Summary

During this interview, Andrea Paul, the Research Director at Kustomer, talked about the various preferences and behaviors of different generations when it comes to customer service and self-service options. According to the study, Gen Z individuals seem to prefer self-service, while the older generations still prefer traditional channels such as phone support. But overall, most consumers prefer self-service, and younger consumers have higher expectations for quick and convenient customer service. Further underscoring the importance of investing in self-service tools, such as chatbots, to meet the changing wants and needs of different demographics.

Key Takeaways

1. Generational Preferences: Gen Z individuals strongly prefer self-service, while older generations still favor traditional customer service channels like phone support.
2. Majority Prefers Self-Service: Across all age groups, the majority of consumers (53%) prefer self-service options, and 53% believe chatbots enhance the customer experience.
3. Meeting Younger Consumer Expectations: Younger consumers have higher expectations for fast, convenient, and personalized customer service, necessitating investment in self-service tools like chatbots.
4. Chat: A Cost-Effective Revenue Driver: Chat is recognized as a cost-effective and efficient support channel, contributing to higher revenue and conversion rates, especially for e-commerce businesses.
5. Delivering Exceptional Service: Personalization and unified omnichannel experiences are essential for providing exceptional customer service that builds brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.

Transcript

Alrighty. Welcome everybody. We’re so excited to get going today.

Fun webinar coming at you here from Kustomer. The omnichannel customer service solution that help you drive customer experience.

As we let people trickle in, we’ve got a lot of people today. Hundreds thousands of people. Okay. Thank you hundred.

They’re gonna be tuning in today, but I think it’s fun. It’s a research based approach. To a modern channel. We got a special guest that I’ll introduce in just a minute before that. Couple housekeeping items. Number one, We do want this to be interactive. It has to be interactive or I will pull the plug on this faster than you can say.

That. So if you don’t mind, grab your chat, and tell me your name and where you’re from.

I want you to use the chat to make this engaging answer some of the questions that we’re gonna be pulling in today’s webinar. So if you can grab your chat in Zoom, tell me your name and where you’re from. So maybe I’ll give a quick example here. How do I do that panelists and attendees? I am Gabe Larson from Salt Lake City, Utah. That’s where I am right now.

So while you guys do that, let me introduce our esteemed guest.

Andrea Paul, Andrea. Why don’t you take the honors and, do a quick introduction? Yeah. For sure.

My name is Andrea Paul, as Gabe said, and I am the director of research here at customer you know, a customer we regularly go out and survey both CX professionals and consumers, and we love to share those findings you guys. So I hope you get some valuable insights, around chat today. Love it. Love it.

And I’m Gabe Larson I run growth over here at customer and excited to jump in. Again, let’s make this interactive. Feel free to throw your questions, comments, and chat. And let’s go.

So today, we’re talking about servicing the modern consumer with chat, Andrea. Are you seeing my slide here? I am. Yeah.

K. Well, why don’t we start big picture? Oh, look, we got tons more people. Okay.

There we go. We got Rochelle, Christian, Tina Melanie Con from Goodall, Austin, Texas.

Tina from New York.

Well, that’s kinda interesting. Since we’re in New York. Andrea, Andrea joins us. That’s you. Okay. That’s me.

Rogers of the Costa Rica. Roger. Thanks for joining. Awesome. Molly. Awesome, Janet. Good. You guys stay on chat.

Let’s make this interactive. So before we jump in, Andrea, I made her put in this slide, big picture. What is this? Why are we talking about it?

What is the research report? Why do I care? Blah blah blah, etcetera?

Yeah.

Happy to give an overview as to sort of why we did this research when we did it.

You know, obviously, the behavior of consumers is constantly changing. That goes without saying. But lately, I’ve sort of felt like there are changes happening at warp speed. Right? I know personally I felt a bit out of touch or behind the curve a little bit this past year when it comes to what consumers are expecting and how they want to interact with brands.

Obviously, this past year has been absolutely insane.

And just how consumers are forced to interact or forced to buy with a brand has shifted so dramatically. And obviously, one of the biggest shifts has been this digital first mindset. So while phone support isn’t going anywhere necessarily, when you force a consumer to leave the platform that they’re currently using in order to get their questions answered, you sort of give them a reason to abandon that purchase or generate a negative feeling. So bottom line is, like, the less effort, the better.

