Amazing customer service is an essential piece of any loyalty program, but premium loyalty customer service must be at an even higher level.
Let’s face it. When members are paying to be a part of a loyalty program, they expect not only great benefits, but incredible customer service as well.
They need to be answered quickly, be given accurate information and have their issues resolved in a manner that fits their needs. Having multiple channels available for customer service is crucial for consumers today.
Each premium loyalty program is extremely unique. Whether it’s the benefits offered, the product design or consumers’ expectations, it’s critical to offer enough channels of communication that members can quickly and easily get the assistance they deserve.
1. Make Your Premium Loyalty Customer Service Personal
We handle loyalty program customer service for all our retail partners as well as several of our own programs.
When we build a white label premium loyalty program for a retail partner, we also white label its customer service as a part of that. When their members call, they are actually talking to people at our call center. It’s just branded as theirs. That’s why it’s extra important for customer service to be on point. We’re representing their brand.
Here’s everything you need to know about premium loyalty at a high level.
100k calls per month is what we take on average. When handling that many calls, it is extremely important to make sure your Customer Service Specialists are trained and held to the highest of standards.
We don’t believe in scripting at our call centers, as this can often come off as robotic and less genuine.
We also don’t manage to a certain call time, since many times this can make a specialist feel like they need to rush a call. Instead, we go with heavy training, dedicate specialists to certain programs and offer constant support to these specialists.
See why winning a Stevie Award for customer service is all about the customers.
2. Hold Your Customer Service Specialists to a High Standard
To ensure our retail partners’ members are receiving the white glove treatment they deserve, we hold ourselves to high standards.
Our most important call metric is our service level.
Eighty-five percent of our calls are answered within 30 seconds. At a high level, the service level is a clear snapshot of all the metrics we analyze daily. For example, if our abandoned call rate started soaring, this would be directly reflected in the service level.
Email is another important channel for our members.
We answer all member emails within 24 hours. However, the emails are rarely sitting in queue for that long. Currently, our average email response time is around 10 hours.
We strive every day to set up our team to ensure our members are getting the communication they deserve quickly. We also strive to handle members’ inquiries within a single response.
Again, we don’t use scripting for this. Instead, we do have certain snippets set up, which help us with the commonly asked questions. However, each email is tailored to the unique member to ensure they have the information needed to continue shopping.
3. Communicate in a Way That’s Easiest for Your Members
Not every loyalty program member wants to talk on the phone or even send an email. That’s why we started to implement live chat.
It’s just another channel that we offer to our members. Live chat is also available for mobile users, which in today’s age is crucial for consumers. We first started implementing live chat in 2013, however, it wasn’t until recently that we really started pushing that channel of communication.
We have dedicated staff, making agents available for live chat seven days a week, 8am-8pm EST. When a member sends us a chat, that chat is answered within 30 seconds. This channel is growing rapidly, as consumers are requiring quicker, seamless answers to any questions they may have.
Conclusion
Consumer behavior is always changing, but one thing will always remain the same.
They expect great customer service, especially when they’re paying to be a member of your loyalty program. Just like with the program itself, it’s all about putting your customer at the center of everything you do.
That’s why we’ve trained our customer service team to quickly adjust, to ensure our members’ voices are being heard, on the channel of their choice.
While phone, email and live chat is our current focus, we are always on the lookout for new customer service channels. We need to ensure loyalty program members are receiving the top-notch customer service they deserve.
How do you ensure your customer service is a cut above?
Mike Procaccini
Michael Procaccini is our Senior Manager, Customer Service overseeing owned & operated and white label loyalty programs. In addition to answering program member inquiries, Michael provides support to his team and our call center. When he's not helping members, Mike enjoys spending time with his family and friends, attending sporting events (preferably any team from NY), concerts and racing.
