Customer service used to be as simple as being friendly and helpful to customers. However, technology has changed the way businesses operate and that includes how they handle customer service.
Technology has enabled customers to be connected all day, every day and have access to platforms that allow them to publicly praise or diss your company. But then again, only businesses willing to adapt to these changes will survive.
Below are six ways technology has changed the face of customer service all over the world.
Customer Centricity
These days, delivering good customer experience is key, which is why more and more companies are focusing on customer centric key performance indicators (KPI).
With the help of big data and analytics, everyone in the company can now have access to these KPIs. This enables the company to hold everyone—not just their customer service reps to be accountable for providing great customer service.
Customer Control
Focusing on providing a good customer experience empowers your customers. They have higher expectations on how they should be treated and have become more demanding.
Before, customers usually didn’t have much choice on what to do whenever they encounter a bad experience with a brand. Nowadays, technology has made it easier and faster to share to the world what their experience was like with you either through Twitter, Facebook, review sites, and more stuff that didn’t even exist several years ago.
Empowered Customer Service Staff
Technology now has the capability to empower customer service reps as well by giving them tools to guide them in helping customers. Big data and analytics, for example, can be used to share customer information, such as demographics and purchase history to your CSRs to help them personalize their services to suit a particular customer.
Aside from this, technology also speeds up the customer service process. Instead of relying on just phone calls, customers can now also give visual feedback to the CSRs via smartphones and screen-sharing functionalities. This makes it easier for CSRs to understand and resolve issues better and in less time.
Proactive Care
Predictive analytics use patterns to accurately forecast potential customer problems before they happen. This is a massive advantage for businesses because it enables them to proactively resolve issues.
Although a lot of companies are still hesitant about this, many experts believe that those who don’t take advantage of the benefits of this technology will be left behind in the long run.
Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is essential because it drives innovation. Gone are the days when customer feedback can only be collected by making customers answer surveys.
These days, businesses are now able to gather, combine, and analyze massive amounts of information coming from all sorts of sources, such as social media, CRM systems, and big data. The information that comes out from all these can be used by companies to improve products and services, streamline processes, and provide a better customer experience.
Multi-channels
Customers these days demand for their issues to be resolved as quickly as possible. The only way this can happen is to provide them with multiple ways to reach you. Advances in technology has enabled companies to connect with customers via their website, email, video chats, and even through social media.
Connecting and responding to customers instantaneously through their preferred channel would result in increases in customer satisfaction and further encourage brand loyalty as well.
Undoubtedly, technology has changed customer service significantly in the past few years. With all these advances, it is safe to say that we can only expect more changes in the future.
Companies who keep abreast of all these changes and are willing and able to adapt to them have a better chance of success.
