to invest in your business. Rather than waiting for customers to report issues, this approach reaches out to them before they know the issues exist. This tells customers you're constantly working to remove roadblocks from their user experience.

But proactive customer service isn't only used for customer delight . It's also an effective marketing tool for introducing and promoting new products and services. For example, if you create a new feature that solves a common problem with your product, your customer service team can refer it to your customers.

They can use your CRM or ticketing system to look up customers who have had this problem in the past, reach out to them via the service ticket, and introduce the new feature and its benefits. This can be more effective than a sales pitch because customers feel the service rep understands their issue after troubleshooting it.

Current data shows that proactive customer service is more crucial than ever. Customers of every industry are accustomed to the fast-paced digital revolution and expect customer service teams to be speedy in resolving their issues.

A main customer frustration is long wait times when seeking support, and their rage only increases the longer they wait .

3. Personalized customer service can improve your online conversion rate.

Your online conversion rate can improve by 8% when you include personalized consumer experiences. A higher conversion rate should lead to more sales and more revenue. Customer service keeps your flywheel moving, like marketing and sales.

But service that isn’t personalized and makes customers feel like no more than a ticket number in the system harms customer retention. 62% of consumers think businesses can do more in terms of personalization because they’d prefer to feel like an experience is all about them.

Data supports that great customer service is an expectation, not a "nice-to-have." You'll attract new customers, prevent customer churn, and build your brand reputation and image with excellent customer service.

Every company is known for its customer service to some degree. Of course, you always want a positive brand image and customer service can be a significant determining factor.

1. Customer service affects your brand image and loyalty potential.

In many ways, your customer service team is the face of your brand. Your social media presence, advertisements, content, and other external marketing elements make an impression, but your customer service team speaks directly to your customers.

They are responsible for representing your brand when interacting with potential buyers. Customer service can break a company’s chance to turn a potential customer into a loyal customer. After a positive customer service experience, 89% of consumers report they are more likely to return and make another purchase. While making apurchasedecision, a critical factor for 66% of customers is the customer service reputation of the brand. W hen they receive poor customer service, 61% of consumers say they have cut ties with a brand.

Customer service is a key player when it comes to building your brand image and brand loyalty. Nearly three out of five consumers report that good customer service is vital to feel commitment toward a brand. Therefore, investing in a customer service team that accurately represents your mission and values is a worthy investment and a wise branding strategy.

2. Excellent customer service will protect relationships with customers who experience a mistake down the road.

When customers have a poor customer service experience, they're more likely to quickly share about it and leave the company than in previous years. And if you work in the B2B space, data shows that 51% of B2B companies start to avoid vendors after a poor customer service experience. However, if your company provides excellent customer service, 78% of consumers would do business with a company again after a mistake.

Additionally, only one in five consumers will forgive a bad experience at a company whose overall customer service they rate as “very poor,” while nearly 80% will forgive a bad experience if they rate the service team as “very good.”

3. A positive customer service reputation makes people more likely to do business with you.

Consumers consider customer service when they're making purchasing decisions. In fact, 78% of consumers use customer service to decide whether or not to do business with a company. This means that your company’s reputation for customer service will impact a large majority of potential customers.

Additionally, customer service doesn't begin and end with your frontline reps. The customer service potential customers experience during the sales process will also impact their purchasing decisions. Therefore, delivering positive customer service experiences should be the goal for any customer-facing role.

If a company doesn’t appreciate and properly resource its customer service team, it will show in the quality of service that customers receive. But when companies provide the proper training, technology, and work environment, customer service employees are a powerful force to turn satisfied customers into booming businesses.

1. Happy customer service employees will create happy customers.

Studies consistently show that happy employees are good for business. For example, recent research that studied customer service employees in a call center setting reported that happy employees were 13% more productive .

Despite this fact, not enough companies take employee satisfaction seriously—particularly in the case of customer service employees. According to our 2022 State of Customer Service report , almost 40% of customer service leaders say that their company views customer service as an expense rather than a driver for growth.

Companies can support their customer service team with the resources, technology, and respect they need to get more happy customers. When customer service staff are equipped to do their jobs well, they are more comfortable and motivated, and your customers are too.

2. Happy customers will refer others.

When humans have a memorable experience—good or bad—it’s natural to want to shout about it from the rooftops. But, of course, today’s rooftops are review websites and social media, with 55% of consumers sharing their purchases socially on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social sites.

For better or worse, your most impacted customers will do word-of-mouth advertising for you. In fact, 66% of salespeople say that the highest quality leads come from existing customers. Since great customer service translates to happy customers, your customer service team can be a major catalyst for cheap promotion through positive word-of-mouth and referrals.

Much like your most loyal customers, referred customers are a business treasure. Referred customers:

• Amount to 5 to 15% of new customers
• Drive $6 trillion of annual consumer spending
• Can offer a 25x return on ad spend

"The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers."

–Shiv Singh, Strategic Advisor

3. Good customer service encourages customers to remain loyal.

As we’ve covered, it's much cheaper to retain an old customer than to acquire a new one. So in this sense, the higher a customer's lifetime value—the total revenue a company can expect a single customer to generate throughout their relationship with that company—the higher the profit for your company.

In comparison to hundreds of possible competitors with similar products and services, your company has to do more than relish the exciting features of your products. You can differentiate your company from your competitors by providing stellar customer service. This is especially crucial when it’s time to launch a new product or service.

Your existing customers are 50% more likely to try a new product and spend 31% more money on it than a new customer, while new customers are only 5-20% likely to buy a product. But for those existing customers to stay long enough to consider a new product, it takes effort via customer service to keep them satisfied. 71% of consumers cited poor customer service as the reason they ended a relationship with a company.

Conversely, when your company’s customer service is excellent, you’re more likely to see your customers stick around and eventually try more of your offerings.

Loyalty is rooted in trust, and customers can trust real-life humans more than the ideas and values of a brand. So, by interacting with your customer service team, those customers can hopefully build life-long relationships with your business.

Beyond understanding how essential it is to put considerable effort into building a solid customer service team, companies need to provide employees with all the tools they need to deliver the type of consistent, proactive customer service required today.

Here are a few stats to keep in mind when improving your customer service team:

1. Customers expect high-quality service.

People don't just expect your business to have a customer service team; they anticipate your customer service team to be world-class and ready to help at a moment's notice.

In fact, according to new data gathered after the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of those surveyed (58%) said their customer service expectations are higher today than they were a year prior.

Customers demand higher quality customer service: 66% said they would switch brands if they felt they were being "treated like a number, not an individual." And there’s plenty of room for businesses to grow, as 71% of customers say they want a consistent experience across channels, but only 29% say they get it.

Customers now have more options than ever before, and they're not afraid to take their business elsewhere if unsatisfied with their experience. So it's now on brands to meet customer expectations if they want to attract and retain loyal customers.

2. Businesses need omnichannel solutions.

Before COVID-19, businesses gradually explored new, digital ways to engage and support customers. But once the pandemic hit, this timeline accelerated significantly, and it was no longer a commodity for businesses to communicate with customers via social media, live chat, or video calls .

