Really, really good customer service is … a matter of perspective. If you ask your customers, you’ll get different answers as to what constitutes top-notch service than you would from management – and your support team will prioritise different things again. So is it all a matter of opinion? (Spoiler alert: No.)
To complicate matters further: individual measures to improve customer service achieve little on their own if they do not work together and complement one another, even tomorrow.
In this post, we aim to shed some light on the matter – starting with the question of what good customer service actually means and for whom, and ending with how six very specific steps can give you a real boost on your way to delivering top-notch service.
Good customer service: three perspectives
What customers want
There are countless stories about everything customer service can get wrong. But what do customers actually value – speed, goodwill, empathy or expertise? We looked at the research:
- Customers primarily want a quick and straightforward resolution: 72% expect immediate service, and customers are 2.4 times more likely to remain loyal when their problems are resolved quickly. Ultimately, the right outcome matters more than a fast but unhelpful response.
- Expertise remains essential. According to the Genesys State of Customer Experience 2026, 91% of CX leaders expect human agents to remain critical to customer experience. As automated systems handle more routine enquiries, human agents increasingly deal with complex or emotionally charged issues.
- Poor service can end a customer relationship very quickly: According to Zendesk, 52% of customers will switch to a competitor after a single negative experience.
- Empathy is more than just a nice-to-have. Research on empathy shows that empathetic conversations can reduce escalations, improve customer satisfaction and strengthen customer loyalty.
So customers simply want their problem sorted out – by someone who knows what they’re doing and listens to them. Improving customer service couldn’t be easier: all you have to do is staff your support team with hordes of wonderful, highly trained people who have plenty of leeway to accommodate customers. Done and dusted, next question!
Strange, this post still goes on…?
What businesses want
For businesses, happy customers are usually not the only priority; the overall package – including the financials – has to be right, and customer service must support the company’s objectives.
As many as 37% of business leaders cite cost reduction as their top priority in customer service – and that is entirely legitimate: a low-cost airline, for example, which focuses on maximum efficiency, must first and foremost keep prices low; ultimately, that is what customers want too.
At the other end of the spectrum are companies that view service as a key differentiator and want – or need – to use it to stand out from the competition. According to Forrester, organisations that consistently prioritise customer experience grow 49% faster and retain customers 51% more effectively than their competitors.
And what about AI? It can be found at both ends of the spectrum: for companies prioritising efficiency, AI can reduce the cost per enquiry. For companies prioritising differentiation, it frees up resources by handling background or routine tasks, allowing staff to focus on cases where human support really matters.
Whether customer service should be particularly customer-friendly, maximally efficient or somewhere in the middle, the key is to set goals that make sense for the individual business and ensure that all measures contribute to them.
For the wider direction, priorities and objectives, see our separate guide to customer service strategy.
Customer Service StrategyAnd what about the support team?
The third perspective is often overlooked: that of the people who provide customer service on a daily basis. There are several reasons why this is not advisable:
- Burnout among customer service teams reached a peak of 66% in 2025
- Staff turnover in contact centres ranges from 26% to 85% – the industry average for other sectors is 15%
- Replacing a single agent costs around $10,000 on average, not to mention the loss of accumulated knowledge
And here we are back at the business perspective again – unhappy employees simply cost the company money! An overworked, burnt-out team also makes more mistakes, is less productive and, due to sheer stress, simply cannot sustain the empathy that customers expect. This is where the team’s perspective and that of the customers converge.
So, if you want to improve your customer service, you also need to consider the conditions under which your team works. We believe that only a strong and satisfied team can deliver truly excellent work in the long run.
These measures will improve your customer service
Although every customer service team is different, having handled around 1,000 support projects, we are familiar with the standard issues and can recommend these six steps to most teams that are struggling:
Turn the first contact into the final contact
First Contact Resolution – that is, resolving a problem on the first point of contact – is arguably THE single strongest driver of customer loyalty.
What this requires:
- clear routing, so that enquiries are directed to the right contact person from the outset
- knowledge management, so that agents can access all relevant information during a conversation
- sufficient discretion so that they do not have to escalate every exception
- AI agents and automation that handle suitable standard enquiries entirely and around the clock
All of this structurally increases the FCR without expanding the team.
