Customer service (CX) and technology effortlessly, go hand in hand. Your brand loyalty will be a strong as your customer service. Remember, "good customer service is cheaper than bad customer service." Technology has enabled many businesses to run their customer support efficiently and at a reduced cost.
Technology has some exciting new trends to keep your customers happy. Keep reading below for a list of the top 10 customer service technologies your business should have to implement outstanding customer care.
Agent Coaching
Your call center employees work hard to provide the primal customer experience. However, there's times when your agents may need assistance. Agent coaching provides "optimized agent performance" by utilizing coaching material such as audio clips, supervisor notes, and other company documents to guide call center agents. As an e-learning coaching tool, customer service agents can improve the way they interact with customers.
Analytics Quality Management
Analytics Quality Management is software that houses your internal operation procedures and policies. Your employees can gain insight on customer requirements and other aspects of business essentials like testing criteria, auditing, and management activities. Analytics quality management data provides businesses with visual analytics to improve the CX.
Chatbots
On the second floor of a high-rise building in Richmond, Virginia, six chatbots are working behind the scenes to dominate customer service. Let's take a look at what they do. Ada conveniently handles claims, Walter specializes in document requests while Hedy, DaVinci, Ralph, and Paul perform basic support functions. Together, they handled 26 tasks in a single day and literally thousands in a month.
As businesses thoughtfully and carefully move forward, chatbots can optimize the technology and many people won't ever be aware they're interacting with AI technology. Today, AI technology allows businesses to personal their customer experience with different voices and personas. Chatbots are conversational and dedicated to your customer service initiatives.
Consumer Messaging
Consumer messaging isn't just productivity, it also improves your engagement with your customers. While 80 percent of consumers try to avoid calling a business because of the time it takes, consumer messaging gives your customers the instant communication they want. Customers prefer other contact methods over the traditional call process. Your business will be more productive, but more importantly, your customers will be happier.
Contact Center Routing Systems
Many businesses need a multi-channel operating system to run an effective customer service operating network. A contact center routing system (ACD) routes calls to agents/queues based on predetermined criteria. A cloud-based contact center routing system allows businesses to have higher call routing capabilities when compared to a traditional phone network and improve the time it takes to handle large scale or measurable customer concerns.
Contextual Insights
Contextual Insights gives businesses the opportunity to get the customer related information they need to save time on authoritative information that governs their interaction with customers. For example, your field agents can eliminate the need to look up information on another browser and increase their productivity and reduce the time it takes to handle customer interaction. "The situational data from your digital and physical work space uses contextual insights to develop context-rich customer service."
Customer Journey Analytics
For most businesses, it's important for you to have insight on the customer journey to improve your CX. How is your business doing when it comes to your customer experience? Customer Journey Analytics provides your business with data to identify specific areas of customer service and improve the customer experience.
Customer Personality Analytics
Understanding how your customers interact or feel about your business operations through data is Customer Personality Analytics. Businesses have an opportunity to understand their customers personality, attitudes, communication, or decision-making. Simply put, customer personality analytics is predefined data about your customer characteristics.
Customer Self-Service
AI (artificial intelligence) and search algorithms increase the likelihood that a chatbot will fully resolve your customers issues. Many organizations investing in self service are finding more than cost savings as an expected ROI. Gartner reported, "40 percent of live volume could be resolved with self-service channels."
Customer Service Engagement Technology Trends
The contact center resolves customer queries in a timely and professional manner. A contact center can help your customers feel engaged to your business. Strong, technology-enabled support can also help your brand retain customers. The right tools can contribute to a positive culture and higher levels of customer satisfaction. The following technologies help you maintain high level customer relations with omnichannel customer support dedicated to customer care.
Enterprise Feedback Management
Enterprise Feedback Management provides quality survey software that facilitates data collection, authoring, statistical analysis, and reporting to enhance the CX. In fact, enterprise feedback management serves as communication dialogue between the customer, business, and employees. The tool used to collect the surveys from enterprise feedback management include interactive voice response (IVR) or the web. Enterprise feedback management provides real-time customer intervention.
External Community Software
External community software serves to provide "customers and peers with interactive software allowing them to post/blog about their customer experience." It also provides rating, services, products, and constructive case creation about your businesses products and services.
Field Service Management
It's important for businesses to have a enhanced customer experience to stay ahead of the competition. Field Service Management (FSM) "helps automate company services." Businesses has the opportunity to effectively manage and monitor your company's operating network to improve the customer experience.
Interaction Analytics
Interactive Analytics helps businesses gain insight on their customer support team that's focused on the CX. Traditional technology did very little to help businesses gain perspective on what truly mattered to their customers. Today, "operational data and call-flow dynamics" through interactive analytics serves to provide structure to customer interaction. According to Analytics Magazine, "only 10 percent of a company's data is in row and column form (stationary)." Interaction analytics allows businesses to store critical customer data that's usually not in context. For example, customer emails, phone calls, or social media interactions are "generated, stored, organized, and analyzed (even in real-time)."
