5 Things Getting in the Way of Your Customer Experience

Ready to see what radically personal customer service looks like? Sign up for a free demo with Gladly today.

Surveys show that a great customer experience is one of the most surefire ways to keep your shoppers coming back for more—but providing the kind of memorable, supportive, and personal experiences consumers really want can be a lot harder than it seems.

Here are five common issues that may be holding your service team back—and the steps your brand can take to fix them.

1. Impersonal service

Your customers want to feel known and understood by service agents, even when they’re making a purchase online. In fact, most consumers report that they’re more likely to make repeat purchases or recommend a brand if service teams make them feel known and provide a more personalized experience.

The problem? Legacy ticket-and-case-based systems treat each interaction as another ticket number, even if the customer asking a question has reached out to you in the past. Your agents will struggle to make interactions feel personal and human if all the information they have is a single, impersonal support ticket.

Consider investing in a customer service platform that empowers your agents with knowledge and puts people first. A platform that sorts interactions by person and conversation rather than ticket allows your agents to view a customer’s personal information and conversation history right off the bat, so they can give each shopper a warm, human welcome.

2. A fragmented support experience

When reaching out for help, most consumers report that they expect the experience to move seamlessly across channels. If a customer has reached out with a question through email, they expect your agents to be able to pick up where the conversation left off through chat or by phone. Shoppers also prefer to solve issues in a single conversation, without the need to repeat themselves multiple times to multiple agents.

Unfortunately, legacy customer service platforms aren’t up to the task of providing a seamless experience. By siloing off each interaction into its own support ticket, they almost guarantee a fragmented, frustrating customer experience, especially for shoppers who reach out using multiple channels.

Look for a channel-independent customer service platform that brings interactions across channels into a seamless, integrated view—so agents can hold a single, lifelong conversation with customers and avoid asking shoppers to repeat themselves.

3. Inefficient systems

A majority of customer service agents say that their productivity is impacted by juggling multiple tabs, and most companies report that ticket duplication is a problem for their service teams.

Both of these issues can be a real pain for your agents, but the costs of these inefficiencies go far beyond minor annoyance. The more time your agents waste juggling tabs and tracking down duplicate tickets, the less time they have to spend offering personal, human support to your customers. Streamlining tech support for your agents can eliminate these issues, reduce wait times, and give your agents the time they need to do their best work.

4. Lack of self-service support

Self-service options are another great way to streamline your customer experience and take some of the load off your agents. Many consumers actually prefer to answer simple questions themselves—and giving them the tools they need to do so frees up your agents to focus on more complex or difficult issues.

Robust self-service support including detailed FAQ pages and chatbots makes the shopping process easier and more streamlined for customers with simple questions or concerns and ensures that your agents are free to offer in-depth support to those who really need their help and knowledge.

5. Unprepared and under-equipped service agents

Remember our first point about personalized service? One of the most important ways your agents can add a personal touch to the online shopping experience is by offering personalized recommendations.

But before your agents can get to work finding just the right thing for a customer, they’ll need to be empowered with knowledge: general knowledge of your products and services and personal knowledge of the customer’s needs and preferences.

This means you’ll need to equip your agents in two important ways. First, you’ll need to make sure your agents are trained and encouraged to make knowledgeable, informed recommendations. Second, you’ll need to give your agents the tools they need to view a customer’s previous interactions and purchasing history.

Knowing what someone’s bought in the past can give your agents the knowledge they need to make personal, informed recommendations—and drive revenue through cross-sells and upsells.

How Gladly can help

Gladly’s innovative, all-in-one customer service platform can help you take your brand’s customer experience to the next level. Unlike legacy platforms, Gladly is all about people—by bringing all interactions into a single, lifelong conversation, we make it easy to build personal, human relationships with your customers.

To see how we can help you get started with radically personal service, contact us today or request a copy of our demo.