From the field: At ISGUS, following the introduction of Zendesk with its Help Centre and structured workflows, we achieved a one-touch resolution rate of 72.6% – 36% of tickets were resolved in under five hours, and the overall ticket volume fell significantly.
Build professional expertise
Knowledgeable staff are the most important factor in customer service for 69% of German customers – more important than speed. The Customer Service Barometer 2024 confirms this: 78% of respondents cite knowledgeable staff as a key factor.
Professional expertise requires structured onboarding, a well-maintained knowledge base that agents actually use in their day-to-day work, and regular professional development – particularly when products, processes or systems change.
An AI copilot can support, simplify and speed up this process: it suggests appropriate responses to agents in real time, draws context from the customer’s history and helps with phrasing – even if an agent hasn’t yet fully grasped a topic. New team members become productive more quickly, whilst experienced ones make fewer mistakes.
↑Give the team space to listen
Only 34% of customers say they consistently feel treated with empathy when dealing with customer service. This highlights a significant gap between what customers expect and what they actually experience.
Communicating with empathy means making the customer feel that they are being listened to. Conversations conducted with empathy reduce escalations, shorten the duration of the conversation and, incidentally, leave a positive impression even if the problem could not be fully resolved.
That requires time and concentration. Streamlined processes, appropriate automation and a properly configured system take work off agents’ plates where a person adds little value – so they can focus on the conversations where a person makes all the difference.
↑Stay consistent
83% of customers are more loyal to companies that maintain consistency across all touchpoints. Inconsistent responses – depending on which agent replies or which channel the contact is made through – erode trust more quickly than almost any other mistake.
Consistency is achieved through streamlined processes, seamless system integration and, above all, clear documentation. AI features can draft or refine responses while maintaining consistent quality and the brand’s tone, regardless of stress levels or how someone is feeling on a particular day. Automation also helps keep data consistent across systems.
↑Make it easy for customers
Customers don’t want to have to go to any trouble. According to Salesforce research, 77% of customers expect to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company. Every additional transfer, every repetition of the problem and every extra approval step makes the process harder and can reduce customer loyalty.
This applies to the design of processes: How many steps does a standard solution require? It applies to the choice of channel: Is self-service available where customers would look for it? And it applies to the distribution of responsibilities within the team: Who is authorised to make which decisions?
Self-service, for example in the form of a customer portal, is a key lever here and can resolve enquiries without customers having to contact support.
↑Measure what matters
Anyone looking to improve their customer service needs meaningful metrics that actually show whether things are improving. First-contact resolution, escalation rates and cost per enquiry provide a better indication of how well the service is performing than response time alone.
92% of customers say that service quality determines whether they will buy again. This can be measured and managed if the KPIs reflect the real objectives rather than simply appearing on a dashboard because the system happens to provide them.
↑What better customer service can change in practice
The right improvement does not look the same for every company. Sometimes it means reducing manual work, sometimes maintaining service quality throughout a complex migration – and sometimes it quite simply means answering customers faster.
75–100 h
less manual work every week
Support that can finally do its job
Peak reduced its error rate from 10–12% to 2% and cut daily email triage from eight hours to one.
Explore the Peak project →
97%
customer satisfaction
Scalable multi-product support
Following an acquisition, tools, teams and processes were brought together without a negative impact on users or customers – creating a stable blueprint for future acquisitions.
Read the Staffbase story →
50%
shorter response time
Response times halved in three months
Email, forms, chatbot and live chat were centralised. The first response arrived after around four hours instead of more than eight.
Explore the Globetrotter project →Looking for more examples? Our customer page features further projects across different industries and company sizes.
View all customer storiesSo where do you start?
Each of these six measures can improve customer service. Which one will make the greatest difference first depends on where things currently get stuck: knowledge, processes, systems, responsibilities or simply a lack of time.
If you want to define the wider role, objectives and direction of your service rather than assess individual measures, see our guide to customer service strategy.
If you would like to work through your priorities with us, take a look at our Customer Service Clarity Workshop or contact us directly.
