2020 Customer Service Trends!

Posted by Prachi Priya

Satisfied customers are hard to find, which is why companies in the coming time will work hard on attaining customer satisfaction.

Why lets’ dig in!

With the growing market needs and new services evolving in the market, customer satisfaction is hard to find. This is the reason companies need to work on their agents’ skills and knowledge enhancement so that the staff is able to meet the increasing market demands.

The market will soon drive success with the more satisfying customer business has. Customer satisfaction is said to play a major role in deciding a company’s worth.

The below graph shows the significance of customer satisfaction for business success.

graph-shows-significance-of-customer-satisfaction-for-business-success

Source- neilpatel

Even the Indian call centre companies highlight the fact that more companies are outsourcing customer support to them with an aim of boosting customer experience. Telephone answering has gained significance as companies very well understand that customer experience can be their guardian angel to success. However, only answering services alone is not the key!

To enhance customer satisfaction, there is a lot more that businesses need not forget.

The coming time will see customer services driving success for companies. This is the reason businesses need to focus on their customer service trends to watch out. Customers expect their service providers to offer personalization, provide services that are actually of interest, do things on their behalf, work with a customer-centric attitude, and provide an on-time problem resolution.

All of these factors play a crucial role in assuring customer satisfaction.

To know more about the trends that businesses need to focus upon, here we go:

Significance of Social Media

The importance of social media is growing day by day and no company can avoid the fact that social mediums earn most leads for businesses.

Considering a report by ValueWalk studies, 63% of the customers feel that their service providers should connect to them through their preferable social channels as it is easy to communicate. The research says that only 35% of customers prefer other channels.

People today use social applications like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to connect to the world. Businesses can use the mediums to get to their target audience instantly. Moreover, answering agents on these platforms helps to reach other potential prospects too.

Imagine a customer connecting to you over Facebook and complaining of a service issue. If you have an answering agent who takes care of the issue, resolves it and even offers compensation for the same, what effect will it bring on other viewers?

booted-customer-satisfaction

Well, instant replies to each query over all social platforms are the key to booted customer satisfaction.

‘M’ Factor

Another customer service trend that businesses need to consider is ‘Mobile’ i.e. – ‘M’.

Why we consider mobile as the customer service trend is because most of the local shopping stores and online shopping experience are handled over mobiles.

Your business has to be mobile friendly to reach the customers’ hearts. Even shopkeepers today use mobiles to compare prices of a particular product or to even search any stores’ location. Thus, mobile-friendliness actually matters for enhanced customer experience.

This is one more reason companies are outsourcing more of their services including social media marketing to experts like outsourcing to Indian call centre companies. It is not only the customer support that is been outsourced, however, the secondary functions are been taken care of by experts too.

AI Chatbots

When we talk about customer service how would we not consider Chatbots? These virtual bots play a crucial role in boosting customer experience, and are a major trend is all set to boom in the time to come.

Global-Chatbots-Market-Revenue-and-Growth

Source- magazine.startus.cc

Why are AI-driven chatbots going to be the biggest trend bringing customer satisfaction? Check out below:

Chatbots are virtual bots that can offer services 24X7.
Bots send automated messages to agents, thus they can make your services available in times of a natural disaster or a pandemic.
Bots are given answers to the most commonly asked questions. Later when a customer comes up with a similar query, bots predict the answers and give a reply automatically without the need for manual agents’ assistance.
Bots do not require IT assistance frequently, thus they can boost customer experience.
Bots are cost-effective than hiring and training a team of agents in-house.
Instant replies and no abandonment is the biggest advantage of having bots.

Every company today looks forward to having bots at service as firms understand the rising significance of spontaneous replies and 24X7 availability.

Customer-expectations-from-a-virtual-assistant

Source- magazine.startus.cc

Even the misconceptions regarding bots have been debunked that said chatbots will take up jobs. It is vital to note here that bots are made with the aim of easing monotonous jobs and will always be dependent on manual assistance for some tasks. Thus they cannot replace human agents.

Agents Performing Work from Home (WFH)

2020 looks forward to boosting customer experience to the best and companies feel that they can do so by work from home policies. The recent COVID-19 pandemic made work from home compulsory for lakhs of people when social distancing became helplessly obligatory.

Thus, to be ready for any possible situation and understanding the priorities and swiftness of the agents, companies now understand that WFH is vital.

Agents working brilliantly from home highlights the point that customer service can thrive amazingly even when agents work from their own place.

Here it is just significant to have adequate services and facilities for the agents to do so. When agents are happy, they will automatically serve better to customers.

“A brand is defined by the customer’s experience. The experience is delivered by the employees.”

– Shep Hyken

Machine Learning is a New Thing

To augment customer experience, machine learning has its own perks to offer.

Machine learning uses algorithms and analyses the business data to bring a better customer experience. Machine learning aims to simplify information and help customers ease their buying and selling processes.

To understand better as to why machine learning is again a big customer service trend, check here:

Machine learning is intelligent and analyses data swiftly for better and on-time results.
Easily detects any possible fraud.
Boosts the business decision making power.
Machine learning analysis boosts product reach, thus enhances customer experience.

Live Video Streaming and Real-Time Support

Imagine yourself as a customer and think how will your experience from a service augment?

Well, is it through efficient telephone answering services or do you want more?

Now, most customers today feel that answering service is not enough and a real-time response and live video streaming is what they want.

Well, yes, customer service will augment when the customers get to see the trustworthiness of their providers and experience real-time responses.

The need for a real-time response in boosting customer service:

Help to answer customers instantly.
Real-time response boosts conversions and is customer-friendly.
Response time is reduced much which boosts satisfaction.

Moving further, when we talk about the interest of customers shifting to companies that help them with live streaming, check out below:

Interest-in-live-streaming-events

Source- acquire

Ending Statement:

At last, predicting what more can attract customers, we came around the conclusion that providing messaging support through channels like a chatbot, messengers, etc. can help. Additionally, customer service trends will also include the Internet of Things (IoT), talk-to-search, personalization, etc. in the future.

Thanks for reading!

Tags: Customer Service Trends Customer Service in 2020 Indian Call Centres Telephone Answering