Crowdsourcing customer service shouldn’t be seen as a way to eliminate costs from customer service, but a key to engage your customer base and deliver a faster, richer, and more effective customer experience.
Crowdsourcing can’t replace your employees. Behind that crowd, you need talented, creative people who are dedicated product and service experts managing the customer conversation. This approach to crowdsourcing lets your team manage communities rather than spend all of their time delivering one-on-one answers.
The Future is Crowdsourcing
The future will not slow down. Information will not be reduced; it will continue to increase exponentially. [We], therefore, must innovate, test, and create significantly more than ever before.
The future presents [us] with two distinct options: Hire armies of employees and agencies to try to keep pace, or figure out ways to collaborate with consumers in a much deeper way.
-Brandon Evans, MarketingProfs
We often talk about getting more customer feedback and integrating customer feedback into business processes. Why doesn’t this happen more?
Eliminate the feedback brick wall. Too many of our Web sites have fenced-off, pay-only, must register requirements before someone can participate in the conversation.
Working with various vendors’ products I often come across answers to common customer problems. When I find an answer to a problem, I like to share. But most high profile vendor sites I visit in my line of work are completely closed off from any non-customer. This needs to stop.
Be open, honest, totally transparent about your data. I love company blogs because it gives organizations an outlet to share what’s going on inside the company, what changes they’re seeing, what the data from customer action says. I currently don’t user UserVoice, but I love their blog because UserVoice is an open community.
The Uservoice team is always posting about how people are using their product, what common issues people encounter, and just generally talking about great customer service. The best part is that it’s open and honest. Everyone can participate in the discussion, everyone helps to find the solution.
3 Key Benefits from Crowdsourcing, Plus 3 Bonus Strategies to Implement Crowdsourcing
Still not convinced?
Think of these 3 benefits of crowd sourcing customer service:
- More ideas.
- Better insights.
- Raw intelligence.
Getting this isn’t hard, start today by doing these 3 new customer experience culture developing actions:
- Reward participation.
- Analyze customer feedback.
- Engage customers in developing the solution.
You can’t predict the future, but the trend in customer service and in organizations succeeding with a great customer experience is that the customer must participate in the solution. Customers today wield more power and but also participate more creatively with organizations. Customers can be the key to the future of your exceptional customer service experience.
