The Importance of Setting Customer Service Objectives and How to Do It

The right vision for customer service can help your business gain an edge over competitors, boost conversions, increase customer loyalty, improve customer satisfaction, and build a positive reputation.

Where do you get started? The first and crucial step is: set your goals. Customer service objectives include individual goals, KPIs, and metrics that your customer service teams strive to achieve. Hiring the right customer support staff with the right customer service skills will make it easier for you to implement your strategy and make the most out of it.

With that, there is no better way to offer consistently exceptional support and challenge your customer service team to grow than by setting the right goals for customer service. Your goals and objectives should be realistic, actionable, and measurable.

The purpose of this article is to guide you in recognizing the significance of defining customer service objectives and equipping you with the knowledge of how to do so effectively.

What is a customer service objective?

The main goals for customer service are to provide prompt, accurate answers to inquiries, handle problems with empathy and care, record problems for internal teams to review, foster connections, and raise brand credibility.

If you can deliver excellent and consistent customer service, you can boost customer retention and loyalty, and leverage your existing customers to sell more of your products. According to Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report, 77% of consumers feel more loyalty toward companies that provide excellent customer service.

Therefore, brands should focus on developing meaningful and strong customer relationships, and providing timely and personalised customer service is critical.

What is the ultimate objective of customer service?

Customer service objectives vary, but they all boil down to one basic goal: increase customer retention by keeping them satisfied about your product and services.

It appears straightforward, but putting it into practise is a different story. You must keep your promises, solve problems, and make life as easy for the customer as possible.

Frequently, you must step outside of your customer service role and put yourself in the customer's shoes. What kind of experience are you looking for? You know what they say: it takes a mile in another person's shoes to understand them. (Unless they're Crocs in sport mode. You must draw a line somewhere.)

How to define good customer service objectives

When you define goals for customer service, you need to know your priorities as a business especially considering how you would like to be perceived by your customers. Determining your needs and wants will help you forge a vision for your customer service strategy.

According to industry experts, the following can be generally considered good customer service objectives. Read them carefully and then adapt them to your own business.

1. Be a brand ambassador

It is very important to keep in mind that customer service executives also act as brand ambassadors. The customer service personnel represent the brand's publicly. In a world of AI and self-servicing, not having the right human presence can be a deal breaker.

As an agent, your interactions with customers and clients will determine whether a relationship will succeed or fail. There may be excellent leadership, an outstanding product or service, or both. However, the customer's relationship with the business will be ruined if that one interaction with customer service isn’t as good as expected.

Even when agents don't have good news to share with the customers, even if they don’t have an actual solution for their problems, they have to do it with kindness and empathy. When the query can be solved, then agents should focus on giving the client practical solutions with clear step-by-step instructions to follow.

Being coordinated is yet another goal for those who provide customer service. Agents are trained to represent customers' interests, but that doesn't imply they should take care of every customer request. They should be able to identify if the query is falling into their field of responsibility or not and convey their request to the respective departments if needed.

2. Provide fast and effective solutions

Being timely and helpful are the most crucial goals for customer service. It's not sufficient to have one without the other. A three-minute response is useless if the response is invaluable to the consumer and at the same time, a helpful solution sent late can become irrelevant. It won't be much use even if it is extensive, detailed, and includes bullet points and annotated screenshots.

Customers today seek instantaneous and effective solutions, which is why they often prefer self-service. Waiting in line for hours and then receiving generic or inconclusive responses can be very frustrating.

Brands should start using AI chatbots, self-servicing options, and relevant videos for the most common problems; then, they can significantly improve their customer experience.

3. Foster customer loyalty

According to research by American Express, 33% of American customers consider switching brands instantly after a negative interaction with customer service. InMoment reports that almost 50% of “loyal” customers have left a brand for a competitor who was able to satisfy their needs better.

Brands should work hard to conquer the loyalty of every new customer. You should know how important initial impressions are since they determine a significant chunk of the customer journey. Brands should treat customers with compassion, openness, and, most importantly, consistency, from the very beginning of their user journey.

For a customer to feel connected to a company, it typically takes a few consistently satisfactory customer experiences. Whether online, by email, in-person, or on Instagram, that great experience begins with the very first point of contact and lasts until they become brand advocates.

