Improving Your First Contact Resolution in Customer Service

Prior to making a purchase online, consumers often contact a company for customer service assistance. Their goal is to get their questions and concerns figured out before processing a transaction (commonly known as first contact resolution, or FCR). It’s more critical than ever for companies like yours to exceed your customer’s expectations during this initial interaction. Failure to do so will almost always send your customers elsewhere to a competitor.

And, when you consider that there can be dozens, if not hundreds, of alternatives for obtaining a similar product to yours online, improving your first contact resolution is vital. Whether it’s via phone call, social media or online chat – it doesn’t matter.

Here’s how organizations like yours can boost its FCR:

Train employees better
Customers are sure to be disappointed if they continuously interact with workers who can’t help with their situation. You need to analyze your consumer data and look for patterns and common questions. Armed with this information, you can better train your employees to deal with any kind of inquiry. Proper training will make first contact resolution smooth and efficient for both you and your customer. When customers feel their anxieties regarding your product or service fade away, they are more likely to pull the trigger on a transaction.

Review current processes and change if necessary
In order to improve any customer service metric, analyze how you engage your clientele. Taking a closer look at these practices and processes can help you pinpoint areas that need improvement. Furthermore, you’ll identify strategies that are working for your clients and ones that aren’t. Removing inefficient procedures and implementing effective service techniques will maintain consumer satisfaction and provide a better level of customer service.

Maintain consistency
Today’s consumers utilize a variety of channels to find the solution to their problem or answer to their question. Therefore, you should implement the same customer service policy across all of the mediums. This guarantees that your customers get the best help possible no matter their point of contact. For instance, if your organization responds to phone calls within an hour, you should do the same for social media questions or emailed requests. Maintaining consistency across platforms will eliminate the need for further outreach and result in faster purchases from clientele.

First-contact resolution is a crucial metric for your organization. By analyzing your current methods across various channels, you’ll provide more in-depth and helpful customer service. And, that leads to stronger customer loyalty and more business.