The quality of customer service is getting more unpredictable. It is becoming more challenging to predict shopping patterns and disrupt supply chains. While customers may have been more understanding of limitations at the outbreak, the “Covid” excuse for long wait times and inadequate response is no longer appealing to them, despite retailers’ difficulties in securing new staff after a year.
Brands are left scrambling to meet customer demands. According to research, 63% of customers will leave companies after one bad experience. Nearly two-thirds are not willing to wait for more than two minutes for help. CX is a critical component of brand loyalty and brand reputation. Brands can’t afford to invest. How can businesses meet customers’ needs at every stage of their journey while simultaneously addressing the unpredictable nature of customer services? Elasticity is the solution.
It is essential to provide flexible customer service.
It’s vital to invest in flexible customer services now more than ever. Elastic CX operations that can contract and expand based on changing market conditions create a flexible business model that allows customers service agents to adapt to the changing demands of the company and their customers.
Support teams are currently overwhelmed with routine, manual tasks that consume time and effort. This frustrates customers and causes them to take longer responses and resolve issues. Notably, half of the customer service agents’ time was spent on repetitive, manual tasks and searching for information. This is not sustainable. Brands can use empathy and technology to offer the personalized, automated, contextualized interactions customers desire.
Happy agents equal happy customers.
Sometimes it can be challenging to build trust and rapport with customers after something has gone wrong. However, brands can communicate how much they value a customer by empowering agents with empathy and humanity and training them in listening and responding to customer concerns. Happy customers are often the result of happy agents. Agents must be able to remain flexible in the industry and larger marketplace that is unpredictable.
Technology gives you more flexibility.
Agents need to have all the technology they need to provide a seamless customer experience. Intelligent automation, such as artificial intelligence (AI), can be crucial in eliminating repetitive, time-consuming, and tedious tasks. These automated systems can detect intent, collect relevant data, route agents based on customer type, and route conversations accordingly. Intelligent chatbots can also deliver contextual and personalized information, which feels natural and seamlessly transfer to agents when required.
These tools and technologies have allowed brands to see significant improvement in their customer service agents’ productivity. According to a Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI), agents are more efficient when they have a single view of their customers and can use AI-driven workflows based on actual customer data to boost efficiency up to 30%. Additionally, AI can detect intent, determine next steps, collect information, trigger relevant workflows and reduce overhead. Organizations also reduced manual triage costs and increased agent productivity up to 50% by using AI. With the right technology, agents can build lasting relationships with their customers and solve unexpected problems quickly.
The pandemic served as a reminder call for modern customer experience, revealing flaws and problems within the existing system. The unpredictable nature of customer service has been further strained by unpredictability. The best way to build dynamic and flexible customer service organizations in today’s world is to invest now in customer service strategies that are more flexible. The more flexibility your customer service operations can exercise, the more adaptable your agents and your business will be, even in the face of the most unpredicted circumstances.