These communication channels appear to be here to stay for the foreseeable future. But, as we shared in our 2022 State of Customer Service report , only 50% of companies have enabled their service teams with the most basic service features a CRM can provide: a help desk, knowledge base, and shared email capabilities. As a result, many businesses have much catching up to do to provide their customer service teams with the tools they need to serve customers well across every channel.

Our State of Service report also found that all of the high-growth companies surveyed implemented several channels and tools, empowering their customer service teams and improved customer service.

Customers not only enjoy using these channels but, over time, they’ll expect them as a standard in the customer service industry. As a result, businesses need to invest in omnichannel solutions to link these new mediums together and create a seamless customer service experience.

The image below explains how omnichannel experiences work:

Image Source

Rather than having each channel operate independently, the channels link together so they can share messages and information freely. That way, customers don’t have to navigate away from what they’re doing to get help from your business.

Instead, any time they need help, they can reach out on any channel of their choice and will get an immediate, reliable response.

3. Excellent customer service is a competitive advantage.

No matter your industry, you want your business to stand out. After all, nobody strives to be the "second-best" at something. Instead, you want to be better than every other company you're competing with and want your customers to know it, too. That's the key to keeping customers loyal and getting them to interact with your brand continuously.

Customer service can be an excellent differentiator for your company. But churn occurs when a customer stops doing business with a brand and it’s often because of a poor customer service experience. At least 67% of this churn is preventable if the customer's problem is resolved during their first interaction.That means if you provide excellent customer service, you'll not only retain your customers but also acquire your competitors'.

It's undeniable that a well-trained, positive customer service team can make your company the best version of itself. Their ability to communicate directly with customers can revolutionize your company and grow your customer base .

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts.

It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” –Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder

Invest in Your Customer Service Team Today

There’s a strong, data-based case for the positive, multi-layered impact that great customer service can have on a business. The proof is in the research and the results: one significant aspect of a thriving business is to put effort and resources into recruiting and training top customer service talent.

So, now that you’ve seen the numbers, what will you do to raise the standard of customer service at your company?

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Leadership & Customer Experience Research & Case Studies

Case studies in customer service & leadership, customer service case study #1, how customer service & relentless support increased one company’s profitability by 40%.

After the first full year of implementing a comprehensive customer service training and development initiative, this wireless retailer experienced improvement in the consistency of sales and service, and dramatic business results.

Dowload the Customer Service and Relentless Support Case Study

Customer Experience Case Study #2

How one bank beat the recession by focusing on customer experience .

In 2008, the global banking industry was crippled by recession, marked by the failure of over 100 financial institutions in the US alone. This case study examines how a Credit Union used Customer Experience to not just survive, but flourish, during that time. .

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Customer Service Case Study #3

How customer service helped one shopping center stand out against the competition.

Marketing a Shopping Center is a challenge. Traffic levels are traditionally dependent on the location of a center and the selection of its retailers. It’s hard to find a way to stand out in consumer’s minds.  But when new, aggressive competition is on the brink of becoming a reality, it is critical that a center find a competitive difference that will keep their consumers coming back.

This Case Study examines how one Shopping Center leveraged enhanced Customer Service retain their share of market and their customers’ loyalty.

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Customer Service Research

The science of wow, a breakthrough study on the definition of “wow” customer experiences, and what creates them .

The Science of WOW! Customer Service is a groundbreaking study on the elements that create viral customer service experiences. The research was conducted over three years in seven North American and Asian/South Pacific countries, and released in 2016.

The results help provide clear direction for organizations that are looking to create customer service experiences that people talk about.

Free access to The Science of WOW Research

How to Apply The Science of WOW

20 strategies for achieving wow customer experiences.

Science of WOW! Customer Service research points to three core directions for organizations, and three critical attributes for employees. This whitepaper examines these, and the 20 strategies for achieving WOW! customer experiences in any organization.

Free access to How to Apply the Science of WOW

How to Get Training to Stick

Stickiness: how to create change through training.

This White Paper on “Stickiness” is a look at the ten key elements that must come together to ensure that your customer service and leadership training creates real change in your organization. This is a must-have guide for people who design and deliver training for their organizations.

Download stickiness

Top Customer Service Mistakes

The top 24 mistakes customer service people make.

What are the most common mistakes people in customer service make? The Belding Group asked members of their LinkedIn Customer Service Champions group what they thought. The tremendous response by over 200 customer service professionals fell into 24 categories.

See the Top 24 Mistakes

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The Importance of Customer Case Studies

Blog • Tips • February 9, 2022 • Team Truly

Showcasing Your Products & Services

Focus on your customers, case studies are a great way to learn.

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Case Studies Increase Brand Awareness

Case studies are cost effective.

• Your customer’s challenges
• The solution
• Steps to implementation
• End results (e.g. increase in revenue, reduction in effort, etc.)
• Direct customer quotes

Case Studies are the Cornerstone of Brand Loyalty & Affinity

Now that you understand the value in including case studies as part of your overall marketing strategy, you’re ready to start building stronger brand loyalty and affinity.

Brand affinity refers to the connection between the core values that your brand represents (through the eyes of your customers), and the emotional connection that customers make with your brand if they believe you share the same values that they do.

We want to see ourselves in the businesses that we support. Once a customer makes the connection between your brand values and their own, they’ll be incredibly loyal to your business.

Case studies are one of the most valuable forms of social proof businesses can use to add credibility and authority to their brand.

That’s why it’s so critical to understand the value of including case studies in your marketing materials.

Otherwise, you could be missing out on the opportunity to show new potential customers just how much you could help them.

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The state of customer care in 2022

Customer care leaders are facing a perfect storm of challenges: call volumes are up, employees are leaving and harder to replace, and digital solutions aren’t yet delivering on their full promise. Add rising customer expectations and decades-high inflation  to the mix, and it’s easy to understand why customer care leaders are feeling the pressure.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Jeff Berg , Eric Buesing , Paul Hurst, Vivian Lai, and Subhrajyoti Mukhopadhyay, representing views of McKinsey’s Customer Care service line.

The stakes couldn’t be higher as teams try to adapt to a postpandemic era of customer care. Over the past two years, leaders have had to quickly adapt systems and ways of working to accommodate the shift to working from home—up to 85 percent of their workforces, in some cases. Contact center employees are harder to hold onto, and nearly half of customer care managers experienced increased attrition in 2021, leading to performance variability.

Over the past two years, customer care leaders have had to quickly adapt systems and ways of working to accommodate the shift to working from home.

While digital solutions and the shift to self-service channels will solve many of these challenges, they aren’t quite reaching the goal. For most organizations, the vast majority of digital customer contacts require assistance, and only 10 percent of newly built digital platforms are fully scaled or adopted by customers.

Not surprisingly, McKinsey’s 2022 State of Customer Care Survey has found that customer care is now a strategic focus for companies. Respondents say their top three priorities over the next 12 to 24 months will be retaining and developing the best people, driving a simplified customer experience (CX)  while reducing call volumes and costs, and building their digital care and advanced analytics ecosystems.

With challenges on all fronts, the question now confronting leaders is how best to prioritize investment across the people, operations, and technology aspects of their customer care strategies. Knowing where to focus or what to do first isn’t easy, and businesses need to move quickly. Companies that don’t invest in this area face the possibility of further talent attrition, customer dissatisfaction, and even loss of market share.

