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Customer Service and Engagement: Five Key Trends

Customer service is a critical function in any business today. While years ago, many business viewed service as an add-on expense and far less important than sales, that has changed. But what's less recognized is that delivering great customer service is something of a moving target. There's no guarantee that what worked yesterday is going to be effective today. Customer service strategies need to constantly adapt to a wide range of factors.

Given that reality, how can small businesses ensure that they stay at the cutting edge of customer service? One strategy is to take a close look at what is currently getting the attention of big enterprises. Large companies are good bellwethers because it's vital that they be proactive: if a global enterprise lets its customer service slip, the repercussions can reverberate around the world and take years and huge amounts of money to correct. So what is on the mind of big enterprises that small companies will want to become aware of? Here is a rundown of a few of the top issues:

Generation Shift

As the historic, post-World War II 'Baby Boom' generation moves into retirement, its demographic followers-often referred to in the media as Generations X and Y -are becoming the major forces in the economy. These post-Baby Boom generations grew up surrounded by media-oriented technology while enjoying relentless improvements in computing functionality and performance. Given this experience, they expect instantaneous service and are puzzled when it is not available anywhere, anytime through any medium. Their tolerance for failure is limited and they have no hesitation going public with their dissatisfaction, including posting messages, photos, videos and more online. They are media agnostic, using the phone, e-mail, Web chat, IM and social media interchangeably.

Customer Service is Going Multimedia

Customer service has always been a phone-based activity, and in many if not most cases, that's still the case. Many contact centres are still just call centres: voice-only systems designed for an era when the only real option for the customer seeking service was to pick up the phone. Adding non-voice capabilities is critical-new generations of customers expect it. In a 2010 survey, contact centre professionals reported that they expect the next two years to bring strong growth in non-voice interactions:

• The greatest increases are expected to occur in Web self-service, Web chat and social media.
• One-third of contact centres are expected to have a majority of their agents handling both voice and multimedia interactions.

Making Experts Accessible

There are always times when a customer service agent needs help resolving a customer's request. Too often, the agent's choices are limited to shouting over the cubicle wall, calling in a favor from a colleague or asking for more time-necessitating a callback or subsequent correspondence, further reducing customer satisfaction and increasing costs. More and more contact centres are incorporating presence to provide agents with easy access to experts who may be located across the hall or around the world and can easily be patched into a conversation. Customers are happy because their needs are fully addressed the first time they contact the enterprise.

Creating Full Context for Every Interaction

A well-integrated, multimedia capability not only recognizes the customer, but also understands the context and intelligently selects the resources required to address the customer's issue. Context means gathering all relevant information about a customer-profile, demographics, preferences, past interactions, etc. Such information often resides in databases, business applications and processes maintained by the business, but not always integrated into the customer service function. When agents do not have immediate access to information, customer satisfaction suffers. A contact centre application that preserves all of this contextual information across all media and has it available for all agents not only increases customer satisfaction, but saves time and expense by reducing the time needed to serve the customer.

Listen for Unspoken Clues

Customer service is a great opportunity to hear the voice of your customer. Many companies are incorporating the ability to do extensive recordings that are then analyzed using speech analytics, searching for recurring issues and themes. But many companies are also recognizing that most, if not all, customer interactions have a major emotional component and are adapting their systems to pick up on clues that suggest both rising levels of dissatisfaction, as well as satisfaction, and providing customer service agents with techniques and support for dealing with both.

Small Business owners should routinely do an inventory of their systems and make sure they have features and functionalities that are keeping up with the expectations and preferences of their customers. If your phone system, for example, makes you 'hard to find' and doesn't allow you to integrate your IM, cell, office and email-you may be at risk of losing your most important customers.

Talk to Telefonix Voice & Data on 01252 333888 to help you bring your customer service up to the best standards possible today.