And with the digital consumer, my sort of, I guess my prediction was that chat would be the the least effort in order to do so with this new digital first consumer. So in an effort to sort of better understand how brands are currently using chat, why some may not have adopted chat yet, and and whether there is this disconnect between, customers and brands. We went out and surveyed over a hundred CX professionals across various industries, across, various business sizes. And then we compared those findings to some consumer research that we did a couple months ago.

Just to see, you know, if the brands and the consumers were aligned. And I I I when you posed this originally, Andrea, I did think that’s interesting because It does seem like consumers want something a certain way, and then us as businesses want something a certain way. Where do those interact? How those intersect?

Let get into it. Anything else or can we jump into it? No. Let’s go. Alright.

Do it. So, want some audience interaction here because I want you guys to see how good you are about knowing research that we’ve published.

So go ahead and put in the chat for us. What percentage of CX organizations are currently using chat. That’s an interesting one. So you can just put a, b, or c there.

What percentage of CX organizations are currently using chat? I do think that we’ve come to a place where I’m gonna go with a gonna go with I just think most people have come to a place where they recognize that that is what the consumer want. And therefore, they need to go there. Jackui said b, we got c’s, raise a b, Sam’s a b.

Morgan’s a c. We’re all over the board here. If I We got mostly mostly b’s in c’s, it seems. We got one at any from rachelle. Well, I’m totally biased because I went with a as well.

Okay. It’s me and Rochelle, a’s, Let’s see what the survey said.

Twenty five.

Yeah. So this was, a little bit surprising to me, but Only twenty five percent of those that we surveyed of the organizations that we surveyed have adopted a chat program currently.

I’m obviously a heavy user of chat. I have, you know, I prefer and always have preferred to shop online. So if I ever have a question or, you know, need to do a return or something like that instead of searching all over for a phone number or email address or contact me for my Avendigm, just go to the website and click on that chat widget. So This is the difference that you were highlighting that I think Everybody wants to use chat now, but businesses were you surprised that twenty five percent of business say they have this?

That doesn’t fill It it felt it felt low to me. And we also were so this, you know, the chat research that we did was live chat, but also chat bots as well. And so we asked a separate question about adoption of chat bots and that that number was even lower, which makes sense, but, I believe it was eighteen percent of organizations reported that they were currently levered Newton chatbots. So really low numbers there.

But I mean, it does take a lot of resources in order to build new, yeah, new channels, new programs, so, you know, when taking into consideration this sort of effortless, fast service that the modern customer demands, the vast majority of businesses just are kind of missing an opportunity and leaving themselves open to competition that might deliver, an easier experience for the consumer. The point there definitely resonates, you know, I’ve tried to put a couple chat bots or chat in different areas. And for a while there, I thought it was just like plugging in the phone, but it’s not. Yeah.

And you wanna, you know, when you’re doing this you wanna make sure that the experience itself is positive. You don’t wanna like slap a chat widget up and then not be able to like actually deliver a pause of experience to consumers. So that potentially could could play into it. Well, it basically came down, Rochelle, you and I were way off. Sorry about Austin. I led you astray.

Zachui, or Jack, Rod, actually, we had a couple people nailed that.

Alright. True or false consumers prefer email over chat as their preferred method of contacting support. Now you’ve got me nervous. But I’ve gotta go.

Put True or Falsen here you guys. Oh, we got caps. You can also you can also guess what their most preferred channel is if you think this is false.

Do you think that chat is number one? Do you think that social is number one? Do you think that phone is number one? Feel free to throw that in there if you have any ideas.

I think it is true. I think consumers prefer email over chat. No. No. No. No.

I don’t think that.

I gotta be consistent. I’m gonna go with false.

Yeah. The business thing, you threw me off the only twenty five percent of business app chat. Okay. So I’m going false, you guys.

Let’s see. What do we have here mostly? Ray’s going with SMS, social number one, false true, true, false, false, false. Okay.

Seems mostly false as the the cohort. Are there any people that said what is the preferred channel?

There’s a lot of social in here, actually.

What do I think the preferred channel? I think Chad is the preferred channel, Ronald. Thank you.

