Four tips for empathetic customer communication

Unrestricted communication with customers is particularly important in crisis situations. However, sick employees, home office and network problems make it more difficult for companies to maintain their normal work processes - not to mention the additional requirements that arise due to the increasing need for communication during the crisis. These difficulties result in, among other things, long waiting times and dissatisfaction on both sides: Both customers and employees are frustrated.

Companies are therefore faced with the urgent task of reorganizing their service teams under the changed conditions. At the same time, they are faced with the challenge of offering their customers, who are often affected by the crisis or unsettled by it, first-class service and conveying a sense of understanding. These challenges cannot be overcome without modern tools and methods. There are four strategies that can help.

Use of digital channels to increase effectiveness

Customer contact numbers will remain at a high level for the foreseeable future and can hardly be managed with the existing tools without additional employees. The use of digital channels such as web chats, business chats and messengers in customer communication promises a way out of this dilemma. They can handle a much higher call volume and reduce costs at the same time.

Use of digital tools to reduce the contact volume

Self-services, chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants (IVA) help to answer many inquiries in advance and thus reduce the number of call contacts. Modern bot technology can now use methods such as speech recognition (natural language processing) and sentiment analysis to identify many of a customer's needs and wishes, respond appropriately and thus relieve employees of some of the call volume.

Use of digital tools for e-mail communication

Manual e-mail correspondence is extremely time-consuming. This means enormous effort for companies and employees and long waiting times for responses for customers. Email bots with natural language processing (NLP) can automate this communication channel for viewing and selecting emails. They are already so advanced that they have a success rate of around 75 percent. This results in faster email response times and positive cost effects.

Use of elaborate methods in team and customer communication

Case lifecycle management and microjourney are flexible methods that streamline and optimize team collaboration and interaction with the customer on the basis of transparent service levels (SLA). This enables the customer-centric processing of all necessary service activities, which is crucial for high customer satisfaction.

"Such measures can drastically reduce the workload for service teams," explains Kay Knoche, Principal Consultant Next Best Action at Pegasystems. "At the same time, the conditions are created for being able to communicate with customers faster, more efficiently, more specifically and more empathetically, thus offering a positive experience in contact with your own company."