Digital Transformation for Customer Service

How are customer service agents affected by evolving customer expectations?

In a world of continuous innovation, fast-evolving technology, and minimal switching costs, customers are expecting increasingly better service from the companies with which they do business. The COVID-19 pandemic has only expedited this development in customer expectations, placing greater pressure on customer service teams to deliver.

Customer service agents are affected by evolving customer expectations in several ways, primarily including:

Receiving a higher volume of cases

In 2020, 52% of service organizations saw an increase in the case volume received by their customer service teams. Agent workloads have increased while resources such as the budget and the number of available agents has remained stagnant. As a result, managing case volume has become more challenging for 73% of customer service agents.

Having to respond to more complex questions and problems

As customers’ expectations have evolved, so has the complexity of their questions - according to 73% of service professionals, customers have more complex queries and issues. For instance, customers’ renewed focus on brand’s values, with 63% of customers wanting to buy from socially responsible companies may prompt complex queries about the company’s environmental sustainability measures and labor practices.

Being required to provide personalized service

People want to be understood – and personalized customer service aims to understand people to provide tailored service.

According to Salesforce, 66% of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs but feel that they are treated as ‘numbers.’ Businesses can meet these expectations and make customers feel valued by delivering personalized services, tailored to customers’ specific needs. Customers are also more likely to purchase from companies that show they understand them , making personalization in customer service crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction and retention.

Dealing with customers that are harder to satisfy

Customers value their convenience - Salesforce, 57% of customers agree that Covid-19 has increased their standards for customer service - the consequence being that 65% of customer service agents feel that customers have become harder to satisfy since 2020.

The greater pressure on customer service agents to provide accurate, timely, and personalized support to customers that are less than easy to please, can:

●????Cause burnout among customer service providers

Customer service focuses on helping people solve problems, which can entail dealing with angry and frustrated people. Dealing politely with a high volume of complaints with unhappy customers day in and day out can increase stress causing agents to experience emotional burnout.

●????Make it difficult for companies to retain customer service staff

Customer service agents who experience exhaustion or burnout in their line of work may opt for different careers or quit their jobs due to the workload making quality staff retention a difficult task. According to Harvard Business Review, the average call center turnover rate may be as high as 45% , which is approximately twice as high as that in other departments.?

How AI/ML and Automation empower customer service agents

With the pressure on service agents mounting, automating crucial customer service functions through chatbots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can help support teams meet customer expectations.

Automation can take over repetitive tasks performed by human agents, while also allowing for collection of important data. As a result, AI/ML and automation empower customer service staff in numerous ways, including:

Providing insights into customer sentiments

Artificial intelligence-powered customer service technology by definition ensures that all customer interaction data is stored digitally. This enables “real time” analysis of these large data sets to extract information about customer sentiments, requirements, interests, and expectations from the company. The trends from these data sets can then be used to provide more well-informed, personalized, helpful service.

Reducing repetitive tasks

Many customer queries can be resolved simply by providing standard information or assisting with simple tasks that automated chatbots can perform with ease. In fact, 69% of customers expressed willingness to interact with a chatbot to resolve simple issues. Automated chatbots can address frequently asked questions (FAQs) such as checking account balance and booking an appointment.

Handing over repetitive tasks to chatbots can, therefore, decrease the workload for customer service agents, reduce the chances for exhaustion through tedious tasks, and free them up to focus on complex tasks that require their human and personal expertise.

Categorizing and redirecting customer queries

Companies may receive complaints or requests that pertain to different departments or personnel - which must be routed to the relevant party. Chatbots and AI/ML email tagging can scan emails and messages, tag them, and redirect them to the concerned department or person.

This would save time and reduce workload for customer service agents who would otherwise have to sift through the queries and send them to relevant parties themselves. As a result, it frees them up to work on more nuanced tasks that require human intervention.

Reducing friction in the customer journey

Chatbots allow seamless transfers between the bots and human customer service agents, with the agents receiving all relevant information about the customer interaction from the bot. This allows the agent to provide quick and accurate assistance to the customer without having to spend time to ask probing questions and collect information.

This smooth handoff and quick resolution of complaints reduces friction in the customer journey, which in turn, reduces the stress caused to the agent from a potential vexed client.

Examples: How digital transformation is empowering customer service agents

1.?Omnichannel chatbots

Omnichannel chatbots are AI/ML-enabled chatbots that provide customers with consistent support across multiple channels. Whether your clients prefer to visit the company website to address their queries, look through the company’s Instagram page, or connect with the company on WhatsApp, omnichannel chatbots provide convenient and consistent support.

According to a report by Aberdeen Group, sustained omnichannel customer engagement helps to retain 89% of customers, making it an essential consideration in customer service design.

Omnichannel chatbots reach the company’s consumer base across different channels and centralize the data gathered through customer interactions. This centralized data allows customer service agents to provide consistent service throughout all channels. It also allows predictive analysis, through which customer service staff can make more informed and strategic decisions about their customer service approach.

2.?Process automation in contact centers

Contact centers provide customer service across different communication channels such as telephone, mobile app, social media, email, and text. This means customer service agents face incoming queries and support requests from various channels.

Thus, a contact center operated solely by human agents will require a large workforce to meet high order demands. And if you’re short on human resource, providing customers with inefficient support hurts their experience and can lead to churn. This can also increase the burden on your existing customer support team.

Process automation, however, can reduce human agent interaction time by 40% by 2027, alleviating the burden on customer service agents while providing quicker service.?Process automation through chatbots and AI/ML-enabled technology can help identify the reason a customer might be calling based on his demographics and previous data gathered by automated chatbots, and transfer the call to a specialized agent.

Robotic process automation also helps agents by collecting consumer data that can be used to understand customer needs and provide personalized service with little hassle.???Therefore, process automation in contact centers allows for more efficient and accurate customer service.