But customer care is also now a major opportunity for businesses. Done well—through a combination of tech and human touch—it is an area where companies can drive loyalty through a more personalized customer journey while unlocking greater productivity, increased revenue, improved job satisfaction, and real-time customer insights.

This article presents the key findings of the 2022 State of Customer Care Survey and how businesses are shifting priorities at this critical time.

Challenges on all fronts

To uncover the latest trends in customer care, McKinsey surveyed more than 160 industry leaders and experts at the director, senior director, vice president, and C-suite levels to find out how their operations have been affected over the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Care is at an inflection point

The survey findings indicate that customer care is at an inflection point. Call volumes are higher and more complex than before, while companies find themselves struggling to find talent and train them to proficiency at pace.

As customer care increasingly moves online, the distinction between digital and live interactions has also begun to blur. Organizations are looking for new capabilities that will enhance both the customer and employee experience in “moments that matter”—those interactions that may have previously happened face to face or have significant influence on overall CX.

Compared with results of the 2019 State of Customer Care Survey, customer care leaders are now more focused on improving CX, reducing contact volumes, deploying AI assistance, and increasing revenue generation on service calls (Exhibit 1).

Customer care talent is increasingly scarce

Higher call volumes and more complex calls are challenging existing capacity—61 percent of surveyed care leaders report a growth in total calls, with increased contacts per customer and a growing customer base as the key drivers. And 58 percent of care leaders expect call volumes to increase even further over the next 18 months.

While a growing customer base is a positive sign for business, it puts greater pressure on contact centers that are already under strain. More customers mean increased call numbers, and with more complex calls, customers tend to have to phone contact centers over and over again—further affecting capacity and resulting in a more negative CX overall.

To make matters worse, talent attrition is affecting customer care capacity. Employees are leaving faster than they did before the pandemic—a result of the Great Attrition—and are more difficult to replace. Nearly half of surveyed managers report increased employee attrition over the past 12 months.

The top-cited reason for employees leaving is poaching by competitors—58 percent—alongside employee burnout, employee dissatisfaction, lack of advancement opportunities, and poor work–life balance (Exhibit 2).

Retaining talent could prove vital in the race to maintain capacity. New hires require significant staff training, with 41 percent of surveyed leaders reporting that it takes between three and six months to train a new employee for optimal performance and a further 20 percent saying it takes more than six months.

Uniting self-service and live channels

Many companies have made significant investments in digital care capacity in recent years, though cross-channel integration and migration issues continue to hamper progress. For example, 77 percent of survey respondents report that their organizations have built digital platforms, but only 10 percent report that those platforms are fully scaled and adopted by customers. Only 12 percent of digital platforms are highly integrated, and, for most organizations, only 20 percent of digital contacts are unassisted.

In an increasingly digital first environment, however, customer care is fundamental to how organizations interact with their customers. Leaders in this field are asking, “How do we create a better, more personalized experience through digitally enabled services?”

Businesses are investing in three critical areas

Faced with the challenges of a fast-changing and demanding environment, companies can’t afford to refrain from acting on the customer care storm. Over the past two years, customers have flocked to digital channels because of the pandemic, and organizations have had to race to meet their needs with new channels that support remote and digital transactions.

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In a postpandemic future, this pivot to digital is likely to keep growing. And while many companies believe that they have made significant strides in their customer care transformation journey, a significant number remain at a foundational level—they are improving self-service options and automating common requests but haven’t yet moved far enough along the journey to distinguish from their competitors. Meanwhile, those that have the leading edge are leveraging real-time customer behavior insights and conversational AI to deliver proactive customer outreach.

Customer care leaders say their top three priorities over the next 12 to 24 months are to retain and develop the best people, drive a simplified CX while reducing call volumes and costs, and build out their digital care ecosystems.

Retain and develop the best people

Traditionally, customer care talent has been regarded as cheap, easy to replace, and relatively low skilled. But with call volumes growing and calls becoming more complex to resolve, these employees now require more strategic consideration.

With three out of five surveyed leaders citing attracting, training, and retaining talent as a top priority, businesses are looking at ways to build a better organizational culture. Two of the most effective ways to do this—according to customer care leaders—are to find ways to motivate and build trust with employees and to encourage leaders to listen and act on employee feedback (Exhibit 3).

Shift the interactions

Shifting the workload away from transactional, repetitive calls can address a number of the headaches facing customer care leaders. The move can free up capacity to improve CX while offering more rewarding work to employees.

Companies are looking to shift from a transactional to a solution-oriented interaction during the live, complex calls that matter most to customers. Organizations are also turning to self-service channels and tech to resolve high volumes. And the strategy is working. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed that decreased their call volumes identified improved self-service as a key driver (Exhibit 4).

Organizations are planning to increase digital interactions one and a half times by 2024. The top three areas identified for investment include tech that improves omnichannel and digital capabilities—for example, chatbots and AI tools—automated manual activities in contact centers, and advanced analytics capabilities.

Despite digital tech taking on more of the burden for customer service interactions, human assistance will likely remain an important driver of overall CX, especially in the moments that matter. Customers want fast, efficient service, but they also want personalized customer care, whatever the channel of engagement.

Develop AI-powered customer care ecosystems

The growing challenges around increasing volumes, rising complexity, and limited talent availability are unlikely to be solved at scale without AI and data analytics. Companies can optimize the entire customer operations footprint by using tech to measure performance, identify opportunities, and deploy value-capturing change management, thus delivering critical operations insights and impact at scale.

For customers, AI-driven tools like predictive analytics can deliver a personalized and proactive experience that resolves issues before customers are even aware that they exist—enhancing CX at every point along the customer journey. Tech can also assist in developing a high-performing workforce by identifying optimal work processes and practices using analytics. Automated coaching can potentially be deployed to every individual, supporting efforts to attract, develop, and retain scarce talent.

How CEOs can win the new service game

In the AI-powered care ecosystem, around 65 percent of tasks and 50 to 70 percent of contacts are automated, creating a true omnichannel experience that provides a consistent and seamless experience across interactions. In this way, the potential of contact centers could be unlocked to become loyalty-building revenue generators through greater solutioning and sales excellence.

Putting priorities into practice

CX is fast becoming a key competitive area. Companies that don’t prioritize their strategy and digital transformation journeys are likely to face continued customer dissatisfaction, as well as talent attrition—thus threatening their brand and market competitiveness.

Getting customer care right depends on prioritizing and investing across the people, operations, and tech aspects of the customer care strategy. Companies can consider the following key steps as they look to build out their capabilities and invest in their digital care ecosystems:

• Start by setting out the vision for the customer care organization, capturing what excellence looks like.
• Conduct a rapid but thorough due-diligence-style assessment of people, processes, and capabilities, looking at the customer care operation in a new light to identify not just incremental changes but a reimagined, large-scale transformation.
• Path one follows a traditional design approach, which may take longer but prove less risky, as the entire transformation is considered at the outset.
• Path two involves an interactive and agile design, test, and iterate methodology, which may lead to new solutions quickly.
• Leverage the full suite of available technologies and analytical approaches that are driving successful outcomes in customer care, including natural language processing (NLP) and AI in frontline operations to match work to workers, together with cognitive AI assistance for resolving simpler customer queries.

