Trends to improve your customers' experience
Over the past decade, consumer behavior has undergone a significant shift due to various factors, including the arrival of the pandemic. Among these changes, we highlight the recapture of power over their purchases, relegating previously important aspects such as low prices or improved products to a secondary level. Now, consumers want to understand and be understood, and have the full support of their preferred brands should they encounter any difficulties.
Customer experience has become an increasingly essential factor in lead conversion and loyalty, and continuing down this path will help us stand out. Customers want to be able to trust brands and be confident that they will receive support if they have a problem.
This leads us to ask: How do these changes affect customer service and contact centers?
Customer loyalty through emotional connection
Understanding how customers feel is the first step to ensuring maximum satisfaction; being empathetic 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 experiencing, 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 data from a Dynata survey, 70% of consumers indicate they are very likely to buy only from brands that understand them and their needs. Understanding and sharing your customers' feelings, needs, and preferences allows your agent to address each customer appropriately, developing an effective and suitable dialogue.
When a customer sees that a brand knows how, when, and even where to communicate with them, the natural choice is to remain loyal to this brand that demonstrates interest and importance.
Customer service is an important factor for businesses
The importance given to customer service is constantly growing, playing a very important role in the organization of companies. Covid leveraged customer service in its growth, making it a priority for companies due to its demand.
During the pandemic, customers could not make purchases in person, and companies had to offer their products and services without interruption. Based on this, we can see how customer service became a pillar in overcoming the crisis and a relevant factor when choosing a company from among all the options available.
The Covid crisis made it clear that customer service will always be a key element in gaining customer trust. According to Microsoft data, 96% of customers say that customer service is important when considering their 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 gained in popularity and importance.
It's crucial to remember that simply offering new channels without understanding customer preferences isn't enough. Having a large number of channels is pointless if only a few customers will use them; companies must diversify to reach more people. However, it's essential to ensure each channel is adequately staffed. Insufficient agents on each channel will quickly frustrate customers.
Channels like instant messaging and social media are changing at a faster pace and require faster service. Take WhatsApp, for example, which has experienced remarkable growth. Customer service agents must be prepared to answer questions quickly. It is estimated that by 2025, most customers will prefer to interact with businesses through social media channels. Therefore, businesses must be prepared to communicate with their customers through these channels and know how to adapt their language and conversational style accordingly.
Technology as a support for customer service
Artificial intelligence and virtual assistants have arrived to revolutionize many areas of work, and customer service is no exception. A good example of this is how they help agents handle simple customer requests, freeing up agents to manage more complex tasks. In other cases, assistants can initiate communication with the customer before an agent takes over. Therefore, automation adds value to both agents and the service, offering enhanced customer experiences through technology.
Among the tools that are revolutionizing customer service and the customer experience, the main or most popular are chatbots, which support agents in delivering better service.
When chatbots handle simple requests that don't require agent intervention, customers are satisfied with the quick response and personalized service, while agents have time to handle complex tasks and feel more confident in their work. There's no doubt that the demand for chatbots is very high.
Artificial intelligence should be a priority for businesses. Gartner predicts that by 2023, human agent interactions will decrease by 11 to 3 times due to AI automation, and that by 2026, AI will drive a 101 to 3 times shift in contact center solutions. Companies are advised to make significant investments in AI technologies with the dual goal of improving contact center efficiency and delivering a better customer experience.
First, the well-being of the internal customer
Agent well-being is a challenge faced by contact centers, as it can sometimes be very stressful, leading to high turnover rates due to burnout and demotivation. Customer service centers have undergone a major transformation with the arrival of new technologies and channels; agents have taken on greater responsibility and their value as brand ambassadors has increased.
Based on the above, the importance of reconsidering the role of the agent and taking it seriously becomes even more apparent; their well-being is crucial to their performance and the experience they offer customers regarding the brand. Providing agents with the right tools is worthwhile: customer service teams experience greater productivity when equipped with technology that provides access to data to help them analyze and make decisions. Agents also feel more engaged and satisfied when provided with the right technology for their work, which also makes them feel more valued, appreciated, and taken into account.
The cloud and its growth
Cloud technologies are becoming increasingly important for reasons ranging from their flexibility to their cost-effectiveness and reliability. According to Gartner, by 2024 there will be more cloud-based contact center agents than on-premises agents.
While some customer experience trends shift with changing customer behavior, others are simply intensifying. What will remain constant in the coming years is the importance of listening carefully to customer needs and desires, being empathetic, making them feel valued, and creating customer-centric experiences to achieve long-term loyalty.
Fountain: Vocalcom
#We invite you to read our blog post «"What is a customer journey?"»
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