What is your first step to resolving an issue with a product or service? You may eventually find yourself reaching out to customer support, the team responsible for helping out with a product or service. A customer’s interaction with customer support teams can impact their relationship with the business. If they have a positive experience with customer support, it can make them feel welcomed and be a source of loyalty. On the other hand, it can cause frustration and deter customers from engaging with the business.
The pandemic has shifted customer support teams to focus on online services and improve their existing online platforms. As both customers and businesses adapt to using new technologies and online services, customer support teams trends are adapting to the changes as well. This article will explore top 3 customer support trends for this year.
1. Omni-Channel: Support Across Multiple Platforms
Customers have their own way of getting support for a service – whether it’s using a search engine, emailing, calling, reaching out through social media, or going directly to the store. This means customer support teams will have to adopt an omni-channel service to support the multiple platforms customers will reach out. According to Salesforce, omni-channel is “one of this year’s most important service trends” due to its push for customer support teams to connect better.
Businesses have been forced to diversify their efforts to connect with customers due to the pandemic limiting in-person interactions and pushing for more online platforms to interact. One growing platform is social media, where customers are engaging with businesses through leaving reviews on posts or private messaging to get support.
2. Speed Matters: Fast and Reliable Communication
Gone are the days of customers waiting 3 to 5 business days for customer support to get back to their questions. As Drift notes, there has been an increase in customers frustrated with brands being unresponsive. This means customer support teams will have to improve their chat and phone services to be more quicker with getting back to customers.
One solution to providing faster communication with customers is implementing chatbots, an artificial intelligence (AI) software that mimics human speech to simulate a conversation with a real person. Although chatbots can help with the demand for rapid customer support service, they can produce the opposite effect if they are not efficient enough to resolve issues and deter customers. Our Vice President of Research, Ken Dulaney, empathizes with frustrating chatbot interactions and details how we can improve them in his blog, “Improve Customer Service with a Smarter Chatbot.”
3. Self-Service: Customers Want Their Independence
Even though customers want efficient customer support services, they also want to be able to resolve issues by themselves through self-service. Self-service allows customers to troubleshoot a product or service on their own by using search engines. A common way businesses provide self-service is through comprehensive FAQs that customers can search through for their question or service issue.
According to Salesforce, top service teams are “nearly 11x more likely to create and manage online communities” than underperforming teams. Another way customer support teams are providing self-service is through online communities where customers can chat with other customers dealing with a similar product or service issue. They can still be active in self-service by answering questions that customers cannot resolve. Companies like Apple are providing online forum discussions that can also serve the same functionality as a search engine by allowing customers to search for past conversations on a specific issue.
Bottom Line
Customer support services can make a huge impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Aragon Research can offer insights on where you can improve customer support service to get the best interaction with your customers and help grow your business.