Interaction Recording
Interaction recording serves businesses of any size. When your business expects to provide a high level customer support, but your business also wants to monitor your employees, interactive recording provides call evaluation, speech analytics, and "audio insight."
Knowledge Management
Knowledge management (KM) manages your information assets from an integrated approach. Your knowledge management can come from multiple channels with search technology and a user interface (UI). A KM operates as a virtual system to enhance operational delivery in customer care. Commonly used:
• For self-service
• For in-house employees
• By partner networks
• In other applications (i.e. ATM)
Live Chat
Live chat support options are becoming mainstream for many businesses that want to improve their customer service. Businesses are able to build a sustainable customer support base with live chat options. In fact, live chat comes in multi-channel networks including web applications. Your business has the potential to integrate chat features with CRM to provide customers with personalized service.
Subsequently, an instant response can also improve your ROI. Happy customers tell their friends and family about your products and services. Live chat can also be combined with your current business social media across all platforms. According to Forbes, "customer service satisfaction with live chat is one the rise.
Performance Management
Customer relationship management is an important contact center element. When your employees have the tools they need to perform their best work, the customer experience (CX) is enhanced. Performance management serves to:
• provide a clear job description
• ongoing education/training/coaching
• accomplished based employee standards
• performance reviews
Credit: Balance Careers
Postcall Surveys
If you're interested in improving the customer experience, postcall surveys give your business the opportunity to learn how happy your customers truly are based on their feedback. As a cross-channel solution, businesses can use emails, SMS, and after call surveys to gain insight on the customer experience along with your call center. The postcall survey is directly related to the interaction (in real-time) with your customer service support team.
Predictive Customer Analytics
Predictive Customer Analytics helps businesses predict their customers next move when interacting with a business. Primarily, predictive customer analytics is used as a conversion tool, but it also serves to give a predictive analysis of how your customers will interact about their concerns.
Robotic Process Automation
According to Forbes, "robotic process automation automates your business up to 70 percent faster." The same Forbes article discusses the value-added activities provided by robotic process automation to improve your customer experience. The goal of robotic process automation is improving business productivity and enhancing the customer experience. In fact, your business can use robotic process automation to optimize your accuracy and eliminate errors in customer interaction and business operations.
Social Analytics
Social Analytics provides data-driven insight concerning your social media business accounts. According to Gartner, "social analytics allows businesses to collect, measure, analyze, and interpret data from social media." When customers are communicating with your business via social media, social analytics gives you an opportunity to improve the customer experience. Social analytics provides:
- insight on website visits
- how long your customers spend on your site/web pages
- web browser information
- physical customer location
Credit: Google
Social Media Engagement
Social engagement is the process of interacting (communicating) with an online community. In fact, social engagement focuses on long-term communication online with popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For businesses, it provides a wider audience to extend their reach.
Video Chat
Video chat technology is relatively new to the customer service industry, but it isn't new technology. Video chat with audio options gives your business an opportunity to interact face-to-face. In terms of service, it's an opportunity to give your customers a chance to get real-time customer care. You can also use pics to help your customers with tutorials or problems with defective products with the use of video chat.
Customer service engagement has never been more important for continued customer retention. Employing new technology has the potential to improve customer engagement and set your business apart from competitor brands. Customer service engagement technology is set to transform the CX experience. Stay tuned for part two to learn more about customer service engagement technology.
Virtual Assistants
A virtual assistant also known as a virtual customer assistant (VCA) simulates conversation to resolve your customer issues. As highly experienced and specialized technology, businesses have the potential to streamline their administrative tasks. In fact, VAs can handle customer service issues your regular support team may not be able to. An virtual assistant can ease the workload of your staff, but they can also make it easier to address customer concerns.
Voice Of The Customer
With Voice Of The Customer solutions, "technology like enterprise feedback management, text mining, web analytics, and speech analytics are used to understand the customer voice. If your business can gain understanding on how your customers feel about your business, you can use that data to improve the core strength of your business. Understanding customer feedback is critical to your business operations and your success.
Voice Response Platforms
A voice response platform allows agent productivity by providing complex call routing based on information provided by the customer. Voice recognition technology enables real-time communication that genuinely supports your customers needs.
7 Voice Self-Service
Voice self-service is also know as voice recognition. Reduce the cost per call for your business by allowing your customers to choose the services they need with voice implementation. Each year, the needs of your customers evolve and self-service meets those needs. Over time, voice recognition with AI technology can learn behavior patterns from your customers and suggest a solution appropriate for individual customer concerns.
Workforce Management
Having your workforce on board and engaged is a very important part of your business operations. Workforce management also known as workforce engagement management (WEM) provides functionality, improvement, and assistance for businesses that want to improve their customer experience. More importantly, workforce management is a task management solution.
These factors are major benefits that come to play when combining today's technology with Customer Service, generating successful Customer Experience and relationships.
