Customer service is one of the most crucial services that determine the growth of any business. Every company and organization that wants to stand tall in the market must be up to date with the latest customer service trends. It requires smart use of upcoming technology, new tools, processes, and systems to deliver effective customer support that drives customer satisfaction.
When customers are impressed by the assistance they receive during interaction with support services they are inclined to come back to the company for more purchases and are likely to refer it to other people in their circle. This is one of the biggest reasons why big names in the market are aggressively optimizing their customer support platforms. Take the example of AT&T customer service, which goes out of the way to deliver the best support to their customers, and this is why they tend to enjoy greater profits as well as high customer satisfaction rates.
Just like all the other major departments, technology has transformed customer service as well. By incorporating technological innovations, customer service has evolved to a remarkable degree. Here are some of the top trends that have the potential to redefine customer service as a whole.
1. Video Chat-based assistance
Usually, the reason why people reach out to customer service is that they have questions, queries, and complaints related to products or services. Advanced technology offers several ways to connect with your customers. Using these technological innovations can help offer a transparent view of products or services.
One of the best ways is to offer a video chat option that allows you to guide your customers with their queries and helps them understand the services accurately. It’s more like offering real-time support to your customers and proves to benefits your company in many ways. Offering real-time support to your customers will help you find an instant settlement to your customer’s queries. It plans to be time-saving for both customers as well as the agents.
So if you’re looking forward to proposing better customer service, facilitate your customers with an option to reach out to you through video call. It gives them a better option to convey their queries. We also see VR (Virtual Reality) technology entering the arena of customer service in the near future that will allow customers to have a meeting with sellers and buyers in a simulated environment.
2. Omnichannel Support
Omnichannel support is a cross-channel approach to provide support to the customers with combined experiences that drive better customer relationships across all traditional and digital channels. This is an umbrella that holds all the customer’s data across all channels into one place so whenever a customer reaches out to customer support, agents can quickly access all the data present through different channels in one place.
With Omnichannel support, customers can choose their own pick to connect with the support agent, it could be through email, phone, live chat, social media or SMS, etc. Some of the major benefits of Omnichannel customer support include offering real-time assistance via video or voice chat. It provides availability across multiple channels and allows customers to get in the go service related to any issue. It makes fetching in-depth insights related to customers’ profiles.
3. Automation in Customer Service
Automation technology in customer service promises to relieve customer support by taking up the majority of the repetitive tasks with near accurate efficiency. You can see that companies that employ chatbots in their operations succeed in raising the morale of their agents while satisfying their customers at the same time. Chatbots incorporated in messenger platforms and live chat support offered around-the-clock support and provide a solution to the programmed degree to handle customers’ problems.
Automation technology also includes digital voice assistants that can take customers’ calls, recognize their intent, and offer solutions to customers’ queries from a shared knowledge base. This automated assistance is smart enough to direct customer calls to the right department of human resources in case of any complex issue.
4. Mobile First Practices
Smartphones are the most commonly found digital gateway in every person’s hands. Companies that see the rising trend of smartphones usage among consumers and make their customer service mobile-friendly, came out as stronger as compared to their competitors. The best way to deliver mobile-friendly customer service is through designing different apps that are ideally free to download, have a smooth interface, and offer prominent ways to contact customer support agents in multiple manners.
FAQs, video tutorials, community forums, and troubleshooting guidelines can also be incorporated into apps to offer helpful mobile customer support. This kind of customer service can promote the sense of helping among people and save company resources greatly.
5. Use of Emotion Analytics
Retaining customers’ loyalty is the most crucial part of customer service. And the best way to do this is by strengthening your relationship with your customers. They want to feel understood and the best way to understand them and their perspective is by using emotional analytics features that are exclusively designed to enhance customer retention.
Machine learning can be trained to recognize the embedded emotion in the language used by customers and to determine their mood. Analyzing these emotions can be used to amend your services to meet customers’ expectations. It will also help companies to identify weak links that cause a negative reaction from the customers and focus on improving them.
Final word
This post covers the most happening customer service trends that you must follow if you’re looking forward to delivering exceptional customer service. Each of the aforementioned trends will have a unique impact on your customer service and improve it in one way or the other.
