Every year, we see many "trends" posts in various industries, and customer service trends are taking their place, too. Did they change or stay the same, depending on which tactics you applied previously? Let's find out what new or old trends the upcoming year has in customer service.
Markets are always described as "competitive and focusing on customer experience," but what's true is that we are paying more attention to CX now. The last year has proven that:
- Some businesses are still trying to understand how crucial customer service is to the overall brand or company
- Customer service keeps becoming another sales tool
- Omnichannel customer service is a must-have
- eCommerce and customer service become a match made in digital heaven
TL;DR
- While markets often tout themselves as "competitive and customer-focused," the reality is that there's now a heightened emphasis on Customer Experience (CX).
- Given consumers' growing demand, having an effective customer service strategy is paramount.
- Let's delve into the top CX trends for this year and beyond.
- Personalizing customer service is gaining traction as a vital component of CX. This includes tailored interactions, personalized mobile experiences, and image recognition technology.
- Agent Experience is emerging as a crucial aspect of customer service strategy. Providing support teams with robust help desk platforms and resources ensures they remain productive and empowered.
- Digital transformation in customer service is accelerating, driven by the need for increased productivity and efficiency. Automation streamlines processes, enabling organizations to handle routine tasks effectively.
- Once considered a luxury, omnichannel support is now indispensable. With the digital landscape evolving rapidly, companies must ensure seamless support across various channels to meet customer expectations.
- AI-driven self-service options, including chatbots and intelligent IVRs, are gaining prominence. These tools enhance customer satisfaction by providing quick and relevant assistance.
- Cloud technologies enable proactive customer support, allowing organizations to anticipate and address customer needs before they arise.
- The rise of hybrid work models necessitates flexible and collaborative workspaces supported by robust help desk software.
- Data privacy and security are paramount in fostering trust and maintaining customer loyalty. Implementing stringent security measures is essential to safeguard sensitive information.
- While some trends may come and go, evaluating their impact on processes, customer experience, and overall business outcomes is crucial. By staying attuned to evolving customer service trends and addressing existing challenges, businesses can drive growth and enhance customer satisfaction.
Since more brands intend to meet growing customer demands, the appropriate customer service strategy is necessary for success. What changes are predicted to happen? Let's review the top eight biggest CX trends of 2024 and beyond.
Personalization Turns into a Requirement
Many businesses see the personalization of customer service as a driving force for outstanding CX. Those trends aren't new but are increasingly important. Don't want to miss a personalized customer service boat? Then you are highly advised to consider implementing
- a one-to-one experience by building personalized connections with customers
- personalized mobile experiences. These days, brands are going from web to mobile personalization, especially those who work in eCommerce
- image recognition technology for personalized suggestions. Yet, it's another trend for eCommerce
- AI and machine learning are used for product recommendation
- data privacy and cookie personalization. The roller coaster of data privacy keeps on rolling out, so be ready to meet customer desire to take over control of their information.
Support Agent Experience or Experienced Support Agent?
Agent experience (AX) is a missing puzzle in customer service strategy. These days, it is among the most popular customer service trends, too. Help desk platforms provide self-service portals and internal wikis, too. That's a kind of go-to resource for your support team if they need to check or refresh their knowledge. Since the workplace is becoming hybrid and distributed, your support reps rely more on a help desk system that allows staying productive and empowered.
How to ensure your support agents get an advantage from the help desk platform? Easily – just choose the system that meets your business requirements and is easy to use. Be sure during the selection to put your service team's needs and quality of experience first. Besides, double-check a) integration capabilities to automate as many tasks as possible and b) security measures and vendor compliance to your industry standards.
The employee experience (EX) can also be part of the total experience (TX) strategy. Incorporating TX into your organization's customer service policies will add to a 360-degree experience. Empowered and motivated support reps are even more satisfied with their work and perform better. If you are bothered by migrating your data, we are here to take the heavy lifting—all you need to do is choose your ideal help desk system.
Automate as Many Processes as You Can
The digital transformation of customer service has become one of the most valuable and challenging trends in customer service. The COVID-19 pandemic provoked and accelerated the implementation of new approaches and solutions, all to increase productivity and efficiency. Thanks to automation, organizations find it easier to streamline and deal with routine, repetitive tasks with reduced human input.
Help desk systems send automated triggers and notify your support reps about a customer problem or a bottleneck in, let's say, the payment process. So your agent jumps in a chat and helps to fix everything quickly. Proactive customer support in action, right?
The McKinsey survey states that organizations have accelerated the digital transformation of their client interactions by 3-4 years. To succeed with this investment, you should understand what your customers are looking for and how you can satisfy their needs. Yes, automation facilitates many operational processes, but it also takes more responsibility on the security side. Integration with numerous apps is common for SMBs or SMEs. Be sure to take all necessary measures to improve the customer service experience of your agents and customers.
