Customer Follow-Up

Chapter 01: Customer Follow-Up

The Importance of Follow-Up in Customer Service

Resolving support tickets should not signal the end of customer service. In fact, customer service follow-ups are just as important as resolving the issue in the first place.

Good customer service is about so much more than being professional, friendly, and polite. To deliver truly amazing customer service, you need to show your customers that they are valued and that you actually care. Following up after a customer service experience accomplishes this by going the extra mile to confirm that customers are actually happy.

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The benefits of following up on customer service include:

• Improves the overall customer experience: Customers don’t typically judge a business based on one sole interaction. Their experience will usually be based on the cumulation of all interactions. This means that you have the opportunity to improve a negative customer service experience just by following up.
• Offers customer insights: Leverage the learning opportunities each time you communicate with a customer. When you follow up on their customer service experience, make sure to find out what your business could improve, what they liked, and what was lacking. These insights can help shape your customer service strategy going forward.
• Retains customers: Unhappy customers usually churn or switch to a competitor without speaking to your customer service team. During follow-ups, you can potentially identify these unhappy customers and learn why they want to leave. It’s important not to be too pushy or aggressive, however. The point is not to fight to keep the customer. Instead, you’re trying to learn why they want to churn to improve retention for other customers.
• Provides potential sales opportunities: When appropriate, you can use follow-ups to upsell or make a new sale. But, be very careful. Only suggest a new sale if it truly adds value to the customer’s experience. For example, if a customer is frustrated and can’t learn your software, it would be appropriate to offer a discounted rate for a training session.

How Do You Follow Up with Customers?

Your customers interact with you in a variety of ways, so make sure to choose the best channel for follow-up based on the individual customer, when possible. For example, if you have an active customer service Twitter handle, you may want to conduct your follow-up on Twitter versus introducing a new channel, like email.

Here are four ways to follow up with customers:

1. Phone calls: If you have this information in your database, a phone call can add a personal touch to your follow-up. However, not every customer will want to talk to you on the phone. Save your telephone follow-ups for bigger, more complex customer service issues. Or, add a checkbox to your initial customer service form so customers can indicate if they want to be called.
2. Email: Follow-up emails are the more scalable way to follow up with customers. You can create an automated email that goes out once a customer service rep has resolved a ticket. You can even personalize the email to come from the rep that worked with the customer, so it is more relevant.
3. Social media: Use social media to send a follow-up survey to customers who reached out initially on Facebook or Twitter. But remember, don’t try to get their feedback directly on social media, as that is a public space. Instead, direct them to a form or a page where they can submit their feedback privately.
4. Mail: If you collect customers’ physical address, a personal thank you note can go above and beyond. However, this method means you won’t get feedback or insights from the customer, like you would with phone calls, emails, or surveys shared on social media.

How Infusionsoft Can Help

Effective follow-ups need to be timely, relevant, and personalized. And, in order to do this efficiently and at scale, you can’t be relying on email threads or sticky notes to remind you to follow up with certain customers.

Infusionsoft can help. Infusionsoft lets you intelligently get daily work done, combining all your essentials tools into one app and removing friction from your customer interactions. It eliminates repetitive tasks, like copying and pasting the same follow-up email, to save you time and alleviate stress.

Here are three ways Infusionsoft can help with following up on customer service:

• Customer information at your fingertips: A CRM system stores data about existing customers, manages tasks, analyzes data, and stores communication. All these features help you organize important information and daily work in one place. This means that you’ll have a record of every customer interaction, so you can quickly see who has spoken to a customer service rep, who that rep was, what they discussed, and more. You’ll always be informed, up to date, and ready for any situation.
• Marketing automation: Your customers want to feel like you just “get” them and are responsive to their needs. With marketing automation, you can deliver personalized communication to the right customers with the right message. Thanks to a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can easily build landing pages and emails to follow up with customers, and have the ability to automate and personalize that communication.
• Hassle-free scheduling: If you do choose to follow up via phone and you want to cover more ground (think: talk in-depth about the original customer service issue or get deeper insights), you may want to schedule a time that works best for your customer. With Infusionsoft Appointments, you can set up your calendar, email a link with your availability, and your customer can pick the time that works best. No more back-and-forth scheduling via email and no more no-shows.

With Infusionsoft, you’ll be more organized, spending less time on repetitive tasks and more time on creating a personalized experience for your customers.

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