Trends to improve your customers' experience

In the last decade Consumer behavior has undergone a great change due to various factors, including the arrival of the pandemic. Of the changes presented, we highlight the recovery of power over their purchases, moving to a second level some points that were previously important, such as low prices or improved products; Now they want to understand and be understood and have the full support of their preferred brands if they have any difficulties.

Customer experience has become an increasingly essential factor for converting prospects and retaining them, and continuing on this path will help us make a difference. Customers want to be able to trust brands and be sure they will be supported if they have a problem.

The above leads us to ask ourselves:As Do these changes affect customer service and contact centers?

• Customer loyalty through emotionality

Grasp as how customers feel is the first step to guarantee maximum satisfaction, being empathic with them is of great importance when establishing an emotional connection with customers.

 For example, if a customer contacts our company to explain a frustrating problem they are having, the agent must have the ability to demonstrate compassion for the customer. 

Empathy will help you gain the trust and loyalty of your customers. According to Dynata survey data, 70% of consumers indicate that they are very likely to only buy from brands that understand them and their needs. Understanding and sharing the feelings, needs and preferences of your clients allows the agent to approach each client in the appropriate way by developing an effective and appropriate dialogue. When a customer shows that a brand knows how, when and even where to communicate with them, the natural choice is to remain loyal to this brand that shows them interest and importance.

• Customer service important factor for companies
  

The importance given to customer service is increasingly growing, thus playing a very important role in the organization of companies. Covid leveraged customer service in its growth. turning it a priority for companies due to its demand.

During the time of the pandemic Customers could not make their purchases in person and companies had to offer their products and services without interruptions. According to the above, we can see how customer service became a pillar when overcoming the crisis and being a relevant factor. at the time of being chosen from the entire offer.

The Covid crisis made it clear that customer service will always be a key element to earning customer trust. According to Microsoft data, 96% of customers say that customer service is important when considering loyalty to a brand.

• The role of communication channels

Today, customers have more options to choose from, even when it comes to communication channels. While the telephone remains an important channel for customer service, other channels such as social media, instant messaging and SMS have grown in popularity and importance.

It is very important to keep in mind that it is not enough to offer new channels without knowing the preferences of our customers since it is not useful to have a large number of channels if only some customers are going to want to use them, companies must diversify to reach more people. However, it is necessary to keep in mind that each channel must be equipped with the necessary personnel for its attention. If there are not enough agents working on each channel, customers quickly become frustrated.

Channels; such as instant messaging and social media, are changing at a faster pace and require faster service. Let's take the example of WhatsApp which has been showing notable growth. Customer service agents must be prepared to respond to questions quickly. It is estimated that by 2025, the majority of customers will prefer to interact with companies through social media channels. Therefore, companies must be prepared to communicate with their customers through these channels, and they must also know how to adapt their language and conversational style.

• Technology as support for customer service

Artificial intelligence and virtual assistants have come to revolutionize many areas of work and customer service. this immersed in some of them, a good example for this topic is that They help agents handle simple customer requests, leaving agents more time to manage more complex tasks. At other times, assistants can handle initiating communication with the customer, before an agent takes over. So automation provides added value to agents and service, offering higher-value customer experiences thanks to technology.

Among the tools that revolutionize customer service and their experience, the main or most popular ones are Chatbots, which support agents in better service delivery. When chatbots handle simple requests that do not require agent intervention, the customer is satisfied with the quick response in personal service, while agents have time to handle complex tasks and feel more confident in their work. There is no doubt that the demand for chatbots is very high. 

Artificial intelligence must be a priority for companies, Gartner predicts that by 2023, interactions with agents will be reduced by 1% due to automation with AI and that, by 2026, AI will drive the change of contact solution center on a 10%. It is recommended companies to make large investments in AI technologies with the dual objective of improving contact center efficiency and providing a better customer experience. 

• First the well-being of the internal customer

The well-being of agents is a challenge that contact centers face, since sometimes it turns out to be very stressful, which causes the turnover rate to be high since there is a lot of exhaustion and demotivation. Customer service centers have been subject to a great transformation due to the arrival of new technologies and new channels, agents have assumed greater responsibility and their value as brand ambassadors has increased.

According to the above, the importance of reconsidering the role of the agent and taking it seriously becomes more evident; their well-being is crucial for their performance and for the experience they offer customers about the brand. Providing agents with the right tools is worth it: since customer service teams feel more productive when they are equipped with technology with access to data that helps them analyze and make decisions, agents also feel more committed and satisfied when they are provided with the appropriate technology for their work, in addition to making them feel more loved, valued and taken into account. 

• The cloud and its growth

The technologies Clouds are increasingly gaining importance for reasons ranging from flexibility to profitability and reliability. According to Gartner, by 2024 there will be more contact center agents in the cloud than those on-premise.

While customer experience trends shift with changing customer behavior, others are only intensifying. What will remain constant in the following years is the importance of listening carefully to the needs and desires of customers, being empathic, make them feel important and create experiences focused on them to achieve long-term loyalty.