Personalized digital interaction nowadays is an expectation rather than a luxury or an added perk, and customer care is the issue at the heart of this digital first environment—companies can’t afford to stumble at this juncture. If done well, however, customer care presents a great opportunity to build loyalty and long-term relationships with customers, creating organizational resilience for the future.

Jeff Berg is a partner in McKinsey’s Southern California office; Eric Buesing is a partner in the Stamford, Connecticut, office; Paul Hurst is a consultant in the Charlotte, North Carolina, office, Vivian Lai is a consultant in the New York office, and Subhrajyoti Mukhopadhyay is an expert in the Chicago office.

The authors wish to thank Karunesh Ahuja and Charles-Michael Berg for their contributions to this article.

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3 Case Studies to Improve Your Customer Service

First Case Study – Striving to Delight

While purchasing an item from a big box retailer, I asked the salesperson if there was a way that I could get a lower price. She explained to me that if I could show that I met certain conditions, the price could be cut in half. But I had to have the appropriate documentation.

Upon returning to the store with the documentation, we accessed the system and were told that I wasn’t eligible. The salesperson and the customer service person overrode the system and gave me the credit. Petty cool!

I stopped by later on and told the salesperson that I gave her a good review online. She noted that she had seen it and thanked me.

What can the big box retailer learn? First, that whatever they’re doing is working. I will return for future purchases and recommend them.

Clearly, this is something that can be done in person, and might be hard to do online. Hooray for brick and mortar.

But an extended learning might be to reward that salesperson. If someone gets all 10’s and a great review, more than just a “pat on the back” is in order.

Second Case Study – Having Good Systems

I logged on to my investment account at a large retail financial services company to discover that one of my investments had lost two thirds of its value. Upon further exploration on my part, I found out that there had been a stock split. When I contacted my advisor, he suggested to wait a few days for the system to catch up.

What can the financial services company learn? First, if there is a problem, telling someone to wait a few days to see if it will be magically fixed probably isn’t the best suggestion.

But worse than that, in this world of real-time data, having a system that needs a few days to make corrections sends an unsettling message about how the company approaches the financial markets. Is this the company I want to manage my money?

Third Case Study – Responding to Feedback

When I started using the new one, I realized that it did not have the capabilities of the older one. When I noted that to management, the response was, “We haven’t quite worked the kinks out of the new one – I’ll pass this along. Maybe someone can do something.”

What can this business tools company learn? First, if you want my opinion, really act on it. Offer to set up a call with one of your experts. Give me a personal email and ask that I provide further documentation.

Additionally, they should have a formal case file system to log issues. In the second situation, we should have opened a file and followed the issue through to resolution.

When I have a problem now, I don’t bother to talk to anyone. I just move forward on my plan to replace them. I really don’t think they care.

What Your Business Can Do

Want to improve your business? Here are three things you can implement:

• If a customer is delighted, reward the delighter(s).
• Understand that your systems reflect your business. Make sure they work as they should.
• If you get negative feedback, work to solve the problem. Avoid excuses or obfuscations. Create either a formal or informal system to get the feedback to the developers or support personnel so the problem is known and fixed.

None of these are particularly difficult to do, but they demonstrate that you care about your customer and the quality of the service you provide. That is what keeps your customers happy and referring your business to others. And isn’t that what we want as business owners?

How do you handle customer feedback in your company?

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• Free Resources

5 mini case studies about understanding and serving the customer

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

Mini Case Study #1: 34% increase in conversion for powdered health drink company by helping customers come to their own conclusions

A single-product company that sells high-quality, all-natural, powdered health drinks engaged MECLABS Institute to help better understand their potential customers and increase the conversion rate of prospects reaching the homepage.

The original homepage took a claims-driven approach – it provided several bold statements about what the product would do for a customer with no information about the product to help the customer understand why it would work for them. Here is a look at the upper left of the original homepage.

Creative Sample #1: Upper left of original homepage for health drink company

The MECLABS team created a version of the homepage that took a conclusion-driven approach – instead only trying to convince potential customers with only bold claims about the product, the homepage copy included information about the product to help customers understand why the product would help them.

Creative Sample #2: Upper left of treatment homepage for health drink company

The team tested this version as the treatment against the original homepage (the control) to help better understand what communication style customers would respond to.

The treatment generated a 34% increase in conversion rate.

This experiment highlights a classic disconnect between customers and marketers. If you work in a company or with a client, you have intimate knowledge of the product and believe in its effectiveness. You spend all day thinking about it. You personally know some of the people who designed it. Your paycheck depends on the success of the product.

A customer does not have this same understanding or belief in the product. They have a significant gap in their knowledge about your product. Bold claims alone are not enough to close that gap. They have to understand why the product will work and come to their own conclusions about the company’s ability to deliver on its promises.

You can learn more about this experiment in The Conversion Heuristic Analysis: Overcoming the prospect’s perception gap from MarketingExperiments (MarketingSherpa’s sister publication).

Mini Case Study #2: Bags company increases conversion 191% by adding clarity to homepage

“I'm the CEO of Doubletake , a tennis and pickleball bag company, but I spent the majority of my career focused on messaging and research, consulting as a strategist for top brands for the last 10 plus years, and in-house prior to that. I'm almost embarrassed that I have this example to share, but I thankfully came to my senses!,” Shawna Gwin Krasts told me.

“It is interesting that crafting messaging/copy for products that aren't ‘your baby’ is so much easier – there is just more distance to see it for what it is. If this wasn't so near and dear to my heart, I would have caught it in a second.”

The team launched its homepage with only the headline “Sports Meets Style” over a photo of a bag. The headline was meant to differentiate the brand from competitors that were either only sporty or fashionable. Below the headline was a call-to-action (CTA) button with the word “shop.”

Creative Sample #3: Previous homepage copy for bag company

Internally it seemed obvious that the company sells tennis and pickleball bags since a bag was in the photo.

But they came to realize that it might not be as clear to website visitors. So the team added the subhead “Gorgeous Yet Functional Tennis and Pickleball Bags.” They also added the word “bags” to the CTA so it read “shop bags.”

Creative Sample #4: New homepage copy for bag company

These simple changes increased the website's conversion rate by 191%.

“It is so important for marketers to get out of their own heads,” Krasts said. “I suppose this is why I struggle with messaging so much for Doubletake. I am the target customer – I have the answers in my head and I suppose my natural curiosity isn't as strong. But clearly, I also have to remember that I've seen my homepage 10,000 more times than my customers, which means things that seem obvious to me, like the fact that Doubletake is a tennis brand not a reseller, might not be obvious.”

Mini Case Study #3: Online motorcycle gear retailer doubles conversion with personalized emails

There are ways to better tap into what customers perceive as valuable built into certain marketing channels. Email marketing is a great example. Marketers can build off information they have on the customer to send more relevant emails with information and products the customer is more likely to value.

"Very early in my marketing career I was taught, 'You are not the target audience' and told to try to see things from my customer's perspective. Empathizing with customers is a good start towards seeing products from the customers' perspective, but marketers really need to focus on quantifiable actions that can help identify customers' needs. That means continuous testing across messaging, price points, packaging, and every other aspect of a product. This is where personalization can really shine. Every time a marketer personalizes a message, it brings them closer to their customer and closes that gap," said Gretchen Scheiman, VP of Marketing, Sailthru.

