What is the Future of Digital Customer Service?

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What is the Future of Digital Customer Service?

According to Grand View Research, “the customer experience management market worldwide will be worth as much as $7.6 billion in 2020. This is a 16.9% year-over-year increase from its value of $6.5 billion in 2019.” 

Businesses are investing heavily in digital customer service since they know the ROI happy customers bring.

HubSpot found that 68% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand known to offer good customer service experiences. 

This blog will go into the nitty-gritty of the future aspects of digital customer service.

1. Live Chat and Chatbots 

According to Hubspot Research, 90% of customers rate an immediate (10 minutes or less) response as “essential” or “very important” when they have a customer service question. In times of 15-minute deliveries and no-touch payments, customers prioritize quick first-time responses. Live chat and chatbots are two different tools with different features that enable businesses to keep their FRTs to the minimum. 

With live chat, businesses have the luxury to connect visitors and customers to a live agent almost instantly (generally during working hours). It also has advanced video calls, VoIP calls, screen share, and co-browsing features. 

AI chatbots, cater to visitors and customers round-the-clock. Chatbots for websites mitigate the need for an agent online unless when routed for a specific query. Online chatbots offer responses to FAQs and thus help agents invest their resources in complex tasks. Moreover, since chatbot software runs on ML algorithms, it offers 

personalized experiences to customers, adding a human touch sans live agents. 

2. Omnichannel Coverage

A survey by Omisend reports, “Purchase frequency is 250% higher on omnichannel vs. single-channel and the average order value is 13% more per order on omni channel vs. single channel.” Since people now use more than one device, they expect businesses to enable touch points across multiple platforms. 

For instance, orders placed on a D2C e-commerce store can be tracked through updates on WhatsApp. Businesses must leverage all platforms available like social media, email, WhatsApp, and SMS in order to create an excellent omnichannel customer experience. Imagine being able to surf and shop on Amazon only through the web!  

3. CRM Software Integration

According to resco.net 74% of respondents say that CRM solutions give them better access to customer data, allowing for more personalized service.

A good CRM is already a vital part of any business that prioritizes customer service quality. It helps leverage customer data. CRM software allows you to know enough about your customers to offer a more personalized style of service. For instance, a sales CRM connects customer activities across social networks and other channels into one dashboard for agents’ reference, so they are aware of all information like customer purchases, how long they’ve been associated with the business, past interactions with other agents and more. 

4. Intelligent Routing

Routing customers quickly to the correct department adds to customer satisfaction and is important to maintaining customer retention. Inability to do so is a big customer service failure. 

AI-enabled intelligent routing and automatic ticketing allow businesses to increase first contact resolution rates and offer excellent customer service. 

Here, the queries the chatbot couldn’t answer are routed to a team of agents based on their expertise and availability. The agent then generally reaches out to the visitor or customer through email or phone.

This helps people get all their questions answered and queries solved, which is indeed a great example of customer service. 

5. Big Data 

Businesses now have the luxury to store and manage their customers’ data (obviously consensually) and also analyze it. 

This allows businesses to do the following things:

Targeting The Right Leads

Analyzing data can help you gain tangible insights into the consumer market, which will help you target the most rewarding leads. and help craft laser-focused marketing campaigns to target them. 

Predictions of Trends 

Big data can help you analyze the purchasing patterns of a given customer and predict when the next purchase will be made, what it will be, and the motivation behind it.

Seamless customer experience

Big data displays patterns in the ways customers use your website and apps to plug-in gaps in customer service. For instance, you can find out the average time a user spends on a particular page of your website, where they click through heat maps and more. 

Catering to customer needs 

Big data makes predictions about what each individual customer wants based on past actions. For example, Amazon and Netflix use big data to provide product recommendations.

6. AI and ML

AI and ML-enabled tools can perform tasks that humans practically can’t, and thus these technologies will likely become an integral part of the customer service landscape in the future.

Both these technologies will enable automation and remove any chances for human error whilst offering customer service 24/7. 

Moreover, they’ll add a human touch to online communications by learning through interaction — offering personalized customer service (71% of marketers find AI could be useful for personalization). This will make the online customer service as warm as it is in stores traditionally. 

The Future of Customer Service

In the future, we will see massive adoption of AI and ML-enabled technologies like chatbots and live chat, where customers receive automatic responses 24/7 with the least FRTs. Businesses will invest heavily in offering best customer service to increase customer acquisition, satisfaction, loyalty, and sales. 

What is the Future of Digital Customer Service?
Brian Wallace

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