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Customer service expectations have undergone a significant change. More often than before service standards will emerge as a key differentiator for customers to prefer your brand over competitors. In this world of overwhelming uncertainty, more customers will purchase from companies that they are certain to provide outstanding customer service.
Businesses need to review their customer service strategy , keeping in line with the customer service trends, if they choose to modernise and stay relevant to customers.
In this article, we look at five distinct enterprise customer service trends that’s likely to reinforce in 2021.
Crisis Management
The pandemic has triggered focus on crisis management for customer service. Customers want transparency – they want to keep them updated, understand how your business responds to the crisis and how your decisions will impact them.
A best practice for leveraging crisis management and create a stronger customer experience rests on
acknowledging the problem at hand
aligning with customers to create a mutually acceptable goal
assuring them that you are well prepared to solve their issue
This entails proactive collaboration, blueprinting and communication with customers.
Remote Service
As remote support applications become more powerful , more customer service teams can work from home. Cloud based calling enables an agent to make a service call over internet while accessing systems remotely, as well as updating the call log , all in one flow.
These allows for widespread hiring that brings in geographical and cultural diversity to service teams, addressing the overall charter of sustainability for your organisation.
Self-Service
Customers prefer to solve issues themselves, with as many as 81% troubleshooting issues independently before reaching out to customer service, as per recent research. Service applications can empower you to be where your customers are , across channels and devices, with smart self-service.
Self-service also saves time for your businesses, spending less time on basic trouble shooting tickets and more time on solving complex ones.
Building a knowledge base – a collection of resources like troubleshooting guides and FAQs, helps customers address their issues independently.
Social Media
Social media is not solely for promotions, increasingly service providers are embracing it to interact more directly with customers, to build rapport and strong relationships. Customers are also expecting to ask questions and troubleshoot with your business through social media.
You can offer customer service through social in ways to display service commitment and brand transparency
answering customer queries and sharing links to resources
proactively alerting customers on a high-occurring problem
solving issues publicly and sharing on a post
Video
Video is a highly effective means of service communication. It’s engaging and helps convey complex information quickly. Customers are often surprised, glad and excited to receive video based support.
Videos can be offered as an alternative to voice and email support, such as:
Screen sharing , recording video and sending these in emails or messaging platforms to explain how to troubleshoot an issue
Webinars or video tutorials to explain product features and applications
Live Q&A to answer customer queries
Like all areas of business, customer service is evolving in line with digital advances and changing consumer preferences. Customers have many choices and customer service experience influences brand choice. Understanding popular trends and capitalizing on the opportunities they present will help your business stay ahead of the competition.