I need people to help me here. Okay. So I’m going with false and I’m going with chat. She voice though, Kevin, you make a good point.

This is why I didn’t go very far in school. Can you imagine me taking a look? I I’m, like, all the voices in my head. Doing decisive.

Okay. It is fall. Chats the second?

Yeah. So The second most I mean, Kevin got this, you know, perfectly correct.

The number one yet is actually voice. So phone is the that’s still the number one most preferred method, for consumers. And that’s why I said phone is definitely not going anywhere.

But chat is you know, very closely on its tail when we did our consumer research, we researched over five hundred consumers.

And, like, the margin between those two is so, so small.

So it just shows how much growth and how happy consumers are with chat because chat hasn’t really been around that long. Like, phone has always very traditionally been what you think of when you’re, like, calling customer service, and you need your problem solved. So it just shows, you know, that that really rapid adoption of the method.

And I think that they both sort of fill the same sort of need for immediacy. Right? Like, Over last year, people have really valued the speed at which their problems were solved. If they felt something was pretty urgent, and a lot of things were sort of urgent in the past year. So the big difference in my perspective is that, you know, chat is really, really scalable compared to phone. Since agents can handle, you know, more than one chat at once, it isn’t this, like, traditional queue of, like, here’s phone call number one and phone call number two.

And phone is more of this traditional channel. So perhaps some older consumers still feel the most comfortable, using phone to to speak to a brand whereas chat’s extremely convenient for this digital first consumer.

But I think the the curious thing is what consumers want and what brands are delivering is so not aligned. Like, only twenty five percent of businesses are currently using chat, and that means that seventy five percent are not leveraging the second most popular channel for consumers, which is like such a huge opportunity in my mind. You feel, I mean, Shannon hit this, and I assume most people are wondering it as well. Like, generally speaking, these are true, but any insights into different types of verticals or customer preferences that would change some of this.

Her specific is there any insight into preferences based on type of business customers are contacting?

Yeah. So in our full report, we broke it. We broke down, I believe, three separate industries.

We surveyed, obviously, when we went out and surveyed consumers or businesses, we had a wide variety of industries.

More of the, like, e commerce retail focused businesses, it was very much more adoption on the chat side because their business lends itself to that a little bit more, I think.

Whereas some may be more financial services. Yeah.

Exactly.

But if you download the full report, there’s industry and business sizes that that you can sort of per peruse through and see how it it shifts from. Like a true marketer, Jan, and she’s making download the report. Download download the report. At least it’s free. So don’t feel don’t feel anxious. Or I could just email you afterwards. I’ll give you the insight.

I don’t have it up in front me. So I don’t wanna say anything. But, yeah, we did dive into that just a little bit, in the report. And that’s one of the fun things we do here you guys.

I actually have not you probably, like, how am I missing? I’m literally work at this company and I’m not guessing correctly. I tried to set this up so I had not seen these slides. So I’m seeing two, and trying to guess this to make it a little more real.

So hopefully, it doesn’t come off like I’m faking it because I I literally mow for two authentically.

Okay. So top reasons, I think a lot of people are probably wondering the same question. If it is the number two most important, why are people not often adopting it?

Mostly on the business side. We know consumers wanna why our business is doing it? Talk to us a little bit about what you found here. Yeah. I mean, you can see the full variety of reasons listed here. We had response that indicated all of these were factors for businesses.

I think the top two reasons that companies haven’t adopted chat yet speak to sort of a lack of time or resources or strategy internally.

So as you can see here, they don’t know where to start, or they have staffing constraints when it comes to managing more channels, which is completely understandable.

The third most popular answer here though, really just speaks to this massive disconnect that I was speaking to before where they think that, you know, their customers don’t want it or they don’t like it.

And we’ve just proven that that’s incorrect. Consumers say that it’s their second most preferred channel to use.

Additionally, many organizations you can see right here, report that they have been prevented from adopting chat because of a lack lack of customizable solutions, which I think is super valid.

There was another data point in a question that we asked in this survey around the importance of matching the chat experience to the overall brand experience. And seventy five percent said that it was extremely important to do so.