For example, 80% of the email messages RevZilla sent were generic. But the website sells motorcycle parts and gear to a wide range of riders, each with their own preference in brand and riding style. The online motorcycle gear retailer partnered with Sailthru to better connect with customer motivations. The team started by upgrading the welcome series for new customers by personalizing the email messages based on the customers’ purchases and preferences.

The company has tested and added many new triggers to the site, and now has 177 different automation journeys that include triggers for browse and cart abandonment as well as automations for different product preferences, riding styles and manufacturer preferences.

The conversion rate from personalized email is double what RevZilla was getting for generic batch-and-blast sends. Automated experiences now account for 40% of email revenue. Triggered revenue is up 22% year-over-year and site traffic from triggers has increased 128% year-over-year.

"Customizing the buyer journey isn't about one long flow, but about lots of little trigger points and tests along the way. For any marketer that is intimidated about getting started with personalization, it's important to realize that it's more like a lot of small building blocks that create a whole experience. We started with a custom welcome series using testing and built from there. We're still adding new tests and new trigger points, but it's with the same concept that we started with,” said Andrew Lim, Director of Retention Marketing, RevZilla.

Mini Case Study #4: Pet protection network increases revenue 53% thanks to survey feedback

Huan makes smart tags for pets to help owners find their pets if they go missing. Initially, the company focused on the technical features in its homepage copy. For example, the tags don’t emit harmful radiation, are water-resistant and have a replaceable one-year battery.

From customer feedback surveys, the team discovered that customers purchased the product because they were worried they wouldn’t be able to find their pet if the pet went missing. This discovery prompted the team to change its messaging.

The new messaging on the homepage read, “Keep your pet safe and prevent heartbreak. Huan Smart Tags help you find your missing pet automatically.”

Revenue increased 53% increase following the change in messaging. “We immediately saw an increase in engagement on our website, with a lower bounce rate, higher click-through rate and a higher conversion rate. There were also a few people who messaged us on social media saying how our new message resonated with them,” said Gilad Rom, Founder, Huan.

Mini Case Study #5: Talking to new customers leads SaaS to change strategy, increase sales 18%

When Chanty launched, the marketing messages focused on pricing since the Saas company is 50% less expensive than the best-known competitor. However, when the team started talking to customers, they discovered most people had switched from the competitor for different reasons – ease of use, better functionalities in the free plan, better experience with the customer support team, and a better mobile app.

The team changed its marketing to focus around these product attributes and only listed pricing in the end as an additional benefit.

“It turned out that this was the way to go because we attracted people who wanted a better experience, rather than just customers who wanted to save money. After six months of implementing this new marketing and sales strategy, our sales grew by 18%,” said Jane Kovalkova, Chief Marketing Officer, Chanty.

Related resources

The Prospect’s Perception Gap: How to bridge the dangerous gap between the results we want and the results we have

Customer-First Marketing: Understanding customer pain and responding with action

Marketing Research Chart: How customer understanding impacts satisfaction

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Why is Use Case Understanding Important for Customer Service?

• June 23, 2023

Is that the sound of the stampede? No, what you are hearing is the sound of the customer service-led growth (CSLG) movement, and it is coming at full speed!

The reason for this constant boom is that customer-led growth strategies help brands boost net revenue retention (NRR), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and, of course, GROWTH. 

A survey by Salesforce reveals that the quality of customer support influences the purchasing decision of about 4 out of 5 customers.

While customer service leaders negotiate the ever-changing reality, they must determine how to push their businesses forward. Unfortunately, decoding customer behavior has been among the greatest challenges for organizations for years.

As such, shaping a growth trajectory based on a customer-driven approach is quintessential. In such strategies, customer feedback and insights primarily influence several mission-critical decisions, from what UX/UI to design, to what features to launch, to what customer service process to implement.

Use case understanding is one of those retention-based growth methods brands use for these intentions.

But why understand customer use cases? While talking about human interactions, it is quality instead of quantity that eventually matters most – now more than ever seen.

What is Use Case Understanding in Customer Service?

In customer service, use cases describe all the possible ways customers utilize a particular service or feature to meet their needs/address specific pain points. They underline the individual experiences of customers so brands can better connect with them.

Businesses build use cases to determine success and failure scenarios and any crucial exceptions or variations in customer support. As people purchase the same service for multiple reasons, use cases vary based on particular circumstances.

While understanding use cases takes a fair share of effort, it is well worth the effort. A well-orchestrated use case equips customer service agents with actionable insights to identify pain points, key areas for improvement, and ways to improve customer growth and retention.

For instance, the manufacturing industry has a reputation for being slow and hard to communicate with. Duplicate responses, missed emails, and delayed deliveries due to back-and-forth communication used to dent their efficacy and client satisfaction. One such victim of ineffective communication was the UK-based manufacturer – Get It Made .

Now the company has adopted a service-led growth framework to break this stereotype and streamline its workflows and communication. Using data analytics and reporting in customer service software, Get It Made can monitor crucial client and project-related insights and, above all, access real-time customer service metrics.

Similarly, telecom operators have to cope with fluctuating support volumes, facing ticket overflows during certain times of the day, month, and year. As such, scheduling customer service agents for peak periods becomes challenging, resulting in increased response times.

To overcome the problem, telecom companies leverage artificial intelligence-driven chatbots to manage high query influx without upscaling their staff. Moreover, these chatbots boast an unlimited capacity, meaning their efficiency scales up or down in ways that conventional support systems could not.

There are several telecom operators already using chatbots to improve their customer service. One such example is Vodafone’s digital assistant, TOBi , designed to answer most customer queries and enable users to manage their accounts, all while boosting the customer experience.

Benefits of Understanding Customer Use Cases

Let’s look at how understanding use cases is essential for customer service-led growth and how it benefits your organization – and your customers.

01. Identify Unmet Customer Needs

A deeper understanding of customer use cases helps you understand vulnerabilities plaguing your customer service and gain additional touchpoints or enhance existing ones. That means no more guesswork.

Determining how customers utilize your customer support lets you pinpoint issues, where they are trying to engage but cannot, or where completing an action requires considerable effort.

These insights act as a guideline for better customer service delivery, quality improvement, and creating a practical unique selling point (USP) to level up your customer experience in 2023.

02. Personalize Customer-facing Interactions

Personalization is critical to incredible customer service as people value brands that realize their unique needs. In fact, you can boost your online conversion rate by roughly 8% by tailoring consumer experiences. 

Understanding customer use cases enables you to deep-dive into people’s sentiments during support interactions. That way, you can tailor your customer-led growth strategies to satiate every client across all touchpoints and, eventually, address their needs in a more personalized manner going forward.  

For instance, offering tailored support across multiple communication channels or fine-tuning post-onboarding journeys so customers can adapt your services to their needs.

Including insights collected via use case understanding to deliver personalized customer service helps brands improve key performance indicators (KPI), including customer lifetime value (CLV), customer retention, and customer satisfaction.

03. Address only Complex Support Requests

Every organization receives 578 tickets a day, 3,991 a week, and 17,630 a month, says a report.

