Like many aspects of business, customer service is an ever-evolving part of everyday operations that is constantly changed by developments in technology.
Customer expectations have changed in the information age, and many businesses are falling behind – Fonolo reports that only 26 percent of consumers had a positive response when asked if they thought customer service centers provided great support.
One of the quickest ways to separate yourself from your competitors is to offer better customer service, and here is a look at a a few ways that you can leverage technology to your advantage in doing so.
Technology in Multi-Channel Service Experience
The average customer today is a multichannel consumer, and your customer service needs to adapt to recognize this. The rise of smartphone technology has changed consumers expectations about when and where they can receive service.
Forbes reports that more than 50 percent of consumers would prefer text over other forms of communication when dealing with a customer service representative. As such, it is important that you make it easy for customers to reach you over a variety of channels.
Cloud customer service software solutions like ZenDesk streamline customer support by putting all the tools for quality service in one place. ZenDesk offers embeddables for your website so that you can easily offer your customers a connection to customer service representatives with the touch of a finger.
ZenDesk’s Help Center, live chat, and service ticket management can integrate natively with any app or website and give you a consistent support structure that is easy for customers to navigate.
Technology in Social Customer Experience
Social media engagement is no longer an option if you want to stay competitive, it’s a must. Among their other great customer service advice, Flint points out that social media personalizes the connection between you and your customer and is a valuable opportunity to publicly display your customer service skills.
The good news is that many companies such as Eptica are making it easier than ever for you to take your customer service experience into and out of social media platforms seamlessly. With social media management technology you can listen to and respond to customers across multiple social media platforms, and tracking your conversations with consumers end-to-end is simple.
One of the best benefits of social media as a means of providing customer service is the fact that everything is public – when you provide excellent service it is out there for the world to see, and providing inadequate service is no longer an option.
Study & Analyze to Customer Impact and Service Delivery
Customer service metrics matter, and you are constantly generating the data you need to provide better customer service with each interaction.
There’s a lot of metric software out there, but what you need it to do is more important than who does it for you – you need to be able to track the volume of interactions by channel, how long it takes for representatives to respond to customers, and how often a complaint was resolved through the first interaction.
Analytics makes tracking this information easy, and allows you to focus your efforts to improve on the places where it is most needed. Data science is perhaps the biggest industry to emerge in the last decade, and applying the tools of analysis to your customer service output prepares you and your organization to provide the best customer service possible.
