We live in a world of high expectations. There are more than 75 million “millennials,” (people between the ages 18 to 34) in 2015 roaming the planet and all of them are potential customers. The largest generation in history is “digital natives” and they have very different ideas than their parents about customer service and the customer experience. To capitalize on this burgeoning market, businesses need to fully understand and meet the customer service demands and expectations. Whether it’s the expectation that our watches will read texts to us, our GPS information will provide us with the fastest route to a destination, or that our customer service issues will be resolved with a couple taps on a screen, what we expect and the speed at which we expect it, is incredible. On the consumer side, these expectations have been ramping up for years but only because companies are making it possible. Here’s the catch; the text reading watches and GPS systems are simple. It’s all technology based and runs without human interference. But, what happens when you add a person into the mix...or hundreds? This is the case in the customer service industry.
When there is an issue with a gadget, consumers want to be able to hash it out with someone in customer service. They do not expect to be met with a robot on the other line. They expect a real person who can empathize with them and talk them through how to solve the issue. But regardless, consumers still expect the same speedy response times as they do with the robots. And yet another catch; with the development of social media as a way to communicate with companies, consumers now can not only call, they can also, email, tweet, Facebook message or snap a picture on Instagram to get in touch. So how can companies solve the issue? That’s where omnichannel support comes in.
The Need for Omnichannel Support
The only way to forge the future of customer experience is for companies to build innovative and intuitive platforms allowing them to be incredibly efficient in engaging with their customers and building lasting relationships.
There is a need for a unified approach to customer inquiries and therefore omnichannel support. Look at it like this: Imagine you have an entertainment system where you can be watching a show in one room, pause it, go into another room and pick up watching right where you left off. As a customer of this solution, you expect that when you go into the second room to resume watching, it will not start again from the beginning. That would not only be annoying but would defeat the purpose. Now let’s make the same example more applicable to our solution.
Just like the entertainment system, in the case of customer service you have an initial action; you’re reaching out to a company to solve a problem. You have a conversation, it gets settled and you’re off to living your life. But say the same issue comes up again. Like the entertainment system being able to resume from pause in a different room, your conversation would be able to pick up right where it left off as well. Starting from the beginning would be inefficient and would create less than optimal customer service. But it doesn’t stop there. Social is not a one stop shop which means that if the customer reached out on Twitter their first time they still expect to be able to pick up where they left off when they reach out the second time on Facebook. This is where the importance of omnichannel support comes in for building a unified approach to customer service.
The Strategy Behind a Unified Approach
An effective strategy is complex without being difficult, abstract but easy to implement. The goal for this strategy is to delight your customers and turn them into life-long fans. But, in order to get there your agents need to be able to perform at the highest tier and your solutions needs to be able to scale without fault.
Performance
Social runs on real time so customer service across these channels needs to be speedy. Agents need the ability to respond and resolve issues quickly. Companies should look for advanced automation technology that routes conversations to the right agents at the right time, allowing them to focus on what really matters – delighting customers.
Scale
With one agent, or many, it is important to be able to engage with your customer at every touch-point. Platforms that allow you to comprehensively view full relationship maps of customers, enable agents to quickly understand and capture the context of customer interaction and take appropriate action to meet and even, exceed customer expectations.
Delight
Delighting customers is always the end goal. By combining the performance and scale factors: the intelligent rules-based engagement engine; your team will not only be able to meet customers’ expectations but they will be able to proactively delight them by resolving their issues before they escalate.
Let’s reimagine the future of customer experience. Together.
The time is now, your customers are waiting. Respond, manage and resolve complex customer issues more effectively. Enhance your brand, improve customer satisfaction and deliver promised value faster than ever before. 