It’s undeniable that customer experience is only becoming more central to business success. But being thought of as an “icon” in the customer service space is challenging. A surefire way to succeed? Prepare for the future now. According to a CCW Digital survey of contact center professionals, the future of customer service is already within grasp. Read on to learn what pros in the industry think, and how to prepare for the future.
Channels of the Future
Just fifteen years ago, the iPhone didn’t exist. Neither did Twitter. In five years, the landscape of customer service channels may be dramatically different. According to the CCW study, the phone will not disappear as a dominant support channel, with only 17% of respondents expecting its relevance to decline, however a digital transformation may come to fruition.
A whopping 84% of respondents believe chat and messaging bots will become more central to support functions in the next five years, showing the importance of AI to the future of customer service. But instant agent channels will also become more popular, with 81% expecting messaging to rise and 76% saying live chat will be imperative. Lastly, social media and connected devices will have a place in the future, with 68% of respondents saying social will become more important, and 60% saying connected devices are on the rise.
The Customer Service Intelligence Challenge
Did you know only 11% of consumers believe that organizations take their feedback seriously? It’s true, and it’s an issue that businesses are trying to solve.
Collecting great insights from customers is the leading contact center objective that companies want to achieve by 2025. Unfortunately, only 1% of organizations currently believe that their customer intelligence strategy is perfect. Why? Almost half (47%) of organizations have data scattered across various systems, showcasing the importance of a unified data environment to gather meaningful and actionable insights.
Other customer intelligence issues reported by businesses were: not collecting enough data (43%), not using data to personalize the experience (43%) and not doing enough to understand customer sentiment (40%). An additional 40% believe that they don’t even HAVE sufficient data to fully understand their customers.
The contact center of the future will have to leverage systems that unify data and give businesses a seamless way to analyze customer intelligence and take action on that intelligence.
Establishing Customer Service Objectives
Many of the “objectives of the future” are the ones we strive to currently measure, but may have difficulty achieving. In order of importance, customer service experts think the following will be the biggest objectives by 2025: reducing effort, consistency across touch points, proactively resolving customer needs, and collecting great insights.
These objectives highlight the importance of a true omnichannel experience, as opposed to a disjointed multichannel experience, and proactive support.
On the other hand, contact center professionals will not be prioritizing some of the traditional success metrics of days past, such as reducing call volume and reducing handle times. Instead agents will be empowered to focus on providing the best possible experience for customers, no matter how much time that interaction takes.