Customer service-led growth, like any other business operation, works on the Pareto principle – more commonly known as the 80-20 rule. More than 80% of all customer queries stem from 20% of repetitive questions.

These mostly hover around level-1 tech support, pre-sales and post-sales queries, and user onboarding. Thanks to use case understanding, you can single out that 20% data set of recurring requests and create automated, canned responses for them.

The result? You and your agents have more time to deal with critical customer-facing communications needing a personal touch.

4 Ways to Effectively Implement Use Case Understanding in Customer Service

Here are four ways to make the best use of use case understanding for customer service in 2023:

01. Thoroughly Understand your Product/Service and its Use Cases

You must have learned this old adage in elementary school – “Knowledge is power.” Most entrepreneurs remain in the false impression that they can coast along on a surface-level understanding of their offerings.

If you do not properly study what you are selling, failure is just a few miles away. So, dig deep into your product/service and how they relate to your customers. Every customer-facing interaction houses a wealth of data, from pain points and expectations to why they prefer you over the competition.

Then, highlight all the possible customer use cases of your service and bring them under the microscope to understand them better.

02. Build a Team with Diverse Skillsets  

When it comes to understanding use cases in customer service-led growth, housing a diverse workforce brings a multitude of ideas and perspectives to the table. During brainstorming sessions, every stakeholder brings unique experiences, backgrounds, and knowledge, which help highlight insights and nuances to identify numerous use cases and solutions to customer pain points.

This drives collaborative problem-solving as team members build upon one another’s ideas in new and exciting ways. The greater the diversity in skillsets, the more dynamic and effective these brainstorming sessions become.

03. Deploy the Right Tools and Technologies

The potential of modern technology in today’s business economy can easily dazzle anyone. Unfortunately, you could fall into the trap of buying solutions with endless features thinking you need all of these to function optimally. However, that is not always the case.

Your customer service tech suite will vary based on your business needs and customer use cases. Accordingly, invest in technologies that align with your organizational goals and help you examine customer use cases effectively.

For instance, data analytics extract qualitative insights from all customer-facing communications (chats, phone calls, survey feedback, and emails). These include customer sentiments, expectations, and behavior patterns. These findings help you determine where to channel your customer service efforts and if you need to modify your existing processes.

04. Align Multiple Departments 

Understanding use cases works wonders with viewpoints from not only your customer service agents but also other departments – marketing, product/service development, and UX. 

Hence, organize in-person boardroom meetings with various stakeholders and gather their feedback to understand how they communicate with customers. These diverse insights will flex your brain muscles and help establish a watertight service-led growth strategy.

Such cross-functional collaborations eliminate guesswork around the benefits and the struggles customers face while using your offerings.  

Challenges in Use Case Understanding (and How to Overcome Them)

While use case understanding in customer-led growth brings umpteen benefits, it also presents various challenges. Read on some common challenges that companies may face:

01. Complexity Issues

Understanding use cases is complex, particularly if you have to consider numerous products/services or customer segments. You could struggle with identifying all possible use cases and must dedicate considerable resources and time to holistically understand customer preferences and needs.

To overcome this complexity, break down the process into smaller, more manageable tasks. Start by focusing on the most prevalent customer service use cases and later expand to more intricate scenarios. Further, joining hands with other departments and teams can help you identify all possible use cases efficiently.

02. Not Having Enough Data

Businesses, especially those that have just taken off, may lack access to sufficient data to understand customer use cases thoroughly. As such, they find it challenging to identify patterns or trends and develop effective services/products.

Too less data makes the flow of use case understanding meaningless.

To make well-informed decisions, deploy data analytics tools and resources to gather and examine more insights. Plus, conduct surveys on the target audience to better understand customer expectations and demands. Finally, emphasize the vital aspects and keep on adding insights till every stakeholder is satisfied.

But how detailed a customer service use case should be?

To the furthest extent and in as much data as necessary to clearly demonstrate customer use cases.

03. Communication Loopholes

Keeping every stakeholder across teams and departments in the know is a must in use case understanding. Else, inefficient communication leads to misunderstandings or information gaps, hampering the effectiveness of customer service-led growth strategies.

To optimize communication, establish crystal-clear channels and protocols. Moreover, use collaboration tools and software to ensure data access to everyone in real-time.

04. Inadequate Training

Your customer service agents must know how to best serve people in their roles, especially those on the front lines. Indeed, they must have the tools to manage multiple situations.

However, customer service agents may not have the necessary training or resources to carry out use case understanding effectively. This results in inefficiencies, errors, and suboptimal outcomes. In fact, 7 out of 10 people complain about the inept training of customer service agents.

To tackle the situation, organize holistic training programs to equip your staff with the expertise and skills to understand customer use cases accurately. Plus, offer ongoing support and feedback to reinforce the training.

05. Focusing on all Use Cases

Digging deeper into every use case is crucial so that you know your focus groups and the goals they achieve by using your services. This is especially true during complex customer-facing communications where extracting insights is essential to rethink and test your product/service.

However, if you blindly apply this approach for every use case, you are simply piling up the data sets, let alone the subsequent time wasted in reviewing them. All these without driving any additional value to your customer service framework.

Instead of addressing every possible use case, prioritize them based on their frequency and impact. For instance, identify the most prevalent and critical use cases having the biggest impact on customer satisfaction and focus on those initially. That way, you can allocate your resources effectively and ensure the best possible support for the most pressing issues.

Be Proactive: Assess Use Cases to Anticipate Customer Needs

Understanding customer use cases helps you determine exactly how users engage with your brand and product/service at multiple touchpoints – and what they are doing or thinking at each stage.

While you might feel that you are adequately fulfilling your customer needs, there are chances that you are not, which is why customers move away to your competitors. That said, you can truly deliver on that promise by deep-diving into practical use cases.

Consider your use case understanding a living record. Refer back to it while reimagining your customer service in 2023 (design, testing, and launch) to drive retention-based growth.

If you accomplish this mission, you will provide more customer-centricity your business needs to write a success story.

Sign up with Helpwise for a 14-day free trial to optimize your customer service-led growth strategies.

How does use case understanding benefit organizations?

Understanding use cases fuels service-led growth in the following ways:

• Pinpoint unfulfilled customers’ needs and expectations
• Offer tailored customer services
• Determine use case specific repetitive queries and automate them

How can businesses implement use case understanding?

For proper use case understanding, follow these tips:

• Have a deep knowledge of your offering and build possible use cases
• Include employees in your team from diverse expertise and background in customer-led growth strategies
• Bring employees from every department together into the framework
• Invest in the appropriate technologies

What challenges do businesses face during use case understanding?

Organizations aiming for better customer retention encounter the following challenges while understanding use cases:

• Complicated use cases in customer support
• Limited data at hand
• Communication gaps among relevant stakeholders
• Agents are under-equipped with information and tools to understand use cases
• Taking every use case into consideration

Related Topics

• customer service led growth
• use case understanding

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Last updated on 2022-03-30

The importance of a good customers service: case study with Lufthansa

There is nothing more frustrating in life than facing a stubborn careless customer service. if you are yourself taking care of customer service, bear in mind the following rules, they might save or even improve your image..

