Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Cloud the Raising Bar for Customer Service
Customers are tired of being generic. They have always been individual and not the same, but for decades businesses have treated them more or less the same because it was hard to effectively provide individual customer service to scale.
That’s finally changing thanks to Big Data, the cloud, and better computing resources. Businesses now can, in practice, deliver a relatively tailored customer care experience at a price point that doesn’t make it prohibitive. Customers know this, too, because some businesses are starting to leverage technology and prove it.
Thus, the bar for good customer care has been raised. There’s more opportunity to deliver individualized customer care, but businesses now are penalized if they don’t. Very soon it will not be optional for a call center to be just a call center—it will need to be a contact center that seamlessly integrates the many possible communication channels that a particular customer might want to choose, and be able to do it seamlessly in an omnichannel experience.
Soon it will not be optional for agents to start a conversation with a customer who has interacted with a business in the past and not know the history of the interaction. Businesses have the tools to keep real-time data on customers and share it with every agent who might need this data, and customers know it and are expecting it.
Further, customers expect the option of solving problems themselves via self-service solutions. Businesses need to offer both live support and self-serve; having one just doesn’t cut it any more.
These expectations are harder to meet, of course. But technology like the cloud and modern CRM and contact center solutions software is making it possible. The race to superior customer service is an involved sprint, but it collecting and making sense of customer data is easier than ever. The sprint is not as hard as it would have been 20 years ago, which is why it must be done: The competition is doing it, and the customer is expecting it now.
So has customer service gotten more challenging? Absolutely. One size no longer fits all. It never did, but now customers expect individual service and savvy businesses are able to leverage the latest in contact center solution software to deliver that coveted individual service.
All of this is a win for the customer, of course. But it also is a win for business, because good customer care is hard but also useful. It informs better product and service design. It engenders loyalty that creates repeat business. It provides an improved feedback loop. These are among many other benefits, too.
Improved customer service benefits both consumers and businesses.
But even if it didn’t, you have no choice. Your competition is doing it, so you must, too.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi