Our Predicted Customer Service Trends for 2015

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Go mobile or go home. As we do our best to look into the future to see where cus­tomer ser­vice trends are headed the one area that is spot­lighted for 2015 is mobile. We already saw move­ment toward mobile last year and we expect that this will only strengthen in the upcom­ing year.

Mobile, Mobile Everywhere

With smart­phones and tablets becom­ing more pow­er­ful, and more seam­less and rich appli­ca­tions avail­able for mobile devices, con­sumers will expect to be able to inter­act effort­lessly with companies.

As of now, it seems the retail indus­try will be most impacted by mobile use and shop­ping expe­ri­ences will be dras­ti­cally altered.  As mobile pay­ment options con­tinue to pro­lif­er­ate, we expect to see mobile com­merce increase as a result.

What this means for com­pa­nies is pro­vid­ing a sat­is­fy­ing dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence will become increas­ingly impor­tant.  As tech­nol­ogy con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate our lives, cus­tomer ser­vice deliv­ery needs to be han­dled through these mobile devices. This will require much more than a patch or quick “add-on” fea­ture to your cur­rent web­site or mobile opti­mized soft­ware. As we move for­ward soft­ware will become the brand. Mak­ing mobile soft­ware the pri­or­ity will dom­i­nate the indus­try as more than 50% of adults cur­rently use a mobile device and 76% of mil­len­ni­als do. In 2014 the total num­ber of vis­i­tors to web­sites from mobile devices exceeded those from desk­tops. There is no get­ting around that mobile is here to stay.

The Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence and Mobile Devices

The same basics of cus­tomer care apply no mat­ter how a cus­tomer is access­ing your com­pany. Con­tin­u­ing to focus on pro­vid­ing quick answers or solu­tions and meet­ing cus­tomers where they’re at remains impor­tant. That being said, cus­tomers are turn­ing to their mobile devices to solve prob­lems so com­pa­nies need to make sure that their soft­ware allows cus­tomers to get the answers they’re look­ing for. If cus­tomers can’t quickly access your com­pany or find infor­ma­tion on your prod­ucts or ser­vices, you’ll lose them to your com­peti­tors who are more read­ily accessible.

Here are four tips for mak­ing sure you are mobile-centric in your cus­tomer ser­vice delivery:

  1. Make it effort­less. More than 52% of cus­tomers will aban­don an online pur­chase if they can’t access a quick answer. Cus­tomers expect to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with a busi­ness across mul­ti­ple chan­nels from their mobile devices. Ensur­ing that cus­tomers can access your via phone, live chat, e-mail, social media and mes­sag­ing is becom­ing more important.
  2. Equal knowl­edge across all touch­points. This is where your train­ing team kicks into high gear. As cus­tomers access your com­pany across mul­ti­ple chan­nels and touch­points, your employ­ees need to be oper­at­ing from the same knowl­edge base so that answers are uni­fied and coor­di­nated. Empow­er­ing agents to offer per­son­al­ized and engag­ing ser­vice, no mat­ter how the cus­tomer is reach­ing out helps fos­ter cus­tomer loyalty.
  3. Data is your friend. Before mobile devices dis­rupted nor­mal ser­vice deliv­ery chan­nels, com­pa­nies relied on data col­lected from agents and depart­ments that had con­tact with the cus­tomer. The same holds true for mobile CS deliv­ery. Mon­i­tor­ing the mul­ti­ple chan­nels that your cus­tomers com­mu­ni­cate allows you the oppor­tu­nity to take the pulse of where your cus­tomers are at.
  4. The agent still mat­ters. Cus­tomers cor­re­late a good agent expe­ri­ence with higher sat­is­fac­tion rat­ings accord­ing to a For­rester report. Train­ing will remain impor­tant to ensure agents are able to pro­vide quick turn­around to answers or solu­tions when a cus­tomer reaches out.

The mobile dom­i­na­tion shouldn’t come as much sur­prise as we’ve seen its impact over the past year. What is new is the real­ity that this isn’t a pass­ing phase that can be ignored or down­played by com­pa­nies. To remain com­pet­i­tive will require mak­ing mobile a pri­or­ity and pos­si­bly redesign­ing soft­ware to best accom­mo­date the customer’s expec­ta­tion that she’ll be able to access your prod­uct or ser­vice from her hand-held device.  Con­tin­u­ing to focus on thor­ough train­ing and pay­ing atten­tion to deliv­er­ing excel­lent cus­tomer care remain the same, what is chang­ing is how those ser­vices are accessed and deliv­ered.  We’ll con­tinue to high­light other trends we see com­ing down the pike over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jodi Beuder
We help organizations create a positive connection between customers and brands. We promote synergy through integration as it builds on the decades of collective history of renowned expertise. MHI Global is your comprehensive source for customer-management excellence solutions to compete in today's ever-changing, customer-centric environment.

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