So slapping any old chat widget on your site, like, won’t actually suffice So if you’re thinking about adopting a chat program, it it it makes sense to ensure that, like, the platform you’re using gives you that flexibility not only to customize the look and feel from a branding perspective, but also just customize that overall chat experience and that chat flow for what, you know, fits right for your business.

But yeah, I think that that the facts that customers don’t want or like it wasn’t top three was pretty surprising to me. Yeah. A little bit alarming.

Couple questions that came in, but I would love for those again on the on on our chat here.

What if if you haven’t adopted chat, where where do you feel like it is for you? Is it because of number one, two, three, four, five, six, or whether it’s you or your friends. I’m just curious that, and if you almost took this survey, why are businesses not adopting chat? Do you feel like it is number one?

I’d be interested to get your quick take on that. While you’re doing that, Andrea, Nick wrote and said from your experience, how much does chat on web or in mobile overtake chats on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etcetera. How how do you look for chat experiences, but they’re often a little different. How do you thoughts on that?

Yeah. I mean, when we were looking at the consumer research and and speaking towards know, the most popular channels for consumers. Social was quite up there.

And That makes sense because it’s essentially the same experience just on a different platform. Right? I think the big connector through all of this is these, like, native conversations that people are having. And as individuals are shifting more towards social commerce or spending more time on social networks versus, you know, an e commerce store.

People can learn about your business. They can see your advertisements. They can buy things via social media. They can have conversations with you via social media.

If they’re already spending time there, then, like, they don’t wanna have to switch in order to talk you. So I think that’s sort of like the connective tissue throughout, you know, the report too, not to have another plug for the report, but we do have a whole section on social messaging as well because there’s such overlap in, you know, the experience from a consumer perspective and also from a business perspective in terms of how chat and messaging function.

So I feel like, you know, they’re sort of neck and neck. It’s just that in an e commerce world, when people are shopping online, they probably still spend more time on the dot com e commerce sites versus your company’s Instagram or something like that. Yeah.

Good. I’m I gotta dive into this report. Sounds like there’ll be some more good information in there. Did ask the group, and it looked like Andrew, for the most part, we were ending on about one and two.

So, Melanie Ronald. Melanie went with two. Ronald went with one. We had Peter go with two.

We have Jamie Go with one. So most people, it sounds like yeah. Sam went with one in six, it looks like.

So a little bit, but I do think a lot of people are feeling or be hearing they don’t know where to start the staffing considerations. Kevin actually pulled an interesting report.

To talk a little bit about some of that. So okay. Let’s continue.

What percentage of customers are consumers under the age of twenty five prefer self-service versus talking to a representative.

Alright. You can feel free to go with a, b, or c there.

I think I’m gonna be, I’m actually cheating and looking at people’s answers. I don’t feel comfortable you guys going with a. I feel like that’s too high.

So I am gonna go I’m gonna I’m gonna ruffle some feathers. I gotta go with at least b. Did anybody go a c?

No. Ronald love with people.

Jacque went with b.

Alright. A lot of a’s in everybody else is. It’s like forty a’s. Alright. Survey says.

Oh, yes.

Kidding me. Yeah. I felt like that was a little high. I felt like a was a little high, but you did set us up to fail on that one.

I mean, so the way that this question was formatted, it was sort of essentially just saying, like, would you prefer to speak to a representative or, you know, use a chatbot or an FAQ article or what have you instead of having to actually speak with someone.

And sixty one percent of consumers twenty four and younger, which I believe is Is that gen z? Is gen z twenty four now? I have to Google this. Yeah.

I don’t even know what I think it is.

Yeah. It is gen z. The highest of gen z now is twenty four. My god.

So gen z prefer definitely prefers self-service.

Only twenty three percent of those sixty five and older said that they approve, prefer self-service. So this speaks to sort of those shifting generational attitudes when it comes to new channels and new ways of interacting with brands.

When we looked at this data, like, across the board with all age groups and all demographics.

It was still the majority of consumers. I believe it was fifty three percent. That said that, they prefer self-service, and they also believe fifty three percent similarly believed that bots improved the customer experience. So that means that, you know, the majority of folks are open to, you know, servicing themselves, so to speak, or having the brand sort of lead them in the direction of self-service, but younger consumers obviously feel more strongly about this.

We also saw that consumers twenty four and younger, rated customer service is slower.

