With the right customer service trends to follow, you can generate significant value for your business. You can acquire new learning methods, new processes, and new tools by keeping up with data-driven trends.
A report by Microsoft says that 67% of American citizens believe customer service as an industry is improving. It entails that this area of business is an ever-evolving industry, and it can be hard to stay ahead if you don’t keep up with the trends.
That’s why, in this article, we’ve collected the game-changing trends you can use to elevate your customer service strategy.
The state of customer service
The pandemic has undeniably transformed the fundamental ways we do business, and organizations were forced to figure out new ways to deliver customer service.
With these changes, the digital space has become a potent tool for engaging with customers. Organizations have heavily relied on the Internet to connect with customers, promote their business, and increase revenue.
Now that we’re slowly shifting out of the pandemic, organizations have begun to refine a blended customer service strategy.
New trends have risen to define the game for various industries this 2022. We’ll take a look at these customer service trends in the next section.
Customer service trends changing the game for businesses
Let’s take a look at these game-changing customer service trends for 2022 and discover the changes you may want to adopt in your company.
Centralized customer service hubs
Centralized hubs are used by businesses that want to provide a go-to platform for their users’ questions and complaints. This is going to be more relevant and beneficial this 2022.
These hubs use customer service software that allows agents to see and organize their tasks in one space. This is even more important especially now that customers demand a venue with multichannel support.
With integrated channels and a centralized customer service hub, responding to customers’ requests can be a seamless and hassle-free process. Implementing this centralization of channels will make things easier for your customer service team to improve their productivity.
More self-service options
All customers want fast replies–if this is not possible, some customers take a path with less hassle to solve their problems on their own. That’s why it’s important that you can provide them with the necessary resources to empower them to resolve issues on their own.
More self-service options are here to make the customer service field better this 2022. To incorporate this trend, businesses should prioritize creating resources that can help their customers be more independent. A common example of this is a dedicated FAQ page on your website.
It’s a win-win situation for your team and for your clients. Agents would have a lower volume of requests to respond to, while users can do it as quickly as possible on their part.
More data-driven scores
Sales and marketing teams have put extra emphasis on data-driven processes that can also be utilized by customer service teams.
With more innovative customer service software, businesses can acquire more comprehensive data. This includes customer service teams’ response rate, average holding time, or the number of tickets.
With these KPIs at hand, they can be more efficient and produce better customer service response results.
More personalization through artificial intelligence
Through an artificial intelligence-based software system, customer service teams can personalize their interaction and overall service with customers. This is the main role of AI this year: personalization.
Even though a lot of self-service tools have been automated, such as chatbots, voice search, and live interactions, customers still expect every interaction with brands to be humanized and personalized.
Companies should keep in mind that a personalized, customer-centric approach to customer service goes hand in hand with automation as well.
This rings loud and true in a recent SmarterHQ survey revealing that 72% of people only respond to personalized messaging. This is exactly why businesses should personalize—to make things more human for customers.
Changes in the customer service landscape
This year calls for more focus on building real and meaningful relationships with customers. Find the right tools, software, and customer service teams that can ensure these connections with your customers.
The abovementioned trends should serve as a guide for how you can follow through and apply improvements to your processes. These customer service trends will give you a wider variety of things to work on, so you can generate new ideas and strategies.
It’s true, businesses have an extreme reliance on trends because they work and produce results. So, serve your customers better with these trends while meeting the demands of the market all year long.