A positive customer experience is a business idea that’s long been on a search for the holy grail. While some people will argue that customer service still lags behind with many local businesses, the concept of it has evolved exponentially to a near perfect form once initiative is taken. New technology is taking the customer service experience and evolving it to a place that might solve many of the issues plaguing businesses for years.
Take a look at what customer service experiences might look like throughout the next decade. Much of this has to do with some of the greatest technological tools being developed today: The cloud and the emergence of big data.
Databases That Help a Customer Solve a Problem on Their Own
As big data become a big deal in how information is organized, business databases can essentially become as smart as artificial intelligence. Once that happens, solutions to problems can potentially be solved through an online self-service feature. Some businesses already try this in limited form and ultimately fail. That’s because the business doesn’t bother to provide the proper information that suits their demographics.
It’s clear, though, that many customers want a knowledge base they can tap into to solve issues on their own. With big data slowly emerging and organizing intuitive information, self-service may soon become mainstream in customer service.
Customer Service Through Social Media
With business marketing already using social media to the hilt to bring a sense of personalization with customers, it could get even more personal. Customer service reps may be soon working on social media to give real-time answers to consumers as method of consolidation. No longer would a customer have to go on the phone to reach their cable company or other business to get a question answered.
This kind of consolidation shows the true advantage of social media and how nearly everything can be done in one location. It’s the slow blurring lines between business and play.
Part of this will extend to the cloud-based multichannel customer experience where a customer can talk to a customer service rep through various technological means while on the go.
Growing Mobile Presence for Customer Service
There’s still so much growth left for businesses in using mobile devices for marketing and other services. While mobile advertising and website design are slowly getting better, customer service on a mobile device is slowly emerging. This can be part of the above-mentioned multichannel customer service concept where you can easily switch over to mobile to continue a conversation while on the go. Much of this will also become interactive as mobile technology continue to improve.
Using Voice of the Customer and Improved Analytics
Known as VoC, the voice of the customer is being used more often in businesses to gauge exactly what their customers are thinking. By allowing customers to provide feedback by phone, sophisticated voice analytic tools allow companies to see what customers really want in graphical terms. This will be complemented with text analytic tools that can take customer interactions by email, social media and chat rooms to determine reactionary patterns to certain procedures.
It’s all just part of an inspiring new direction for customer service that every business needs in order to maintain customer loyalty. Once it all consolidates, there won’t be any hesitation for the reluctant small business to improve the customer experience. No longer would you have to suffer with complaints that your employees gave your loyal customers a customer service experience resembling something close to being comatose.
Resources:
http://fonolo.com/blog/2013/09/top-10-customer-experience-trends-for-2013/?ls=web_twitter
http://blogs.forrester.com/kate_leggett/13-01-14-forresters_top_15_trends_for_customer_service_in_2013
