How do you treat people who want to support your business? Do you put them on hold? Do you wait to respond to their messages until it’s convenient for you? Do you ignore their feedback on your business? If you have trouble answering any of these customer service questions, then it might be time to rethink your strategy.

Customers want to be treated like friends, and creating loyal customers starts long before they walk into your business. If you want to stand out today, you have to deliver on an amazing customer experience. The following signs are clear indicators that you’re missing the mark in terms of customer service.

1. You Place Customers on Hold or Miss Calls Altogether

Did you know that nearly 21% of customers will only wait five minutes for a business to respond before moving onto other options? If you’re leaving customers on hold or aren’t able to respond to them within a few minutes then you’re driving them straight to the competition.

Believe it or not, the key to a winning customer service strategy is being cognizant of the customer’s time. While customers value the 1 to 1 nature of phone calls, what they value even more is their time. Adopting a messaging platform allows your employees to communicate with multiple customers at the same time. So your employees can respond to every message as soon as it’s received—no more hold music. 

The result is a better customer experience—customers spend less time on hold, employees can respond to every customer in real time, and overall customer satisfaction increases. Being able to respond to every customer isn’t just good for them, it helps you serve a larger customer base and ultimately increase your revenue.

2. Your Team Doesn’t Have a Fast Way of Communicating

Internal communication for business is as about as fun as it sounds. Unfortunately, how your team handles internal communication has major implications for the effectiveness of your customer service. The reality for many business owners is that emails often go unchecked for hours, or worse, ignored altogether. 

Mobile messages, on the other hand, get noticed. Talking to customers should be as seamless and mobile-friendly as talking to your team. Podium’s Teamchat puts the power of on-the-go communication back in your hands, literally. With Podium’s dedicated smartphone app, you can talk to customers alongside your internal messaging, so you have the context to keep the conversation going wherever work takes you.

3. You have Trouble Managing Multiple Inboxes

Instagram, Facebook, and Google are all great on their own. But when you combine DMs, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Google Reviews, and phone calls—it’s too much. Even the best multi-taskers would be overwhelmed trying to respond to customers on all of these channels.

The good news is you don’t have to master a million inboxes, just one. Podium combines all of your customer messaging channels into a single inbox. So you can keep your customers happy without sacrificing your sanity.

4. You Have No Data on Customer Satisfaction

One-click buying and two-day shipping have transformed how customers think of convenience. Even though the bar for businesses to deliver a good experience has never been higher, many still haven’t gotten started. According to Deloitte Digital, “Despite the holy grail status placed on consumer experience, it’s often over-promised and under-delivered.”

Feedback, a customer satisfaction tool from Podium, uses the same text-based communication channels your customers know and love to understand their experience before it becomes public. You get instant insights into your customer experience at every touchpoint. No more waiting on one-star reviews to know exactly how you can improve your business.

A Winning Customer Service Strategy

If your customer service strategy is in trouble, now is the time to roll up your sleeves and fix it. The necessity of great customer service is only becoming more and more critical to the success of your business. 

Talking about customer service, Deloitte Digital’s research of more than 500 brand leaders concluded, “To stand out from the pack that offers mediocre experiences, brands must offer frictionless engagement across marketing, commerce, and service touchpoints, from the showroom to the call center to how they operate their supply chain and fulfill orders.”