How is Technology Shaping Customer Service?

Businesses that aren’t evolving their customer service strategy are leaving a lot on the table. If companies are proactive enough, there’s a huge opportunity to hone in on delivering an amazing, omnipresent service.

Seventy-one percent of customers say that the most important thing a company can do is to value their time and make it easier for them to move seamlessly across channels, according to PwC.

Today, some companies are investing in technologically advanced tools that help them not only connect with their consumers but also analyze their habits to predict their behavior.

Here's an overview of a few big ways technology is shaping customer service:

1. Big Data Analytics Can Help You Understand Customers Deeper

“Customer service is no longer a guessing game—today, businesses are overwhelmed with data on what customers—loyal and potential—want,” says Steve Sims, cofounder of the Behavior Labs who sees first-hand how tech has revolutionized customer service.

Investing in data scientists and one of the 16 top big data analytics platforms, according to Information Week, is a step in the right direction in learning more about your consumers.

"For example, analyzing incoming contact center inquiries can alert support teams to bugs or other issues, which are escalated to a product engineering team to be resolved and deployed before they affect a critical mass of customers," according to pwc white paper.

2. Businesses Can Streamline Marketing Tools from End-to-End

Marketing teams across America can use advanced Point of Sales (POS) systems to capitalize on details of their customers’ history, future appointments, reservations, typical purchases etc.

“Automated marketing material can be sent to them based on this information (i.e., appointment reminders, product sale alerts, ‘thank you’ emails, birthday emails, etc…),” says Carli Brinkman of Touchsuite.  “This not only personalizes the experience for the consumer, but it also eliminates the time and energy that might typically be required for the sales rep, stylist, etc., to determine the client’s needs.”

3. Mobile Chat Has Been a Huge Hit

“A survey also found that overall, 92 percent of consumers reported high satisfaction levels with customer support as a result of using mobile chat - a 20 percent increase over traditional support methods when shopping online,” according to Christina Schultz, a Moxie Software representative.

LogMeIn recently released BoldChat mobile, a multichannel customer engagement tool that allows folks to chat with their mobile consumers. Since everyone is shifting to mobile, this is a pretty logical step for customer service.

Right now, not enough companies are jumping on this opportunity. You don't need a statistic to know that, these days, most people research products and services on smartphones before making a purchase. But one survey by LogMeIn and the E-tailing Group found that “Customers rated over 40 percent of mobile shopping experiences “unsatisfactory.’”

Additionally, some smart, savvy businesses have even taken advantage of one of the most popular means of communication today: text messaging, according to John Huehn, CEO of In the Chat. Check out this case study on text message marketing.

“The traditional call center is riddled with problems, from the nightmare that is [Interactive Voice Response] IVR to getting unexpectedly disconnected when you finally connect with the correct representative,” Huehn says.

4. Speech Recognition Could Transform How Companies Literally Talk to Customers

There’s a lot of potential there for voice technology.

If companies can find a way to utilize voice technology and speech recognition to offer personalized responses (re: No. 2), then customer service can successfully be automated via voice tech. In the long run, this would save pools of time and resources.  

“Voice-based technologies have the potential to streamline routine and relatively simple customer service tasks.  The level of customer satisfaction achieved with them will be increasingly determined by how well these systems add contextual and persona-based intelligence to each interaction,” says Louis Columbus, product management and product marketing expert on Quora. 

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