Omnichannel Support Rocks
Of course, omnichannel support was a widely used "nice-to-have" feature for many years. Now, it has become a must-have in customer service. Forrester research claims that 80% of customers will regard the world as "all-digital" in 2024. This means that almost everything in our lives revolves around digital technologies. People work online, shop online, and socialize using social media. Thus, companies that overlook omnichannel support will be less satisfied or even lose some of their customers.
On the other hand, digital exclusion is a significant problem in many countries. For example, Lloyds Bank research demonstrates that almost 9 million people in the UK have no internet access. These individuals also lack the necessary digital skills to get help online. The efficient omnichannel customer service allows for serving and supporting individuals of different ages, backgrounds, or abilities.
Is AI Still a Customer Self-Service Trend?
Implementing a self-help option is two-in-one: customer requirements and the enhancement of workload on your support agents. Customers (expectedly) have various conditions. No doubts here, right? Let's see:
- some prefer the good old FAQs section
- others take value from knowledge-base articles
- some customers like to get and share their experience in a community
- others like quick guidance from chatbots
So chatbots, along with intelligent IVRs backed with natural language processing (NLP), can fix customer-related issues faster. Should you apply AI-based tools in your customer service? Fall for "to apply." Even simple chatbots save time and effort. They use keyword searches to find necessary articles or other resources, which helps get a suitable answer.
Ultimately, artificial intelligence continues to drive innovations in support services and preserve its spot in a customer service trend list.
Let Proactive Customer Support Be with You.
The adoption of cloud technologies and integration in help desk systems give a less bumpy way to anticipate customer needs. Yep, digital-first experiences continue to improve and keep a big focus for 2024.
Do your customer support team a favor and free them from the burden of reactive support. Fall for a proactive approach. This way, you acquire a better understanding of who your customers are and what causes (or could bring) friction in their journey and be quick in preventing or addressing the friction. And you'll get an improved experience (for clients and support reps, too) and happy customers.
Here are a few samples to convince you of the benefits of adopting proactive customer support:
- Customers can Google their questions or issues and find your customer content. And they find the answer because you have optimized your guides or help section to be easily found.
- Setup triggers and makes your chatbot proactively ask your customers if they need assistance after purchase or while using your service.
- Don't make your customers submit a ticket and wait for a response. Be proactive and offer a chat, call or email support any time.
- Automate outbound massaging if your supply chain experiences disruptions or tech issues that require more time to fix. Be proactive; don't wait for customers to blame poor service.
Building a Hybrid Workspace
The increasing popularity of hybrid schedules takes a reasonable place in delivering a great support agent experience. These days, we get used to working from anywhere and literally speaking nowhere (if there's an internet connection). Here is where help desk software helps you create a flexible and collaborative workspace.
High productivity rates come at a human cost—people get overworked and exhausted and lose their sense of work-life balance. Many business owners promote a hybrid schedule and offer a different perspective on cross-team collaboration and engagement. As a result, they have access to a bigger talent pool of remote candidates who have already learned how to strike a balance through a remote or hybrid workplace.
Security: Go Further Than a Mere Checkbox
Transparency of your business processes can increase or decrease customer retention, as can an unhelpful support rep, late response, or delayed order. Data privacy and security play a crucial role in developing customer-company relationships.
However, hackers' attacks and other cyber threats remain important, too. Be sure to deliver the industry-required SaaS security to minimize access points and take control of the information. Consider setting two-factor authorization, additional data encryption, and enlarging your portfolio of security compliance.
Empowering Chatbots: Enhancing Customer Experiences
We've encountered frustrating moments with chatbots before, but the landscape is evolving. Some businesses, having invested in earlier versions of this technology and perhaps shifted human resources, have been a bit slow to address these issues. Generative AI-driven chatbots, however, present a promising solution. They excel in swiftly and accurately responding to customer inquiries tailored to their specific needs. It's our optimistic anticipation that by 2024, we'll bid farewell to the era of limited, awkward, and inaccurate customer service chatbots!
What Customer Service Trends Should You Follow?
Let's be honest: some trends have relevance, and some look like a come-and-go thing. Often, the so-called "best practices" get labeled as trends. Unfortunately, those kinds of customer service trends tend to perform on and off—depending on your industry, audience, customer lifetime, or some other specific aspect of your business.
Does it mean you should adopt none of those trends? Nope. It would be best to analyze the effect it will have on your processes, customer experience, and bottom line. For example, omnichannel customer support makes sense because these days, people spend more time online and can request help via any social media. An educational example of British Airlines proves that.
Each year, month, week, or day comes with growth opportunities, but despite choosing a customer service trend to adopt this year, analyze what weak spots your support service has and how you can improve it.