More difficult and less personal and less convenient than all the other age groups. So it just means that the current service strategies and the channels that are being used are falling short when it comes to that generation.

Older generations maybe that are perhaps a bit less Tech savvy may still prefer to pick up a phone and call, a company representative, but as younger generations begin to age and they turn into these heads of households, it’ll really be important to invest heavily in these, self-service tools, like like chat bots or, you know, some intelligent deflection where you send people FAQ articles, so that they don’t necessarily have to contact customer service in a traditional sense. And I think you know, this demographic has really grown up with Google in their back pocket. So it’s really important to, you know, give them that help yourself.

And I I think that that challenge, if you’re a business and you do have to service both, you know, the baby boomers and the millennials and the gen z and gen y and whatever else Jen there is. That that’s tough because you are starting you’re seeing some very clear differences in expectations and I think a lot of companies are trying to balance that. How do I make sure everybody’s out? Because I don’t just sell a hundred percent to this, you know — Right.

Okay. Next one. What percentage of consumers under the age of twenty five? Oh, no. That was the last that was the last one wasn’t it?

I did. I went backwards. Sorry.

I was like, that does sound that does ring a bell. What do CX professionals rank as the cheapest, cheapest support channels or methods.

What is the cheapest? So we’re thinking like phone, email, social. Phone email, social, SMS, chat, chat bots.

Can we email mail in here? I think Sam put snail. Snail mail?

Exactly. You can put anything in here. Good day.

It was so much easier when I had the multiple choice. Let’s see. What is the cheapest?

Cheapest can’t be phone. Phone’s gotta be the most expensive.

And this this was sort of speaking to both cost per contact. Also, like, you know, if you’re using tools in any way, shape, or form, like the the ROI on that. Because if you’re paying to implement something, then, you know, there.

Okay. I’m gonna go with Kevin’s been pretty hot. I’m going with email. Kevin, I’m just gonna do the bandwagoner. I do that a lot. Andrea knows that. So it looks like, Christian’s chat, Rogers, Chad Austin, email, Ray’s social, Alex email, melanie’s social, Jen chat.

Sam, Sam said mail, but I think he probably thinking, not not not snail mail. I think he’s thinking.

Sorry if I did that. Oh, he didn’t say yes email. Okay, Stan.

I mean, if you would have put if you would have put direct mail, I would have loved that because that would definitely laugh. But okay. Let’s see. Survey says chatbot.

Notbots. Chatbots knocked out. Email’s that low. Hey. Yeah. It according to the respondents, it was the second I mean, here’s the thing, right?

Not everyone necessarily uses a chat bot or uses social or uses SMS messaging. So For people that might just use email and phone, email’s probably the cheapest, but for people that are leveraging, other methods, then these are the ones that that went out. So I think it makes sense obviously because with chatbots, they don’t involve agent intervention. They oftentimes are a cost when you’re first adopting one unless you well, even if you build it in house, that’s just man hour cost.

Yep.

But you, oftentimes, will have to invest in that, but it pays off significantly and it allows businesses to scale because they’re no agent intervention there. However, you know, many folks have an adapted chat bots because they don’t have the money or the resources to do so. That’s what when we were surveying them and the reasons why they had not yet done so. Those were the the top ones. So it just proves the ROI here. On chat bots themselves.

And one of the most obvious reasons that customers like live chat and social messaging and SMS messaging is that they hate waiting. It’s like that classic tale of the stereo typical hatred for contacting customer service. You call your internet company, and you have to wait on hold for forty five minutes in order to get anyone on the phone.

With these, like, real time digital channels like chat and social messaging, customers sort of expect and hopefully will receive, more immediate responses. And luckily unlike voice companies can handle more than one inquiry at once. So it’s not like you know, very linear of, like, inquiry one, inquiry two, inquiry three.

When a con a customer contacts customer service via phone, that sort of what happens, and there’s obviously usually wait times and queues involved when they’re using chat, an agent can sort of multitask and handle multiple inquiries simultaneously. So while an agent’s waiting for a reply or having, a customer test a solution or something like that. They can pop over to another, conversation that they’re having and get that one sorted out.

