Ultimate Customer Service Trends 2023 (Part One)
It’s almost cliché at this point to say the COVID-19 pandemic brought about many business challenges and forced businesses to change how they interact with customers. To further complicate matters, many companies are foreseeing a global recession in 2023. How can businesses adapt to the current recession as customers are forced to make hard decisions on where to spend their money? Looking ahead here are some trends that will keep your customer experience team engaged with your customers for the best ROI.
A trend that is most likely to become increasingly important to customer experience executives is customer retention.
Customer Retention
The number one change most business leaders will implement in 2023 is customer retention. One would ask, why is customer retention so important? Repeat business is crucial to every business’s success. The cost of acquiring new customers is anywhere from 5 to 25 times more than the cost of keeping an existing customer. Loyal customers are free advertisements for businesses; they can easily generate leads using word of mouth. Once they are happy with your business, they are open to upgrades, cross-selling, and upselling.
Action Steps
Fixing the leaking bucket (Customer Churn)
To be able to effectively retain customers it’s important to know where and how you are losing them. A process we call fixing the leaking bucket. The number one culprit is negative customer experience, much like fetching water with a leaking bucket. Unfortunately, most companies fall victim to this leaking bucket syndrome. They spend company resources to acquire new customers and fill their leads funnel while viable customers churn. The solution is to move beyond temporary band-aid solutions to completely fix the leaking bucket. A positive customer experience creates loyal customers.
Constant Communication
Keeping in touch with customers regularly with relevant information keeps customers engaged with your brand (P.S. No Spam!). Send personalized messages based on actions performed by a customer and as much as possible avoid spamming them with marketing emails, this will likely cause them to unsubscribe from your email list and even churn in a worst-case scenario. Constant communication is also a great way to get feedback from customers. With regular check-ins through interviews and surveys after each support interaction, companies will be able to listen to what customers are saying, their desires and pain points, and offer them exceptional customer experience.
Cut Cost but only Behind the Scenes
Businesses can cut down customer service expenses by implementing cost-saving measures such as offering remote customer service. Opting for a remote customer service business can cut down overhead costs such as office space rental, utility bills, etc. Choosing remote customer service also offers businesses the added advantage of offering 24/7 customer support to their customers. This will in turn produce more happy customers and better customer satisfaction. Building a robust knowledge management system will also help businesses cut down costs without compromising excellent customer service. Finally having communities or forums can also help cut down costs, as community members can easily help each other, freeing up your customer support agents to answer more complex queries.
Also read: How to deliver great customer service
Make Customer Service Departments Value Centers instead of Cost Centers
In most companies, customer services departments are viewed as cost-centers, non-profitable parts of the business, dealing with customer inquiries and complaints. If businesses are to get more profitable in 2023 and the years ahead, customer experience leaders have to start viewing customer service departments as value centers. With cutting-edge technology customer service departments can be turned into revenue-generating centers for a business.
Action Steps
Shift Customer Service Departments into Being Proactive, not Reactive
Many businesses are using knowledge base centers. Most customers prefer to self-serve in recent times. Having a knowledge center that is well structured and easily searchable enables customers to easily self-serve, also it can be used to reduce customer support training time. Customer support agents can also share public-facing documentation with customers, by so doing reducing the number of customers who reach out to the contact center over time. In addition, being a proactive customer agent helps build lasting relationships with clients which translates into revenue for the business. Automated tools can also be used to predict customer behavior and suggest products to customers based on their past preferences.
Bridge the Gap Between Sales and Support
Contact center agents can be used as an extension of the customer success and sales team. Every time a customer reaches out to the contact center this is a golden opportunity to generate new business. Training agents to recommend products and services (cross-selling and upselling) can boost agent productivity and generate revenue. For example, a customer who calls for support for an old model of a product will be open to the idea of an upgrade if offered a discount or other benefits like an extended warranty. Also leveraging the information they get from customers, like informing the success team about customers whose subscriptions are almost over for promos and marketing campaigns.
Training, Upskilling of Agents, and Use of Technology
Training and upskilling customer service agents helps them deliver effortless support increasing customer satisfaction. Well-trained agents can build lasting relationships with customers using empathy and great communication skills. When people experience exceptional customer service they always remember and share the experience with others. They are also more likely to spend their money on your products or service in the future. Training customer service agents will also bridge the talent gap enabling your team to work more efficiently.
Secondly, using automation to take care of repetitive tasks, helps free up your agents for more complex issues. For example, using chatbots for tasks such as refunds and cancelation. Integrating your system with omnichannel software technology to keep all interactions in one place can help with data mining and analysis for future projections.
Offering Asynchronous Support
Gone are the days when people want to be put on hold for several minutes to be connected to an agent. Now customers want the convenience of reaching and receiving support on their own schedule. For busy customers, this helps them get support in their spare time instead of wasting precious hours on phone with agents during their busy schedules. Offering asynchronous support is also cost-effective for companies as this allows them to handle more customer inquiries within an allotted time without having to hire more agents. With channels such as the good old email ticketing systems, tickets can be routed to appropriate agents for faster resolution. Async support also allows agents to be more efficient, responding to queries at their own pace, thus taking the pressure of responding in real-time off their shoulders resulting in a better customer experience.
