COVID-19: A new Challenge to Strengthen and Create Strategies to Ensure Continuity in Customer Service

The emergence of the coronavirus epidemic (COVID-19) took us all by surprise, causing concern and anxiety. Although as human beings, we constantly adapt to the multiple changes that originate from the dynamics of the world, this new virus conflicted numerous aspects, most of them related to our health, social relations, the labour market, and the economy; among others.

To overcome this, at Kushki we had to look for alternatives in the way we work, thinking about the safety of workers and customer satisfaction. And a question emerged: How can we improve customer service in pandemic times? To answer it, we had to think carefully what the needs and requests of our customers are and make changes in our support area, according to them.

In this article, we will explore some procedures that made possible the following changes:

Regarding our workers’ safety, we opted for working home office, thus reducing the exposure of the company personnel to the coronavirus. For this reason, we encouraged measures aimed at decreasing the risk and the spread of contagion.

Additionally, we implemented virtual daily follow-up meetings, where we constantly evaluated customer satisfaction indicators. This helped us to develop continuous improvement activities for increasing the service’s quality.

On the other hand, we enhanced our worker’s job skills through courses and customer service trainings in order to promote active listening, which increases efficiency, for meeting the requirements from old and new customers in a more effective way.

In this way, we also take care of our customers, providing the necessary equipment to respond to the multiple requests they may have. This is why it was essential to work on rising awareness among the staff through training.

It’s worth emphasizing the pandemic encouraged businesses that did not previously have technological platforms to seek alternatives, such as our payment gateway, for the development of their commercial activities, and for offering their services and products through electronic applications. This led to an increase in online requests, so training the staff adequately was critical to face the increase in the demand.

Today, we continue to work on taking the necessary measures to guarantee a high-quality service for our customers, implementing all the biosafety policies that have been decreed by the governments in the countries where we operate and by our own company.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic poses big challenges, so we will continue setting clear tasks in order to satisfy the needs of the shops affiliated to our platform, and taking actions for the protection of our workers.

Finally, we are continually performing updates according to the progression of the crisis caused by the pandemic, implementing changes in different support processes, reviewing the requests that we receive, evaluating the possible solutions to emerging needs and projecting support strategies in the shortest time possible.

Additionally, thanks to the active listening strategy towards our customers, we are performing technical developments in our products according to the requirements and needs that they have expressed.

As a company, we need to think and constantly worry about our customers, understanding that they are also being affected by the changes that have come about. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen and create strategies for ensuring the continuity of our customer service, keeping as a priority the value that we can deliver to them at these moments of hardship, developing the changes we mentioned, where the empowerment and improvement of the electronic service channels will help us to continue giving accurate advice to our customers.