While businesses are still obsessing about millennials and trying to figure out how their organizations need to change to cater for this generation, a new one is emerging and their behaviour is already influencing everyone else’s.
Today we expect to have access to the internet everywhere and all the time and, therefore, we have become hyper-connected, hyper-mobile and, naturally, hyper-impatient. We yearn for convenience and reward with our loyalty the businesses that provide an effortless customer service.
However, for the most part, there is a major gap between the convenience consumers demand and the way businesses expect consumers to talk to them.
So how can businesses bridge this gap? How can a business truly deliver an effortless customer service for the digital consumer today and tomorrow?
On his keynote at CIOCITY17, Davy Kestens, Sparkcentral’s CEO, showed the audience the path toward that elusive effortless customer service.
- Be where your customers are today
The new generation “kids”, who saw their first reflection on an iPhone instead of a mirror, are forcing us to switch to the communication channels they use. And they live on their mobile devices digital messaging is the main interaction channel.
Facebook and Twitter were the first major channels that allowed consumers to bypass the contact centres, so businesses should start there, ensuring structure and processes are aligned and able to adequately and timely respond on these channels. Then, they should build on that and start expanding to other channels. - Know your customer & provide full resolution
But just being active and responsive on these channels is not enough. The potential to scale beyond that exists, but it requires a solid and secure identity management system to be able to track customers in whatever channel they choose to interact with your business at a given moment and, at the same time, be able to always provide full resolution without compromising security or convenience. - Implement scalable workflows to handle increasing volumes
As customer service starts becoming effortless, those who had needs or problems that they did not deem worthy of the effort to resolve through other traditional channels, will flock to these channels and will expect a consistent and convenient communication experience every time. When that happens, businesses must have in place scalable workflows that automatically route, categorize and prioritize messages and that enable agents to respond faster with recommended responses.
Now that you are more than half way up this path, watch the full keynote from Davy Kestens at CIOCITY17 and find out the final two steps.