4. Focus on improving customer satisfaction levels

The most crucial customer service goal is to raise customer satisfaction levels. Customers generally care about response time, clearness of instructions, and the agents’ attitude. To make sure the experience your customer service is providing is satisfactory for your customers, you should collect their impressions.

You can take post-call feedback and ratings to determine what the customers think of the experience you offer and how you can effectively improve. Since many customers prefer to handle problems on their own by self-serving, brands should track how many inquiries are answered by their own documentation and if customers struggle to understand their resources.

The main objective here is to eliminate any potential sources of unhappiness and generate ever-better goods and services so that clients suffer ever-fewer issues.

5. Humanize the customer experience

Although there may not be an obvious indicator for this specific customer service objective, a comprehensive strategy for humanizing your client experience can produce outstanding customer service outcomes.

Websites no longer serve as a static catalog of your goods and services. They play a crucial role in providing customers with an interactive and enjoyable experience. As a result, your online customer support operations must include a human element and provide a flawless customer experience.

Personalizing the experience is a good way to humanize the customer experience. To do that, you need to collect data about your customers and adapt the services accordingly. Investing in personalization will definitely pay back!

You can also employ various strategies to provide great customer service to your clients, regardless of the channel they use to interact with your brand. Video chat is one of your best options. Over the past five years, the use of video chat for customer care has increased by 400%, and there are several valid reasons for this.

Video chat has proved to be more effective than live chat, giving your clients a convenient and personalized way to interact with your business. Video chat is not only a smart choice if you want to humanize the experience but also helps you achieve customer service efficiency.

Benefits of setting customer service objectives

Setting goals for your team is like setting a growth map: If you know where you are going, you are much more likely to arrive at your destination successfully. Here are some benefits of setting objectives for customer service:

It gives your customer support team direction and guidance.

By setting customer service goals you will give your agents direction and set priorities. This may increase employees’ independence since everyone is aware of the strategy and can make their own decisions in the right way. Additionally, it gives your team a framework to follow. By setting objectives for customer service, you can define priorities, and your team will know what to focus on.

It helps manage team performance.

Goals help manage and monitor team performance. Defined goals facilitate and encourage feedback opportunities and give customer service agents a benchmark to strive for and to assess their work.

It aligns actions to goals.

Goals for customer service motivate action. With clearly defined purposes, everyone from agents to managers to the entire staff will cooperate for the company's development. In this way, customer service objectives encourage action by demonstrating how certain efforts can contribute to the company's success.

It improves your customer service strategy.

By setting steady improvement goals for customer service, you will motivate your team to think about improving the service by highlighting areas of opportunity. When everyone is rowing in the same direction the boat will move faster.

What is an example of a customer service objective?

"To increase the rate of first-call issue resolution by 15% within the next two months for our technical support team, with a focus on reducing the need for follow-up calls and enhancing customer satisfaction."

The target in this objective is a 15% increase in first-call issue resolution within a specific timeframe (two months). The goal is also tailored to a specific department (technical support), and it emphasises the desired outcome, which is fewer follow-up calls and higher customer satisfaction.

This specific objective provides a clear and measurable goal for the team to work towards, allowing for precise performance evaluation.

How Layerise can help you provide excellent customer service?

You'll be glad to know that Layerise can help you provide great customer service in the following ways:

Give a direct voice to your consumers

The Layerise chat options allow businesses to interact instantaneously with their end-user, giving customers space to ask for help. Customers often prefer to interact via messaging as it is fast and hassle-free.

Customer details at your fingertips

Layerise gives brands complete visibility of their end-users. By collecting customer data during the onboarding stage, companies have access to all their important details, allowing customer service representative to provide personalized assistance.

Educate and assist your clients

With Layerise you can create brand-safe product-specific Assistants for your customers to access product onboarding information, assembly guides, or troubleshooting. Creating intuitive, smart, and practical guides has never been easier.

Marketing Efforts

Thanks to Layerise you can also create automated marketing and advertising campaigns based on your target demographic. Furthermore, you can increase conversions by personalizing your send-outs and reminders.

To learn more about our solution, book a demo with us!