Are You Keeping Up With The Rising Expectations of Your Constituents? Four Questions You Need to Ask

By: Nicola Brookes, Global Corporate Communications Director at NewVoiceMedia

In today’s socially-connected and digitally-driven world, your perspective and current supporters, volunteers and funders have more knowledge and choice than ever. Regardless of sector, this means people judge every organisation to the highest possible standards. With customer experience becoming a key battleground, you need to ask yourself the following questions now.  

Do you fully understand your constituents omnichannel experience?

Six out of ten customers change contact channel depending on where they are and what they’re doing. For nonprofits, this means that one day your constituents could be in touch via Facebook and the next, they could call you. The trouble is most people don’t see organisations as a collection of departments, which is why they expect a company to be aware of their previous communications.

NewVoiceMedia’s cloud contact centre software integrates seamlessly with Salesforce Service Cloud and tracks text, social, email, instant messaging and calls to deliver an integrated customer service experience. Providing your donors, and other participants involved in your mission, with the ability to contact you in ways that suit them will help you create a competitive edge over organisations that don’t. For this reason, managing your channels to build a complete picture of interactions can help you adapt to all the different ways they prefer to contact you.

Are you able to deliver a personalised service experience?

Competing in a data-driven world means personalising experiences. Your supporters will expect you to remember them, and as a result, the volunteers representing your nonprofit will need to have access to your donors’ interaction history and unique preferences to personalise communications.

ContactWorld for Service and Salesforce Service Cloud enables you to put stakeholder-centric data in front of customer service agents, in real-time. If a charity is regularly contacted by the same donor, information will pop-up to show their previous contact history, reducing the effort needed to personalise the service journey and cater for their individual needs.

Calls can also be intelligently routed by a wide range of criteria. For example, if you have 15 callers in a queue and ten are suppliers and number eleven is a regular donor, the system can move the donor to the front of the queue if their call is more important to your cause.

Are you providing access to services fast enough?

We live in a world where almost everything is accessible on demand. Even as a nonprofit organisation, your constituents will still expect access to the information they need in just a few clicks. As the digital economy continues to evolve and grow, people are going to have even less patience for slow websites and waiting in contact centre queues.

Google recommends that web pages load in two seconds and NewVoiceMedia’s Serial Switchers research reveals that callers are not willing to spend any more than 11 minutes on hold to an organisation before giving up.

Each nonprofit’s mission and program is unique, some will be focused on saving time so they can improve efficiencies and save valuable funds. For others who offer services to the vulnerable or disadvantaged, such as a women’s crisis or suicide prevention centre, saving a few minutes on hold time could literally mean saving a life.

Tech Trust, a UK-based charity that aims to help other nonprofit organisations increase their impact through more effective use of IT, has significantly improved its efficiencies with ContactWorld and Salesforce Service Cloud. The organisation is now able to handle 50 percent more calls every year, serving its customers better and more quickly while adding just one new agent.

Do you help your constituents to help themselves?

For simple queries, your supporters and contacts won’t want to pick up the phone or send an email, especially if they are already on your website or mobile app. Self-service is popular because it provides your supporters with the ability to fix problems and find answers without having to personally call your organisation.

Tools such as chatbots and FAQ pages enhance the customer experience by saving time and empowering people to help themselves. What’s more, easily accessible self-service options operate on a 24/7 basis, meaning your supporters can find the answers they need without having to wait until your contact centre is open just, so they can talk to someone.

Technology has fundamentally changed your supporters expectations and gaining their loyalty can be dependent on maintaining positive experiences. In this context, developing a faster, smarter and more personalised service will keep your organisation ahead of those expectations, enabling you to develop stronger relationships with your donors, volunteers and other participants.

Canadian Cancer Society in Saskatchewan (CCSK) overcame the odds by taking a long-term view and making strong and engaging relationships with its supporters a key priority. With Salesforce and ContactWorld, the charity benefited from a 30 percent uplift in participant retention and 70 percent increase in pledge numbers, with an overall increase in fundraising of 225 percent.

Join our webinar on November 23rd and learn more about how Salesforce and ContactWorld can help your nonprofit improve its daily operations, achieve more satisfaction, better engagement and faster resolution.

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