We have all experienced this. Automatic hotlines never leading to answers, customer services ignoring us, expensive hotlines forcing you to pay to complain, emails never receiving any answer, people sending you from a department to another constantly asking you to repeat your story... bureaucracy and administration are as necessary as there are harmful for your company's image .

Recently, I have experienced what might have been the worst customer service experience I ever had.

In this article, I will study this specific case and try to highlight what would have been the correct behavior, how this company could have saved a customer without necessarily spending money.

Lufthansa and the inexistent customer service

( Want to skip the detail of my customer service experience? Click here! )

Early September 2012, I fly Lufthansa with my friend. We booked tickets way earlier and we are now ready to fly. Problem is: Lufthansa's staff is on strike. As I am French, I can hardly blame Germans for being on strike: in my country, this is almost a national sport!

My flight is changed to another airline and confirmed. All good.

We fly with my friend, but starting then, nothing goes right: we can't sit together, our flight gets late, we miss the next flight, our luggage is lost, we are sent for three hours from one counter to another, then we are asked to pay our Metro tickets by ourselves to reach a train station that might help us reaching our destination... hell on earth.

A few days later, I prepare a long, polite, detailed and well organized email to describe my exact situation to Lufthansa's customer service, convinced that I will get a quick and efficient answer.

After a few minutes, I receive an auto-reply:

Dear Customer, Thank you for your email.

We will contact you with an answer to your query as soon as possible. In the meantime, your patience is highly appreciated.

Thank you for choosing Lufthansa and we look forward to serving you online and in flight.

Lufthansa Customer Service & Support Center

Great! I will receive a quick answer.

A week later, I still have nothing. I send another email, copying the original message and asking if my case is being handled. Same automatic answer.

Another week passes. I check online and find that there are several "customer service" lines for Lufthansa. I decide to try calling. This time someone answers me! And the answer is clear and precise: please send us an email..................

I send a third email asking if I can expect receiving an answer someday.

Dear Mr. Rio,

Thanks for your email.

As a complaint case, please kindly contact our Customer Relation Center at email XXXXX.

Yours sincerely,

Great, I am now redirected to another customer service center, still from Lufthansa. Could they not have redirected me in the first place? Anyway. I repeat the same procedure and re-send my email, precising this is already the third one.

Not even an auto-reply.

I leave this all story aside for a while. After a month, I send a fourth email and a fifth one, one for each customer service line. I also go on Facebook and find that Lufthansa has a page: I leave the same complaint there.

My two emails got absolutely ignored but my Facebook message is almost instantly replied:

Hi Julien, I'm sorry to hear you still haven't received a reply from Customer Relations. I will send them a message, asking them to get back to you as soon as possible.

Great! Finally, something happens!

Well, not really...

45 days after the initial email, I still got no answer and I lose patience. I go back on the Facebook page and check out other people's messages: I AM NOT ALONE!

Hundreds of people in various languages are complaining the same way as I do for similar reasons.

Enough is enough: I decide to take another approach. I create a Facebook page: " Lufthansa's disappointed customers ".

I go back on Lufthansa's page and remind them that it has been over 45 days since my original complaint and that I have received no feedback so far. I mention my new page and invite all disappointed customers to join and share their stories.

A minute later, I receive the following message:

Hi Julien, I have contacted Customer Relations. A decision regarding your case has been made today, you will be contacted shortly. 

Magic, isn't it? You wait for 45 days and nothing is done, but the day you create a Facebook page for disappointed customers things get better!

Well... not that much actually. My case might have received a decision, but I still haven't received any feedback.

The customer's point of view

As a customer, what do you think about this situation?

You paid for a service. You received a much lower quality of service and went through endless troubles. When you would expect to receive apologies and/or compensation, you are asked to wait.

After sending several emails and request, after waiting for 45 days, you still get no feedback, no-one takes interest in your case. How could it be more frustrating?

The result from the customer's perspective is obvious:

• I will not fly Lufthansa again
• I will spread my message and share my bad experience with people around me

For Lufthansa, this is both a customer loss and bad advertisement.

The golden rules for customer service

Earlier this year, I wrote an article called " How to answer customers emails ". If you haven't read it yet, I encourage you to give it a try: in this article I list some of the most important aspects of customers' emails and how to answer them properly.

There is one thing each entrepreneur, manager or customer service staff should keep in mind at all time: regardless the quality of your product or service, if your customer service is not up to customers' expectation, all your work is worth nothing .

Try considering the following situation: you spent some great time in a luxury hotel for a very reasonable price and everything was almost perfect. Only a small detail bothered you and you would simply like to discuss it with the hotel's customer service to find some solution. But the hotel ignores you, never gets back to you and does not even take time to thank you for your comment. Would you not be frustrated? Would this not completely spoil your earlier satisfaction?

Customer service is the last contact between a company and its customer and this is why it has to be perfect.

I would actually have preferred keeping this point for later, but it is definitely the most important of all. Empathy. Empathy is the absolute solution to all problems you might ever encounter with your customers. Simply put yourself in your customers' shoes: why is this person so frustrated and what can I do to make this person feel better?

If you have to hire someone for your customer service this is the only thing that you absolutely need to check: is this person capable of empathy?

This is another essential point. It might seem obvious, but it is sadly too often forgotten by customer services.

The client is what brings money in the company. The customer is what pays your salary. Regardless his level of anger, his level of rudeness, he is the king. He paid for a service and he is not satisfied. He might be right, he might be wrong, but this matters not in the way you must answer him: with respect. You must be humble at all time and reply anger with calm.

3. Plan ahead

You should be able at all time to plan ahead and expect your customer's need before those appear .

When a customer sends you an email, he should receive right away an automatic answer. This auto-reply should contain basic information such as "Thank you for your message" and "we will reply you within X days".

This is important: the customer should know at the time he sends an email when he can expect an answer .

If you feel like you can't answer him within the timeframe, get back to him BEFORE the deadline has been reached .

"Dear customer, we took your message into consideration. Unfortunately, we are currently unable to reply your request but will give you an answer within X days. We apology for...."

That way, the customer does not need to send a second email, and this is an absolutely essential point.

Put yourself in the situation where you sent an email to a customer service. If they promised getting back to you with 48 hours and you still have no answer after 3 days, you are frustrated. Now, if before the end of those 48 hours a representative gets back to you explaining that the answer will be delayed but that they did not forget you, you have no reason to worry about being ignored.

Whenever you can't keep up to your promise, get back to the customer BEFORE it is too late and inform him . You should always be able to get back to him before he needs to remind you of your words.

4. Be human

You certainly have rules and procedures to follow. For each situation your customer might face you probably have a "prepared answer".

For example: "If you want to return this product, you will need to provide us with the ticket, the proof XYZ, the certificate XKY, etc...". Be human, you are not a machine. There are situations in which following the rules word by word is just impossible. Answering a human need with an administrative response is not efficient.

Of course, you have to follow those rules, but try to be flexible, understanding and to reply in a human way .

Earlier this year I faced this situation as a customer: living in Hong Kong, I have a French international insurance. My insurance asked me to get my doctor to fill in a medical certificate written in French. It took me forever to try to get my interlocutor to understand that Chinese doctors do not speak or read French. I took an international insurance, it would have seemed obvious that I would live abroad and require international documents. But sometimes, customer services are stubborn and refuse to think: they stupidly follow the procedure without taking the human aspect into account.