Simultaneously. So the amount of time that each chat takes is much lower than other channels and significantly less expensive as a result, and that’s the same thing with social messaging, which we were just talking about. It’s sort of like the chat experience, but just on a different channel. It does, it does seem like, you know, obviously chat lends itself or chatbots lend itself to more automation.

Kevin did bring up an interesting point. And I think that’s part of the evolution, you know, oftentimes these chatbots sometimes lead to another channel because maybe they couldn’t solve it or couldn’t answer. But finding that balance, you know, I do. We find companies and customers.

They are able to reconcile resolve some of those basic questions and not have staff that via the phone. And so I would expect that to continue to iterate, but you’re right, Kim. And I do think at the moment things have been a little bit of a challenge. Right. We’ve had I mean, we’ve seen in previous research, with chatbots that businesses don’t think that they’re effective and that was very true for a long time. Like a lot of chat bots are sort of crappy and they send you bad answers, and it’s very, you know, obvious that they’re you’re not gonna get your question resolved. So people to escalate them.

Now luckily with sort of advancements in AI and machine learning, there are chat bots out there that are incredibly intelligent and incredibly accurate, not that they can handle complex issues. I don’t think that’ll ever be the case. If there’s a really complicated question that’s always gonna have to be escalated to an agent, but things like, you know, initiating a return or asking where my order is or things of that nature can get solved almost instantaneously with chat bots as long as they’re integrated with all of your data sources. So I’m hoping that’ll only get better and more businesses will be able to adopt them.

I think it has to because it’s such a cheaper option. Right? I think people continue to to evaluate it. But this falls into that.

Some of the reasons maybe people like Chad a little more, talk to us about these.

Yeah. I mean, I I think that, like, the three big reasons are the convenience, the immediacy, and this low effort involved. So you know, if you take a second and think about online shopping, you find the perfect gift for someone, but you don’t know if batteries are included or if there’s you have a question on sizing or whatever, instead of searching all around for a way to the company, you just have a chat widget there, and you can sort of effort effort effortless link, click on it and get your questions answered. I think that’s, like, you know, an ideal way to turn customer service from just a problem solver into a revenue generator.

And, you know, it may not sound like a deal breaker to switch channels, but seventy nine percent of consumers actually said that they get frustrated when they can’t contact customer service on their preferred medium or platform. So the convenience factor is really huge. When trying to build brand equity. It’s like the feeling when you have your credit card in the other room, and this e commerce shop says, you know, re input your credit card information, please. And you’re like, actually, I don’t think I need this anymore. I’m gonna go ahead and not buy it. The same same scenario with customer service.

And we’ve also talked about immediacy in regard to the most popular channels of, like, phone and chat.

Seventy one percent of consumers expect their problems to be solved immediately when contacting customer service, and we’ll go into, like, how this is actually possible.

With technology tools, but I think there’s also, you know, the reason why some businesses are intimidated about adopting chat because they don’t know how to do it in a scalable way. They don’t know if it’s necessarily possible to deliver on consumer expectations chat, but, it is possible with the right tools. So we’ll talk about that next. Yeah.

And then like social messaging or SMS messaging, it really does allow you to instantly meet your customers where they are, whether it’s browsing online for products or checking their shipping status or you know, prosing your social channels for social messaging. So this last step actually isn’t from our research. It’s from Matt Dixon’s.

Only nine percent of customers that have low effort experiences display any sort of disloyal attitude or behavior. But ninety six percent that have high effort difficult experiences are disloyal to a brand. So chat does a really good job of delivering that effortless experience.

Yeah. And I do think that the effort stuff is so, so, so, so important. So I know we’re coming up on our time. Some of you who’ve gotta jump, at the thirty minute mark, feel free.

We’ll definitely make sure you have access to this stuff and then do download the reports. A couple of you, I know we’re chatting with me. So thanks for joining while you can if you need to jump. Just a couple more pieces here.

Before we close, true or false customers who engage in the chat before making a purchase have a higher order value.

I gotta go with true. Let’s see. Ronald says false. Shelley says, true. Tina says true. Austin true.

I’m gonna go with true.

I’m just gonna go with like the Majority rules. It is true.

Everyone got this all right.

This also this, data point, actually, the first one here also isn’t from our research, but I felt it just, but it was so perfect to the narrative of this webinar that I included it. This is actually from Forrester, I believe.

