The customer service landscape has become more complex than ever, with various communication channels being introduced. This has presented new methods of interactions between businesses and their customers.
When a business is running a contact centre, there are developments they need to consider for growth currently in order to ensure the business is where it needs to be in the future.
Unsurprisingly, technology is the most important driver of change within a business. “In many cases, technology will change the way a company will interact with its customers in the future,” explains Henry McCracken, regional sales director for Aspect Software.
The term ‘millennial’ has been doing the rounds all over the world, with companies streamlining their business strategies to cater to the millennial generation, born between the 1980s and early 2000s.
“Millennials have often been called the entitled and privileged generation because they have grown up with technology and have become accustomed to being able to connect with whoever they want, whenever they want,” explains McCracken.
But it is not only these young people who have the millennial mindset. Older consumers have also become accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it. This has resulted in higher demand for quicker customer service, often through self-service.
Consumers want the ease of being able to find the information they are seeking immediately. This need creates a window of opportunity for businesses to make use of chatbots. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have made it possible for businesses to set up these bots in their messaging apps, with some businesses even setting up a WhatsApp number for their customers to contact them on.
WhatsApp and Facebook facilitate interaction among one billion users on their platforms, respectively. It therefore makes sense for companies to go where their customers already are by introducing messaging app chat bots that will improve customer service and ultimately enhance the customer experience.
Although chatbots are programmed to encode natural language and contain substantial knowledge, there will be queries reporting its lack of understanding or that it fails to respond. In these instances, the customer should be given the option to speak to a human contact centre agent.
Chatbots will deal with easier queries, while the more complicated questions and complaints are left for the human agents. Agents should be told what the customer’s issue is when they answer the phone and already have a plan on how they are going to resolve it. In these instances, the concept of context is critical. This prevents customers from being frustrated when the customer has to repeat their problem.
Customer service is about making things easier for the customer. This will have a positive, lasting impact on a business and it’s bottom-line. “If companies can look at their operations now and make the changes that are beneficial to their business, they will be in a great position to take on challenges associated with customer service in the future,” concludes McCracken.