5. No excuse

You are late in your reply because of a strike? Because your colleague was sick? Because of a computer bug?

Customers don't care.

If you are late, if you can't give a straight answer, if your service lost the customer's file... don't give him excuses. Don't start explaining the reasons why it happened and how it isn't your fault. Go straight to what matters to him: the solution.

"We are sorry we had to delay our reply. We are now checking your case with our team and will get back to you within X days with the proper answer. Once again, we apology for our late reply and thank you for your patience and understanding".

That is all. As a customer, you want fact. You want to know when and how you will get what you want . The rest does not matter to you.

6. Social Media

A few years back, no company would ever have considered opening their customer service to everyone. Today, things have changed and numerous companies try to adapt their system to more transparency.

Social Media is scary for most companies as it implies partially losing control: what happens between a customer and the company through email is pretty much confidential. What happens on Facebook or other Social Platforms is open to anyone and therefore represents a real risk of totally losing control. On the other hand, it shows a real desire from the company to be transparent.

How to deal with Social Media? Well, there is no golden rule here.

Some companies restrain the type of comments left on their page and "moderate" those by deleting anything negative. This might be the wrong approach: either you accept to open your company to critics, or you don't. This behavior shows a motivation to be transparent but the desire to keep control: this is the wrong message to give people.

Some others will let customers post anything (as long as it follows some basic ethic rules), positive as well as negative, and simply answer the feedback as they come. This might be the best way to use Social Media. However, you have better be pretty confident with your quality of service: if all the messages you receive on the platform are negative, this exercise of transparency with soon become a huge problem for you to handle.

A thing to keep in mind is that Social Media and customer service are two different things . In the end, you must reply your customers individually with personal answers and potentially private details. The Social Platform should only "guide" the customer in the proper direction and advise him to save some time, but only the customer service will be able to provide the correct answer.

Make sure your customer service is at least as efficient as your Social Media team: it would be very frustrating for your customer to get instant reply on Facebook and to wait two months for a customer service's reply!

7. Hotlines

Hotlines can be extremely painful for customers.

First, if you offer a hotline for your customers to give feedback or complain, make it free: companies charging people who complain have no idea about the very concept of customer service .

Second, you are entitled to use those "automatic hotline" systems directing the customer to the right service. But if you do so, use EMPATHY ! These systems are conceived to save the customer's time and make the problem solving process more efficient. Unfortunately, most of the time, those system are extremely inefficient and get the customer more frustrated than he was before calling! Test your own system as if you were a customer and update it from time to time to make sure it is always working its best in the customers' interest .

Third, hotlines are useless if their purpose is to redirect people to the email solution. If you provide customer with a solution, make sure this solution is going to bring answers on its own , otherwise you are wasting your time as well as your customer's one.

Fourth, you are entitled to outsource your hotline or to host it in a different country from yours. However, make sure that the person your customer will have on phone speaks clearly and fluently your country's language and that this person has a very clear understanding of what your company does and how it deals with problems . Too often hotlines are simply unable to help the customers because they simply follow guidelines without trying to understand what the customer really needs.

For hotlines, there is a very simple rule to follow: test it yourself once in a while . Create yourself a problem a customer might encounter and call your hotline. If you get in any way frustrated, then something is wrong and you must restructure it.

Lufthansa's customer service: the pros and cons

My personal experience with Lufthansa has been disastrous. But things could have easily been different.

Let's go back to the case study and try to see how things could have been handled better.

1. A bad experience

The first point to note is that I paid for a service I never had and that I instead experienced successive problems.

What, as a customer, I would have expected would have been, first, apologies for the situation, then, some kind of compensation.

But before all, what all customers are looking for is respect .

2. A first contact with the customer service

After I sent my first email, I immediately received an auto-reply. This is a good point.

However, the auto-reply wasn't bringing much information : "we will contact you as soon as possible". When I read this message, I did not expect that 45 days later I would still be waiting!

"As soon as possible" means nothing: for some people it might be 24 hours, for others "one day when I have time". Be precise! "We will contact you within a week" would have been a better answer.

3. No answer

After a week, anyone would expect something to happen . This is the second negative point: Lufthansa did not get back to me.

The proper handling of the case would have been a second (personalized or automatic) answer: "Dear customers, We apology for the delay of our answer. Unfortunately, we are currently unable to reply your request. We are trying our best and will get back to you within 7 days".

This type of answer is already quite frustrating for the customer, but, at least, this one knows that he hasn't been forgotten. With such answer, I would have waited longer without getting impatient.

Lufthansa's customer service hotline hasn't been able to give me any other answer than " please use our email service ". Then why having a hotline ?

5. Too much delay

Whatever the reason, a month is the maximum a customer can accept before receiving an answer . If Lufthansa isn't able to reply customers within 30 days, then they have a serious customer service problem and it is time to solve the problem by hiring and restructuring their service.

6. From A to B

Lufthansa sent me from a customer service to another, once by phone, once by email, without ever solving my problem.

If you are not the right service to contact (that can happen), don't tell your customer to ask somewhere else: transfer his request yourself!

Lufthansa should have redirected my request to another service by itself if it was wrongly addressed.

7. The Social Media

Here we have a very positive and a very negative point.

Lufthansa's Social Media service is great. They accept all comments, both positive and negative, try to answer everyone within a reasonable timeframe, are always polite and try their best to be useful.

Unfortunately, Lufthansa's Social Media team is much more efficient than their customer service colleagues and they have absolutely no power of action.

The Social Media team keeps promising that "the request has been successfully sent to our customer service department", but nothing happens after this. Another great promise with no action behind, what a shame!

Customer service is all about your image.

You might follow step by step all my guidelines and still face difficult situations: that is normal. C ustomer service is more a social science than a business. It requires you to really understand people's mind and needs and not everyone is able to do so.

But if you follow all the steps previously stated, you shall at least be able to limit the frustration of your customers.

Remember that a happy customer might share his experience with one person but a disappointed one will share it with 8 others. Bad word of mouth can kill companies. Take very good care of your customer service.

Customer service is all about changing feelings, not facts . Whatever bad experience your customer went through is past already: what you can, what you must change is his perception and feeling about your company . You must convince your disappointed customer that they can trust you again. Changing feelings involves dedication, empathy and respect – it doesn’t require money . Most people will be satisfied with a fast reply, apologies and – eventually – a discount, a small gift or some advantage. Make your customer feel important and involved: that costs nothing and that creates loyalty. If you would like to develop your strategy and go further in terms of customers’ loyalty, I invite you to read my article “ Mismanagement of customers loyalty ”.

To conclude this article, I would like to invite you to read about Dave Carroll's story. In 2009, Dave Carroll's expensive guitar was broken by United Airlines. The company ignored his complains and requests. As a result, Dave decided to write a simple song about his story "United Breaks Guitars". Within 4 days airing on Youtube, the stock price value of United Airlines dropped by 10%! This is a story all customer services should keep in mind: you can't disrespect your customers and expect no consequence . Sooner or later, misbehavior has consequences. To read Dave Carroll's full story, have a look here: United Breaks Guitars .

Julien Rio.

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