So live chat, not only helps resolve issues more efficiently, but it can also drive revenue and conversion rates for a lot of e commerce businesses. So many customers, you know, might have a question around policies or products when they’re doing business online.

And the easier that businesses can make it to get those questions answered, the more likely they are to complete their purchase instead of abandoning their carts.

So Forrester said you know, there’s typically a ten percent increase in order value from customers who engage in a chat before making a purchase compared to those who did not use chat. And then the second one is actually from our research. Fifty one percent of consumers, thirty five and younger are willing to buy products and services from a chat bot. So, you know, that means that chat bots, even not human beings answering questions can also turn into revenue generators when they’re, you know, integrated with holistic customer data and they’re able to serve up relevant information or offers.

So It’s just really powerful when you’re thinking about shifting, your customer service organization from this call center into a revenue generator. I think that chat is a super powerful tool there. I mean, this whole movement on social commerce, you obviously played a role in that, but I was educated. We did a big event on social commerce and boy did it feel like that was coming whether you like it or not.

Selling, marketing, you know, all in chat. I was still just getting used in some cases to servicing with chat but I think, you know, the whole the whole sales cycle, the whole experience can almost be done in chat now. So, think this is kind of as we wrap here. Talk to us a little bit about some of the findings then that you you the takeaways as you think about chat where we go from here. Yeah. This is sort of my wrap up slide. It’s the big conclusion, but, you know, the big question is how can you actually adopt chat in a scalable way that can also deliver on your customer’s expectations from a chat program.

Because if you adopt chat. It’s all well and good, but it isn’t necessarily a magic bullet if you aren’t delivering a good chat experience and the quality of support that you deliver still has to be pretty accept if you wanna, you know, leverage CX as a differentiator. So, our research said that personalization was actually the most valued customer service attribute today.

And achieving personalization really isn’t possible unless you’re able to see a full customer’s history while you’re managing any channel, whether that’s chat or email or phone. So it’s this like true omnichannel experience which doesn’t omnichannel oftentimes gets confused as like multichannel. So it it doesn’t necessarily mean being available on every channel. It means that they’re seamless transitions from one conversation to the next no matter what channel you’re on, and these consistent experiences from one channel to the next. So, you know, in a multichannel environment, each conversation and each channel sort of lives in a silo, a new ticket, a new agent handles every conversation that you have.

And as a result of a fragmented experience like that customers may have to repeat themselves multiple times or you know, you might focus on resolving a ticket as quickly as possible versus, you know, building a customer relationship whereas omnichannel support shifts that perspective to customer relationship building, and customers can move between channels throughout a single engagement or throughout their customer life cycle, and they’re sort of guaranteed this consistency So each conversation sort of starts where the last one stopped.

And it really you’re able to deliver this this personalized experience.

And I think that’s only really possible if you’re using technology tools that are able to aggregate all of that data. And unify all of that data into a single space. So whether it’s data across channels that you’re using, data across different apps that you’re using, data across different platforms that you might have to toggle between.

And if you can aggregate all that and capture all of the flow of conversations across those channels into a single screen, and create this unified home for all of your data. You’re able to deliver on those customer experiences. So it’s not like you need a separate team specifically to handle all of your chats.

Oftentimes, you know, brands will do that, but As long as you’re able to see the full picture, you can do it in a much more scalable way, versus, you know, having to hire a dozen more people to handle this new channel that you’re you’re sort of trying to implement. Never gonna order Huddl never. No.

Awesome. Great takeaways.

So Everybody appreciate you taking the time. Andrea, fun research, fun, little back and forth.

It sounds like most people are a little more in tune. To the research than I was. I think I I counted myself going two for six.

Two for six. You could grade yourself And again, grab the research diving a little bit more into some of those industries and verticals Andrea said, and you can find that at customer dot com slash resources. So Again, thank you for joining, Andrea. Thank you for joining.

Anything, last words, Andrew, before we close? No. I mean, feel free to shoot me any questions that you have on LinkedIn or my email Andrea dot paul at customer dot com. I’m happy to give more context.

There’s a plethora of additional data that I have. So happy to share that with you if you need Awesome. Alright. Well, again, everybody have a great day, and thanks for joining.

Thanks guys.