1. COMMUNICATE QUICKLY AND FULLY TO BUILD TRUST

Whether it's a new business question or a question about an existing order, partners and customers want something when they contact us; namely answers.

When it comes to customer services, our number one priority is communication. We want to communicate with partners and customers as quickly and in as much details as possible. We want them to know as much as we know.

We have gathered three key themes from the teams that excel in customer services: prioritizing speed, consistency, and honesty in communication.

PRIORITIZING SPEED

"Speed of communication is the essence of customer services. The faster you deliver information, the faster you can act - and that's what customers want", said Cisneros.

In a recent report, 91% of leaders said they thought they could close more businesses if they responded faster. But how fast is it fast enough?

• Only 25% say they respond in less than 30 minutes
• 62% of companies say they respond within one hour of receiving a customer question
• 46% say it takes between an hour and 4 hours to answer a new customer's question

CONSISTENCY

Logistics Dynamics carrier and agent support manager Andrew Whipple III says consistent communication is key to building a relationship of trust.

“We create and maintain businesses by establishing partnerships with reliable and quality companies. If we weren't great at working, then we wouldn't have consistency and much less business”, he said.

“Answer to everything. Even if you don't know how, explain what is happening and what you are doing to find the right answer for them. Silence is an assassin that no one wants to invite to tea and biscuits.” — Andrew Whipple III, Support Manager for Carriers and Agents, Logistic Dynamics, Inc.

HONESTY

“I tell my clients that I will give them everything - good, bad and ugly," Cisneros said. "I do not promise to know every answer automatically, but I assure them I will give them the solution they need.”

2. BUILD A PROCESS TO FEED CONTINOUS LEARNING FOR EMPLOYEES

Being part of a fast-growing business in a fast-paced industry, such as logistics, requires assistance, sales, and account management representatives to learn consistently. This means that business leaders need to provide ongoing training to keep their representatives prepared and up to date, especially when juggling a wide range of knowledge about materials, regions, and systems.

Create a continuing education process to provide representatives with ongoing training, in addition to a regular training program for newly hired employees. This should be scheduled, structured to override process changes, share updates, or change solutions that may be useful to the rest of the team.

METHODS FOR UNDERLINING CONTINUOUS LEARNING

• Daily check-in: Gather the entire team before the start of the day for a quick 15- or 30-minute meeting. Share some of the top lessons to keep in mind for today, plus the updates you will need to be successful.
• Weekly review: Gather the team for a 1-hour session to address difficult situations and how to resolve them. Ask your team to share their experience so you can all learn from each other.
• Rotational training for new employees: when new representatives join your team, experienced employees lead their training and integration sessions. This gives everyone a chance to refresh and allows new teammates to learn from direct examples.

“We examine new knowledge, review existing knowledge, and cover common situations that arise so that we all know how to resolve them if they occur again.” — Ben Cisneros, Sales Manager, Quality Material Handling, Inc.

3. MINIMIZE CUSTOMER CONTACT POINTS WITH YOUR TEAM

When sending a request for assistance, it is frustrating to be transferred from one representative to another. Customers do not want to hear from more members of your team and do not need to see your team's discussions and failures along the way to a solution. Customers just want to feel confident that your business can provide them with a solution.

Jesse Genet, CEO, and co-founder of Lumi, said this is essential because teams need to be able to work together to solve problems — before they reach your customers.

“In the unpredictable and time-sensitive world of the supply chain, fast internal communication is the key to delivering results for customers," she said. "It's essential that members of the cross-functional team be able to work together in real time to solve problems right before they reach the customer.”

METHODS TO MINIMIZE CUSTOMER CONTACT POINTS WITH YOUR TEAM

• Remove internal conversation from e-mail threads: Representatives often send e-mails to teammates to ask questions, track responses, and keep orders moving. To clients, these long e-mail chains seem sloppy and complicated.
• To do this, you can help your team stay professional by giving them a way to collaborate internally without sending emails. One option is to try shared inbox software, such as Front, which allows you to chat internally directly on e-mails without customers seeing.
• Set up automatic routing to send messages to the right person: instead of forwarding an email to ask, "Can you handle this?" try using message routing to automatically reach the right teammate.
• You can set this up with traditional ticketing tools, as well as shared inbox software such as Front. Most often, teams choose to direct messages based on the expertise of a representative, the region assigned to them, or a specific client account.

“When logistics teams implement automation, it's not just about the hours saved. It's about opening the door to higher levels of planning, strategy and optimization along the supply chain.”

4. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MANY COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS

Customers expect to be able to contact you via email and phone, but many teams are expanding their availability to include options such as texting and live chat. Being present where and when customers want to contact you is essential to a successful customer service strategy.

THE BEST COMMUNICATION CHANNELS USED BY LOGISTICS COMPANIES

• E-mail: e-mail is the most common way customers contact you - anything from new business to support. It's easy, fast, and reliable.
• Phone: your customers want to be able to hear your voice when they need you.
• SMS: use a business SMS service to send real-time messages to customers with updates, confirmations, and more. Try to use a service like Twilio so that customers can respond as well, allowing you to have a two-way conversation.
• Social Networking: customers can tweet or use Messenger by Facebook to contact your company with questions or questions about sales. If you do not monitor these channels regularly, you lose business potential.

5. UNIFY YOUR COMMUNICATIONS

When you switch from TMS, e-mail, Slack or Teams to chat with your team, information is inevitably lost, and your team is wasting time switching between platforms. None is good for the customer experience.

To eliminate this problem, companies use shared inbox software, such as Front, which will unify communications across a single platform. It can keep all your team's communications, such as email, SMS, live chat, phone logs, social networks, and more. Your team can collaborate on messages directly on the platform, so your inbox becomes a hub for completing work and a reliable audit trail.

QUALITY SERVICES FOR CUSTOMERS ARE MEMORABLE

Customers may never see your dedicated trucks, warehouse, drivers, and packers or even their own products. That's why leaders think customer service is so important - it's what your customers will remember about their experience with you.