Customers have a lot of expectations from brands, and one way or another, customer service teams are expected to meet them. Customers want their concerns to be resolved quickly, and rarely exercise patience. They expect empathy, but can be unsympathetic themselves. They demand strong communication, even if they’re not great at it.
Keeping up with all of this can be really challenging. But remember, you’re not alone. Customer service teams all over the world face similar challenges, and fortunately, many strive to support one other. They’ve created online communities and customer service blogs to share the latest data, strategies, and advice to help customer service teams thrive.
10 of the best customer service blogs to follow now
Need to keep up with industry trends and the best customer service strategies? These 10 blogs are packed full of invaluable information to help you refine your customer service offering.
1. Intercom
Intercom is a software company that specializes in customer support software, best known for its popular live chat solution. Intercom’s blog is frequently updated with fresh content that addresses customer service trends, strategies, industry best practices, and more. The company also conducts original survey research to give customer service teams insights that they can act on (check out their survey on what customers want and expect from businesses).
2. Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service SaaS solution that provides a suite of customer service tools, including an end-to-end help desk solution, live chat functionality, and more. The company’s blog offers insights into customer behavior, customer experience strategies, guides on improving customer satisfaction, and even guidance for creating and structuring your own customer service department.
Zendesk’s blog covers a variety of customer service and sales topics, and you can use the category tags to zero in on the subjects you’re interested in.
3. Magical
Magical is a free Chrome extension that helps you automate repetitive, daily tasks to improve your productivity. Since the app is primarily used by sales pros, recruiters, and customer service professionals, Magical’s blog has dedicated sections for these areas of business. (It also has productivity, automation, and company update categories, if you’re looking for other insights.)
The Magical blog’s customer success section provides customer service teams with actionable advice and resources to help you work better. The blog includes a guide on customer service automation, for example, customer service scripts for different situations, and tips for dealing with rude customers.
4. HubSpot Service Blog
Thanks to its excellent product and impressive content marketing efforts, HubSpot is one of the most well-known, end-to-end CRM solutions in the business. The company has a dedicated blog for all things customer service, success, and experience—the HubSpot Service Blog.
HubSpot’s blog features customer success advice, new research, how-to guides, and strategic content to help you refine your customer service function and customer experience strategy. If you’re looking for expert insights and actionable suggestions for pretty much anything related to customer service, you’ll want to check this blog out.
5. ClientSuccess
ClientSuccess is a software company with award-winning client success software, designed to help teams manage retention, growth, and end-to-end customer journeys. The company’s blog is packed full of useful insights for customer success leaders looking to grow and upskill their teams. You’ll find everything from tactical posts on creating or revising your customer journey map to thought leadership articles that explore how to make your customer success more personal.
6. CustomerThink
CustomerThink is one of the largest global online communities for business leaders that want to create truly customer-centric enterprises. The blog is very thorough and covers everything from customer experience management to customer success technology, and strategic advice for transforming your customer success function. If you’re not sure where to get started, check out the Editor’s Pick section, or browse the different categories till you find what you’re looking for.
7. SixteenVentures
SixteenVentures is a blog by Lincoln Murphy, a leader in customer success as a function and business strategy. Murphy’s experiences and actionable advice are valuable to both seasoned customer success leaders, and frontline employees who are new on the job.
You’ll find Murphy sharing effective, tried-and-tested customer success strategies, actionable advice to reduce churn and improve onboarding, guidance about analytics and tracking, and more.
8. GainSight
GainSight is another software company that specializes in customer success and product experience software. The company’s blog covers customer success strategy and thought leadership, and it shares insights to help customer success teams refine their function and generate revenue.
One of the best parts of GainSight’s blog is its categorization feature. This divides the blogs into different sectors like education, engineering, and healthcare, and different topics like adoption & onboarding, best practices, and durable growth.
9. Support Driven
Support Driven is a massive community of customer support professionals that connect and network across different platforms, including Slack, podcasts, and conferences. Its blog contains helpful articles for customer service teams—you’ll find everything from articles about dealing with really specific situations to detailed comparisons for popular customer service software.
The great thing about Support Driven’s blog is that the articles are written by real customer service professionals who share their wisdom from first-hand experience.
10. Help Scout
Help Scout is a software solution that lets businesses manage all their customer conversations in one place. Its blog has lots of up-to-date content that explores customer success strategies and technology, and it delivers insights for managing and growing your customer service team.
The blog uses cool, custom illustrations, and it includes detailed case studies that help teams learn.
What are the five Cs of customer service?
When you browse customer service blogs, you might come across the “five Cs of customer service.” These are five key areas that businesses need to be mindful of. They include:
- Communication. Your customer service team should have good communication at every level. For example, managers should give frontline employees clear instructions and keep them updated about company policies. Similarly, your frontline agents should communicate well with customers—they’ll need to understand each customer’s problem, and correctly guide them toward a resolution.
- Competence. In research conducted by KPMG, as much as 90% of surveyed consumers cited resolution as their top customer service priority, so it’s really important to train agents accordingly. Your team should be skilled at providing customers with quick resolutions, especially to common problems.
- Care. Empathy is also important in customer service. You need to care about solving your customers’ problems, and they should feel like they’re being understood. One study found that as many as 96% of customers view empathy as important in customer service interactions.
- Culture. Many businesses claim to be customer-centric, but what does that really mean? To be truly customer-centric, your business needs to cultivate a culture that prioritizes customers and their needs. This responsibility isn’t exclusive to customer service teams, but they definitely have a key role to play. Customer service agents should be committed to solving problems and improving customer experiences at every touchpoint.
- Consistency. According to Salesforce’s research, 75% of consumers expect consistent experiences across multiple channels (like web, social media, etc), and 73% have a likelihood of switching brands if they don’t get consistency. So, as a business function, customer service agents need to strive to deliver consistent, smooth experiences across different channels.
Ready to take your customer service to the next level?
Customer service blogs contain loads of valuable information to help you learn and work better. But, for us, a big reason for reading these blogs is that they remind you you’re not alone.
Your fellow customer support pros all have those days with not-so-nice customers or huge spikes in support requests. Fortunately, many of them have figured out a few handy tips and tricks that they’re only too happy to share.
But there are also the good days, where customers really appreciate you and are delighted to have their problems solved. Those days remind you why you love being involved in customer service and are grateful to do what you do.
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