Action Steps
Adapt your Metrics
To effectively maximize customer lifetime it is crucial to measure and analyze customer service metrics and adapt to changing demands of customers as well as identify areas for improvement. With the rise of async communication, the probability of agents handling multiple interactions from different channels simultaneously is inevitable, hence only measuring metrics such as Average Handle Time (AHT) wouldn’t give customer experience leaders a deeper perspective into the customer journey. It is therefore essential for businesses to adapt to metrics such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) and resolution rate to identify patterns and trends. Tracking and analyzing metrics like resolution rate can help businesses understand the percentage of customer requirements that are within a given timeframe and which ones take longer to resolve. It can also help identify the role customers play during resolution time. Do customers provide the necessary information to agents to enable them to assist them more effectively, if not how can agents be more proactive with the questions they ask customers for better-personalized customer service, customer feedback, and resolution time?
Scale to Handle Higher Volume
As we all know the inevitable constant in life is change. In 2023 one of the difficult decisions customer experience leaders have to make is how to scale to handle higher volume requests without overwhelming their agents. One of the best ways businesses can achieve this is by leveraging technology to automate certain tasks. By automating some tasks, businesses can open up new channels such as chatbots, social media messaging, etc., and integrate them with a one-click CRM that can be managed in one place where both human and virtual agents can interact with and view full support history without compromising service quality. Also offering new support channels and hiring qualified agents to handle those channels can help a business handle higher volumes of queries especially when new products are added to a service. Another important thing when scaling to handle higher volume is to document a company’s most critical processes. This way new team members can easily learn the internal processes and offer the same service as old agents. Lastly, it’s important to review what a company knows about its existing customers and its potential customer when scaling customer support. Companies have to know what is most important to these customers and what is less important to them, to be able to provide a service that creates a positive customer experience.
Also read: 4 ways of scaling customer support with automation
Open Async Channels Slowly
It is always exciting to add new channels to support customers, however, if not done well this can be overwhelming for both agents and customers alike. To ensure a seamless process for both parties it is important to open async channels slowly. Take some time to gradually shift customers from the traditional (synchronous) channels into async channels. Also, it is important to understand how these two channels differ to enable flawless implementation. Another important thing to consider when implementing Async channels is your customer base preference. Conducting surveys can help companies make informed decisions regarding usage and how to integrate async channels for the benefit of all.
Trust in AI-Powered Support
With confidence in AI rising, anxiety around AI-powered tools is becoming a thing of the past. Hence it is salient for businesses to embrace AI-powered support in their customer service operations in 2023. According to a survey conducted by Ultimate trends 92% of respondents said their trust in AI has improved over the last 12 months. This is due to the significant advances made in the AI field. Many customer service leaders are ready to embrace AI-powered automation for customer service. With the rise of conversational AI tools such as chatbots, companies can easily offer customer service that feels as natural as human interactions. An easy way to scale support and offer a customer experience that makes people’s life easier and better. Nate Brown couldn’t have put it any better in the tweet above.
Also read: Zendesk AI chat bot
Action Steps
Train your Customers to go Digital
Customers today care more about their convenience, hence businesses have to adapt and provide AI-powered digital experiences that are easier, faster, and more convenient. People do not fancy being in a queue waiting for an agent when they can do it themselves, hence it is important to cater to the lifestyle of your customers accordingly. Once customers are trained to go digital, AI tools can be used to answer frequently asked questions, rather than having agents respond to every need, thereby speeding up response time for improved customer satisfaction.
Leverage AI to Analyze Your Support
The massive amount of data produced globally each second means leveraging AI tools can enable customer experience leaders to anticipate trends, key events of interest, and the sentiments of customers. A trend that will gain significant momentum in the 2023 recession is the use of Big Data and Analytics. By using AI to analyze historical support conversations, CX leaders can make informed decisions about pain points in product usage and mitigate likely threats that will affect customer experience negatively. With the use of AI, companies can now measure customer wait time in queues since long wait times can impact revenue negatively. With everything in the span of a finger now, most new-generation customers are very impatient and will take their business elsewhere if they have to be in queues for long. With AI, poor service can be easily tracked to perfect customer service.
Build Resilience into Your Customer Support Operations
No one knows what the future holds especially when it comes to customer interactions. An agent may have the nicest customer in one moment and the next moment an angry and uncompromising customer. The ability to build resilience in your support operations can go a long way in impacting customer service for your brand positively in the long term. For example, an agent has a bad interaction and falls out for a few minutes to recover, with the use of AI-powered automation, customers can still be serviced while the agent recovers without any downtime for your business. According to an article by Shep Hyken, it takes an agent an average of 40 mins to recover from a bad interaction, this is bad for business and the next customer in the queue. With AI-powered tools, human emotions like sadness or feeling down from contentious interactions are eliminated, hence the next customer can be serviced with less difficulty. Finally, with better implementation of AI-powered tools, there’s nothing like an agent who has had a bad day which will affect the experience of other customers. Ultimately building resilience into your customer support operations enhances customer engagement and customer loyalty to your brand.
Conclusion
In conclusion, although the 2023 recession may pose many business challenges, implementing intentional strategies from these trends that will make customers' life easier and better will go a long way in building loyal customers for your business. Using AI-powered tools to listen to customers about their experiences will help you better understand your customers for long-term growth and success. Apply these trends that will help you create strategies to maintain existing customers and win new customers.
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