If you’ve been in the service industry for more than a few years, there’s no doubt you’ve seen a shift in customer expectations. With the technology available, customers see no excuse for poor customer service.
A poor customer experience signals that the overall performance may be subpar, turning customers to your competitors and costing your business revenue. Plus, over half of the consumers surveyed report they’re willing to pay a higher amount for companies that provide a superior experience, so companies that provide exceptional service can actually make more per customer.
It’s safe to say that every service business strives to acquire more customers at premium prices. So, let’s look at the most significant customer expectation shifts that field service companies need to address to improve customer satisfaction and grow their business, and how the right field service management tools can help.
Rapid customer support response times
Gone are the days when customers simply left a voicemail that service providers returned when they were able. Now, customers expect an immediate response. For example, in one survey, almost half of respondents expect customer service to respond to an email within four hours, and 12% actually want a response within 15 minutes.
What’s more, there are numerous channels to respond to. Customers might call, email, submit a ticket, or a host of other options depending on your customer support setup.
The research shows that the phone is still the preferred way to connect with companies regarding customer support, but digital channels are not far behind. However, only 33% of customers prefer to schedule an appointment over the phone, with many people preferring to book online. This means you must figure out a way to keep track of customer communications from every channel and relay them to your technicians in the field without a delay.
Zuper understands how difficult it is to track customer presence across channels and how important it is to always meet customers where they are. That’s why Zuper integrates with the top CRMs and support systems, including HubSpot, Zendesk, Zoho, and Salesforce. These integrations allow you to offer multiple levels of support while keeping customer information accessible to everyone whether they’re in the office or the field.
Connected end-to-end experience
When you’re trying to connect technicians to customers across a range of dates and locations, scheduling and dispatching can be a nightmare without the right systems in place. In fact, it’s so much of a problem that some service businesses even outsource the task to third-party service providers. Unfortunately, while outsourcing seems like a good option to remove some pressure, it often creates a worse customer experience.
Not only do your service professionals have to lose time dealing with unhappy customers when they show up to complete a job if scheduling was handled poorly, but those unhappy customers will likely complain to others about their experience. Research indicates that an unsatisfied customer tells 9-10 others—souring their opinion of the company as well. Chances are you don’t want to leave your reputation up to another company.
If you want a seamless and pleasant customer experience, you need to keep scheduling and dispatching in-house and use the latest technology. Zuper makes it easy with drag-and-drop scheduling and AI-powered dispatching to ensure customers are matched with the best technician as quickly as possible—eliminating the complications and need to outsource.
Additionally, Zuper’s analytics and reporting enable you to review ongoing KPIs and customer feedback. These reviews will help you find loop holes that are damaging your customer experience so you can address them immediately.
Expert service, always
Your service professionals are experts, but when they show up to a job without the information or tools that they need, that’s not how it looks. All too often, there’s a miscommunication or error that causes service technicians not to get all the work order details and results in them leaving the job unfinished and the customer unhappy.
It’s certainly not the technician’s fault, but they end up looking like an amateur—damaging their relationship with the company and hurting their morale for the next job.
The solution is to give your service professionals access to job details on the go. With Zuper’s best-in-class app, your service professionals can access customer and job information in just a few clicks. Plus, through integrations with your CRM and other communication tools, technicians receive any updates automatically without the back-and-forth emails and phone calls.
What’s more, Zuper lets you streamline your workflows so that your service technicians always know what’s next. From estimate to payment collection, Zuper helps your team cut out duplicate tasks with automation whenever possible so that they can focus on being the hero and creating happy customers through a job well done—not paperwork.
Zuper unifies your workflows, communications, and documentation in one place so that your service technicians don’t waste time bouncing between apps to search for information, and instead spend all their time providing the best service and experience for your customers.
Companies must stop viewing customer service and field service as different departments and, instead, find a way to integrate them to create a premium overall customer experience. With Zuper, you can connect your support personnel and service professionals with all the tools they need so that everyone is adequately equipped to provide the stellar service your customers deserve.
Give your field heroes the support they need and sign up for Zuper today!
