Customer service delivery in 2013 looks very different to how it looked five years ago. The way that organisations interact with their customers has undergone exciting and far-reaching changes in recent years, with organisations deploying new approaches, tools and technologies and moving towards a real multi-channel customer service strategy. This blog highlights these changes and argues that whilst innovation continues to drive demand into self-service channels, the face-to-face and telephony channels still remain surprisingly strong.
Multi-channel customer services
Contact centres no longer just take calls; we see contact centres operating across telephony, self-service, speech and tone based IVR, web chat, social media and email. This means that customers can expect an organisation to have a single view of their activities, holdings and needs and to be able to see their interactions across channels. A customer experience where the customer can hop from one channel to the next should be the norm. As such, in 2013 the best customer service organisations are mapping complex customer journeys and scenarios to ensure that there are no failure points between these channels and that they operate effectively as a cohesive whole.
Not all channels are created equal
Self-service and digital channels are ideally suited for simple transactions and queries and have the side effect of creating a 'sticky' link between the customer and the organisation. In 2013, transactional and low-value demand can be identified and migrated from the telephony channel, reducing cost to serve and increasing convenience for the customer. With a customer enrolled and interacting regularly with the business the quality of data and insight that can be generated is much higher. This allows the business to identify micro-segments within the customer base and tailor specific campaigns to drive a change in their behaviour. Both the customer and the business benefit; a win-win.
The telephone is still the cornerstone for customer service in 2013
Targeted moves towards more self-service do not spell the death of the telephony channel: far from it, the remaining telephone interactions are likely to be more complex and more personally important to the customer. There is also the danger that where service calls do not meet a customer's expectations material dissatisfaction is likely to be caused, and where replicated across many customers can lead to rapid reputational damage to the business.
This puts extra emphasis on the quality of customer service people and processes. Advisers need to be trained, incentivised and empowered to provide the best possible customer experience. In 2013, speech analytics tools allow advisers to be given targeted feedback on their performance, knowledge-sharing tools allow for information to be passed around the adviser team in real-time and organisations are fostering advanced behaviours of empathy and performance through their training and reward structures. All of these are driving up the quality of adviser led interactions.
These characteristics regarding multi-channel contact centres, self-service and adviser empowerment are all inherent in leading organisations today. Looking forward to 2014, I believe that the importance of these characteristics will increase further. With customer service continuing to be a key competitive differentiator, those organisations who fail to provide leading customer service could get left behind.
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