When it comes to your business, providing consistent high-quality customer service is one of the best and fastest ways to ensure its success, hence you need to watch out for customer service trends. Research has shown that customers prefer to use the products or services of businesses whose frontline employees know how to listen to what customers’ are saying; do what they say they will; know their company’s products and services by heart, and follow up or follow through.
One thing’s for certain nowadays, modern consumers are much more tech-savvy than those of past generations. As our technology open up new directions for innovation, and much more to business transformation, so too will go shopping and buying habits of the people online. Consumer behavior will remain on-trend not just for this year but for the coming years as well.
Consumers will always have great concern about the quality of customer service they will be receiving than on the price and quality of a certain brand. As for business owners like you, you must be aware of the customer service trends. Understand and be able to adapt these trends to your customer service strategies.
What is Customer Service?
From the word itself, customer service is the act of taking care of the customer’s demands, needs, and wants. This is done by providing professional, high-quality assistance, and services during and after all requirements are met. The primary role of a customer service agent is to meet the needs and desires of any customer. As for customer service agents, he or she must possess the following qualities:
- Politeness. This is a very important quality that should always be present in customer service. As for any type of business, good manners should always be a practice whether a customer had performed a purchase or not.
- Professionalism. All customers must be treated with professionalism. Doing so will show the customers they value and care for.
- Promptness. Customers agents should always be quick to respond to customers’ inquiries and other concerns. As for physical products, product deliveries must be promised to be delivered on time. More so, delays and cancellations must also be avoided.
- Personalization. Customers like the idea that customer service providers know them on a personal level. One trick here is to talk to them on a first-name basis.
Customer Service Trends
If you are looking for ways to further improve your company’s customer service, consider taking a cue from these seven customer service trends this year, as shared by Real Business.
1. Mobile Optimization
With more and more consumers using mobile devices to search for and purchase products and services online, plenty of companies are also concentrating on e-commerce and mobility strategies.
So rather than duplicating online content for their mobile, their main priority is to create a customized mobile experience by providing customer service mobile applications that can fast track transactions and promote better customer service to people on the go.
2. Proactive Outbound Communications
In a survey carried out by Forrester in 2012, it has been shown that 29% of companies have already invested in proactive outbound communications.
For this year, a good number of contact center infrastructures are expected to continue adopting proactive outbound communications on their operations to cut back the costs for incoming calls by sending outbound messages of interest to customers to their preferred mobile devices.
3. Focus on Next Best Actions
These days, companies are all about honing their predictive powers to anticipate their next best move, improve customer relationships, and provide the products and services that consumers truly want.
They do this by closely studying pre- and post-purchase engagements to monitor how customers interact and ultimately tailor their services to the costumers’ unique needs or requirements.
4. Customer Voice Matters
While many companies are already using customer feedback to improve their products or services, this strategy will be further used by businesses this year. However, instead of just using one communication channel, they will utilize multiple platforms to better understand what their customers want and act on it.
Also, direct feedback will be tied to the performance of the agent who handled the transaction and will also be used as a key metric to measure the success of various operations.
5. Flexible Customer Service
Companies will closely look at the channels most of their customers prefer to use when carrying out transactions. They will then use the result as a guide to align their channel strategy with their customers’ needs.
So from voice channels, expect companies to expand on other platforms, including mobile, email and chat, to enable them to provide better customer service experience across communication channels.
6. Dependable Data
For most customers, better customer service means being able to have the right answers to their inquiries. As such, for this year, businesses will give more emphasis on letting their customer service agents have access to their customers’ prior interactions on all communications channels available.
Also, expect the adoption of knowledge management solutions and best practices to deliver personalized service to the customer base.
7. Self-service Usage
In a survey by Forrester, it has been found that 67% of consumers are using web self-service knowledge to find answers to their inquiries. In this regard, numerous organizations will tap into such channels to further improve their relationship with customers and enhance customer satisfaction.
This involves the integration of interactive voice response (IVR) systems, online capabilities, and paperless billing, among others.
Customer Service Outsourcing with PrimeOutsourcing
Customer service is usually the heart of the business. Its primary goal is to be able to provide an exceptional service that will leave consumers feeling satisfied, respected and valued. Outsource your customer service with PrimeOutsourcing and save your resources, time and overhead costs.
We will help you stand out from your competitors! Achieve and maintain a positive reputation among your customers. More so, encourage your existing customers to purchase your products again. Request a quote today! If you have further inquiries, you may also check out our FAQs page.
