What is next to improve customer service?
All companies have to manage customer service to some extent. Some better than others. Some companies feel that an online FAQ will be sufficient with online forms with no chance of human contact. Whether this is acceptable or not also depends on the age of the customer. People aged over 60+ generally prefer the telephone followed by email. Younger people aged 18-29 prefer live chat, website forms, social media and will also try chatbots. What about using apps? Mobile use is increasing in all age groups so could a customer service app be the answer and if so what are the success factors to make it work?
Let us start by first considering how we could measure the experiences that customers are exposed to.
Measuring customer experience
How can you measure and benchmark customer experience? Can chatbots and customer service apps improve customer experience? Measuring will enable you to gauge the progress of your customer service initiatives. Getting customer experience right has an important business goal attached to it, so it must be taken seriously. Companies leading in customer experience grow revenue faster than those with low performance and they also drive higher brand preference, and can charge more for their products. The full details are in this report; Source: Forrester Research, Inc.,”Improving CX Through Business Discipline Drives Growth.”, June 19, 2017.
Forrester research has a Customer Experience Index, and below is a diagram that shows the components of that index. The index documents the leaders in various industry types.
Source: Forrester Research, Inc., “The US Customer Experience Index, 2018” – How Brands Build Loyalty With The Quality Of Their Experience, June 19, 2018
What are the most effective channels for customer service?
A survey by NewVoiceMedia in February 2018 showed that phone calls, social media and email are the most popular choices for customer service but around a third said that there is no “most effective channel” for getting a customer service problems resolved. Therefore, maybe chatbots and apps, if implemented right, could help with increasing the success of interacting with customers.
Let’s have a look at two of the new candidates that could help improve customer experience. Chatbots and customer service apps.
Customer service chatbots
The use of chatbots for customer service is increasing. Could this be one of the new ways to increase the customer experience index? For example, providing cover during out of hours periods. However the quality of the early projects varied. I often select a chatbot rather than a phone call. Personally I do not like having to hold on the telephone for a service representative for something small.
I recently interacted with a Dutch customer service chatbot on the Bol web site. With my limited use of Dutch I found this a challenge but an enjoyable one. I quickly obtained the answers I needed.
There are many success factors that you need to be aware of to successfully implement a chatbot. I took part in a panel session at the DMEXCO event in Cologne that discussed implementing chatbot projects. You can view the chatbot panel session at DMEXCO here. My fellow panelists are from Microsoft, Valora, and Facebook.
Chatbots are indeed coming!
Customer service apps
An app can help direct customers to the right social media channels, phone numbers, or direct them to open a ticket. Customer service apps have advantages for the companies that launch them too. They can organize tickets and also route them to the correct people.
Below is an Infographic that takes you through the critical factors for app creation, including:
- Workflow management
- Multichannel integration
- Social media support
- Search capabilities
- Reporting and analytics
- App architecture
- Single sign-on
- Software updates
Now that you can see how chatbots and apps can help enhance customer service; would you be willing to experiment with a pilot in addition to your existing channels? With over a third of people expressing doubts in the survey by NewVoiceMedia about the most effective customer service channels already being used, there could be improvement gains with the use of apps and chatbots. Especially as we getting used to having apps and chatbots more and more in our daily lives for various tasks.
Click To Enlarge
Via Salesforce
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