Whatever market they are in, organizations face a stark choice – innovate across their operations and get closer to customers or lose market share to more agile, flexible rivals. The forthcoming Franco-British conference ‘Disrupt or Be Disrupted’ will look at the impact of this changing world and how companies of all sizes can understand and compete in it.
Customer experience has been front of mind for marketing and customer service professionals for a number of years, but does it really have a big impact on the bottom line?
Providing customer service through social media has multiple advantages for both consumers and companies. Customers want the convenience and simplicity of being able to contact companies through Twitter and Facebook, without needing to call or email a business. Done well, social customer service also benefits brands.
Traditionally brands have segmented their customer bases by demographic factors such as age, and used this information to drive specific customer experiences for each group. However, this only goes so far, as age isn’t always a good guide to customer needs. For example, 45% of APAC consumers are millennials, but that doesn’t mean they all have the same needs, wants and desires.
When customers deal with your organization, they don’t care which department they are communicating with – they simply want the best possible experience and service. They expect to receive high quality, joined-up service and get a consistent, accurate answer to any question that they might have.
Organizations today receive a growing number of incoming emails and social media messages from consumers. At the same time the range and scope of these interactions is also expanding – essentially consumers today want to be able to have conversations with brands, on their channel of choice, in order to find out information, solve problems and to give feedback.
Good customer service leads to happier, more loyal customers who stay with you longer, spend more and are more likely to recommend your business to family and friends. However, it can be difficult to measure the exact impact of individual customer service interactions on these metrics, leading to the contact center being seen as a cost, rather than a department that boosts the bottom line.
With customer service being at the top of the business agenda for organizations, what are the trends that are impacting contact centers? To find out, analyst ContactBabel surveyed 216 UK contact center managers and directors. Reading through the results, six key conclusions stand out..
In a multichannel world, the telephone is no longer the default choice of consumers. However, it is still vital, particularly for more involved conversations. Yet new research from consumer group Which? shows that telephone customer service is failing to keep pace with customer needs.
Earlier this month, we published the 2016 Eptica Insurance Multichannel Customer Experience Study, which evaluated how insurers in the US, across ten sectors are meeting the challenge of new digital channels for customer service. To do this, we researched their ability to answer routine questions on five digital channels....