Three decades ago, businesses with the best products ruled the industry. At that time, all you have to do was to offer a unique solution that solves a problem. For the last one and a half decades, offering a good product or a service is not enough. Because everyone started doing that.

The new benchmark in the market was customer service. The businesses that offered the best products and best customer service ruled the industry.

Now, everyone is offering excellent customer service. So the next benchmark is customer experience! Buyers want something more than their actual purchase. Especially in the service industry when the competition is so cut-throat. Agencies that offer excellent customer experience WIN!

In this article, we are talking about the evolution of customer service and how it has changed for agencies. Let’s take a look:

How Customer Service Has Evolved For Agencies?

There are multiple reasons behind the shift of customer service, here are some of the most important ones:

1. Technology

There was only one channel of communication back in the days – phone calls. Now, it has changed to so many channels that we actually had to create a platform to manage all these channels.

Customers now communicate through calls, emails, texts, social media, chatbots, and so many more that companies have to outsource customer service to other businesses. This shows the overwhelming amount of requests businesses receive on a daily basis.

For agencies, it used to be simpler when they meet clients, understand their point of view and needs, and create presentations. You might have seen the meet and greet in Mad Men. That was a reality back then. Now, clients can Skype you in the middle of the night, and you have to answer!

2. Collaborative Approach

Businesses are not empowered with so many collaborative tools that it has become so much easier to collaborate with your clients and work in the same space, without even meeting. Back in the days, it was impossible to make changes that we do now. Clients used to meet several times a year and discuss agendas.

Now, agencies are all about customer satisfaction, so they listen to every single need of their customers more than once a day to make sure that they are provided what they asked for. Of course, this couldn’t have happened without the revolution in the tools we use today.

3. Reputation Can Be Easily Ruined

The Internet has a funny way of working. It can build an empire overnight and it can also ruin an age-old business to dust within a few hours. For old agencies, even if the client happens to be so disappointed with the services, it was very hard to let the whole world know. Because the modes of communication were less. Now, one missed shot, and boom you have a 1-star review on Google.

It is surprising how brand reputation can be ruined today. Customers don’t even think for seconds before posting their views on special media. Because every individual can now freely share their opinions. In some cases, businesses try to hide comments on Facebook to save reputation, but there’s always a risk of a backfire.

Naturally, every agency makes sure they are treating their customers right and responding to every single question they raise. Businesses now have to take care of their customers on a different level.

4. Competition

Everyone is offering t-shirts. It’s all about how you present it, package it, display it, and associate emotions with it. It’s not just about t-shirts now, customers want to wear something that has a cause or motive. Just the same in the service industry, every agency is offering graphic design services, it’s the winning agency that studies client requirements and delivers something that the client has never seen.

Agencies are very dedicated to the customer journey now. They start studying from the lead scoring to the customer reviews, every single thing! The agency that’s smart enough to do this, win!

6 Tips For Agencies To Provide Customer Experience Clients Never Forget

In order to deliver unforgettable customer experiences, agencies have to do what they haven’t yet done. These 6 tips will be definitely helpful in this journey.

1. Learn Something New About The Customer Everyday

Understanding the customer is never enough. You can always learn more about their business, their approach, their model, and their goals in every single communication with the point of contact. Ask these questions to your point of contact:

1. What kind of customers do you want to acquire?
2. What is the pricing of your product?
3. What are the industries you serve?
4. What are your priority features in the product?
5. Can you share a bit about visitor behavior and how we can help you?

These kinds of questions would help you understand your customers in a better and stronger way. And believe it or not, each insightful conversation builds to an unforgettable customer experience.

2. Help Besides Necessary

All the agencies help their customers, it’s not new now. That may create a good impression of customer service. But in order to provide a delightful customer experience, you need to help the clients in their success journey.

For example, help your clients make a business decision. Let’s say your client is looking for a sales engagement platform for the business. You could easily avoid this situation because it doesn’t simply fall under your duties as an agency. Your job is to provide the services your client has asked you.

But what if you create a suitable list of sales engagement software and share that list with your client. Any human being can identify help, especially when it is not motive-driven. This is selfless help, and that will add value to their experience even though it is not remotely relevant to the kind of services you provide.

3. Deliver More Than Expected

It is always admirable to deliver more than expected because every agency is delivering what is required due to competition. That has become the nature of business now. As a consumer, you’ll notice that most businesses are providing what is necessary, but very few are putting efforts into making the purchase special.

As an agency, if your job is to submit a design to your client, make an extra effort and submit 2 options. If you have to deliver a 1000 words content, make an extra effort and deliver 1400 words.

The important thing is to mention this extra effort as well, just to make sure it doesn’t go unnoticed.

4. Provide Value

So many agencies get happy when they get tasks to work on, even if those tasks are really not necessary for the client. For example, an ecommerce website client comes to you asking for PPC services. After understanding their requirements and budget, if you really feel it is not healthy for them to spend such a huge amount on advertising at this point, be upfront about it. Always speak in the best interest of your customers, even when that is a potential loss for you.

This is the real value you provide as an expert. You help save money for your clients, and instead, suggest a better option. That’s the job of experts – guide clients in the right direction.

5. Be Available

As we discussed earlier, now customers have more than one platform to communicate with you. As the platforms increase, your job becomes harder and harder. But the agency that never misses responding wins. Most clients complain about miscommunication or lack of communication about their agency, and that can become a reason to discontinue the contract. You certainly don’t want that.

The best way to deal with this problem is to build a solid customer relationship team that solely focuses on responding to clients at any time and giving valuable answers. I believe that half of the problems resolve when you start communicating, and not just in customer service.

Once you start the conversation, the possibility of pissing off your customers vanishes. If that’s compromised, it’s not new that agencies taste bad-aggressive customer reviews on public forums.

6. Make Things Easier For Your Customers

Nobody likes to stand in line for 2 hours to get a bottle of milk. That’s why we love ecommerce. There’s beauty in simplicity and that’s what you should deliver to your customers.

Whether there are new project requirements or simply a change in the current design, make things easier for your customers. If you have to adopt new technologies to achieve this, just do it.

It is always a good investment when things become normal. Look at the things around you for instance – they all are making things easier for you in one way or another, and you have invested for the very same reason!

Bottomline

The customer service industry is always going to evolve. Your job as an agency is to always find new ways to deal with customers and deliver something new. It is a relationship – and all the efforts you put into a relationship will give you the best results.