The strength of real-time data as it affects customer service is easily visible in companies that don’t have it.
The customer experience is more important than ever, in an age where social media governs most every aspect of our online activity.
Information is accessible at the click of a button, and customers are loath to be placed on hold – especially when they are spending their hard-earned money online. Various studies have emerged that now endorse the significance of real-time data as it affects the customer service experience.
Real time social customer service
For example, a social customer care report investigated various Australian brands and discovered that they paid scant attention to real-time customer service on social networking channels. The dynamism, high interaction rates and culture of nowism that is so much a part of present-day society is here to stay.
Thus, the emphasis is now rapidly shifting towards e-commerce websites providing real-time data to bolster the overall service that customers receive.
Predictive Analytics Providing Self-Learning Customer Service
The strength or weakness of a customer service operation is predicated on the ability of a business to simultaneously maximize customer and business needs.
The arena where this confluence takes place is the customer service operation. Static customer service operations – without self-aware engines – are incapable of meeting the exigencies of the market. In other words, a customer service operation that is incapable of automatically populating its database with accurate questions and answers ultimately fall shorts of the mark.
Real value from real time customer service data
The results speak for themselves in lower ROI, diminished customer satisfaction and increased shopping cart abandonment. A turnaround is possible, provided that a synergistic effort is made to update – in real time – the customer service operation of an e-commerce website. Such technology is now readily available in the form of self-learning, automated and fully integrated customer service software.
Real time data does not rely on static databases and FAQs; it supports existing systems and enriches them with new content that is relevant to the e-commerce website.
Intelligent customer service operations dramatically reduce the need for personnel to deal with run-of-the-mill queries. Customer service departments can be trimmed down and customer agents can be trained to deal with more complex customer queries, since the majority of their time will be freed up.
Real time data is key to timing the customer experience for the most impact
The benefits of RTD (Real Time Data) are significant in that there are multichannel decision-making support services available in a cross functional manner. Further, the business processes can be fully optimized with maximum alignment to the overall objectives of the organization.
Real-time data in customer service allows for quick maneuverability with business objectives in the event that anything is off course. A wide range of performance analysis tools can be generated with real-time data, including real-time analysis, real-time monitoring, user management and load generation.
Real-time data results in zero latency – when managed correctly. This has far-reaching implications for more effective customer service for any e-commerce operation. Real-time refers to information that is received as it happens, not processed at a later stage.
The difference is apparent when one considers customer queries received via e-mail, forums, or snail mail. In the aforementioned cases, a protracted period of time often passes before a customer service response is generated. The fallibility of information that is not 100% reliable means that customers may not receive an adequate response – even from live personnel.
The adoption of an accurate, intelligent, self-populating customer service operation obviates all of the hindrances inherent in ineffectual customer service operations.
