Customer service is often associated with long hold times, complicated solutions and an overall bad experience for customers. These interactions are crucial moments in the customer journey that can make or break a relationship, so turning a negative into a positive can increase lifetime customer value exponentially.
When considering how to improve customer service, gift cards are a great way to integrate rewards into your service experience and leave customers with positive memory of their interaction. This blog will outline how integrating gift cards into customer service programs can help enhance customer experience, boost loyalty and retention, build positive associations with customer support and improve the overall customer experience.
1. Enhance Customer Experience
Customers are always looking for a positive experience. They want to earn points, rewards and other extras with their purchases. So when something goes wrong, and they need to reach out to customer service, customers are typically looking for something in return for their time and inconvenience. Enhancing customer service with gift cards works well because gift cards:
- Add monetary value to the interaction that can drive customers back to your business
- Are flexible enough to fit any customer service rewards budget
- Are easy to deliver- with instant e-delivery options
Enhancing customer experience doesn’t have to be expensive. Integrating gift cards into customer support experiences can be valuable and memorable. Customers will feel seen and heard which can drive them back to your brand over and over again.
2. Boost Loyalty and Customer Retention
There isn’t always a direct association between customer service and customer loyalty. However, when customer service experiences are good, it can build loyalty and long term customer retention. It’s easy to seek loyalty when a customer has a positive experience with your brand, but sticking by them when something goes wrong, that can create a customer for life. Use gift cards to create a positive experience. These rewards can boost loyalty by:
- Providing memorable trophy value to the reward associated with the service experience
- Offering a consolation to whatever the issue was that brought the customer to your service team
- Providing gift cards to your brand, or a flexible brand like the Engage2Reward™ Choice Card allows customers to use the reward at their next visit to your business.
Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to build loyalty and opportunities for retention. Don’t count out a call to the service line or an online chat with support as an opportunity to continue building customer relationships for the long term.
3. Build Positive Association with Customer Support
Often customer support gets a bad wrap because customers always have a problem, or something has gone wrong when they reach out to support. However, providing small spot rewards like a small-denomination Engage2Reward™ Choice Card can:
- Incorporate positivity into the support interaction
- Build rapport between support associates and customers
- Keep customers coming back to support with a more positive outlook
Building trust between customers and your customer support team is critical. When a customer has a problem, they want to feel confident that support can resolve it and help them move forward. Providing a small reward card as part of the interaction is both memorable and sets a positive tone for the whole interaction.
4. Improve Overall Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction can be measured by standard metrics like CSAT or NPS scores. These metrics allow you to see trends across your customer base over time and evolution of a business. Integrating gift or rewards cards into customer service programs allows your team to:
- Create a positive association with your brand and products
- Build long-term trust that improves standard satisfaction metrics
- Enhance the customer service experience with gift cards
Adding gift cards to customer service or customer support programs allow associates to turn a traditional customer friction point into an opportunity to create a memorable experience for the customer. Opportunities like that are rare in a customer lifecycle in any business and can not only improve customer satisfaction but can improve referral rates and can use gift cards as a customer retention strategy.
Conclusion
Customer service and support programs can make or break customer experiences in both the short and long term. When done right, integrating gift cards into your customer service programs can boost loyalty, increase retention and even support business expansion.
Learn more about how the Engage2Reward™ Choice Card can support your customer service program today!
