Service greatly affects how likely a consumer is to be a repeat customer. This has been apparent even before digital technology took over our lives. In the modern world, businesses lose an estimated $75 billion a year from poor customer service. Not only that, but studies have shown that when customers receive great service, they feel more valued and are more loyal towards that brand.
Naturally, it makes sense that a lot of B2C companies are focusing efforts on improving customer service, making use of technology to do so. New advances in technology help make the experience better for consumers, as well as help to create efficiency for businesses. In this article, you’ll learn more about the ways modern businesses are using technology to improve their customer service.
Streamlining Support
Efficiency is one of the biggest factors that influence a customer’s opinion on the level of support they receive. When a customer contacts support, they want their problem to be dealt with quickly and for a helpful resolution to be reached. This is achieved through businesses having an efficient process for receiving and dealing with support tickets.
For example, a ticketing system can be used by companies to receive and deal with issues from customers. When a customer has an issue, they can contact support and receive a response from an automated system.
While customers may want to contact a human representative directly, this is difficult to achieve without having a large number of agents available at all times. The support ticketing system helps to organise, prioritise, and consolidate all issues instantly as they arrive. This ensures that tickets are sent to agents who can best deal with them. In addition, customers can be given automated responses to certain questions or directed to helpful links and resources.
AI tools can help to optimise this process further, delivering personalised responses to customers to show them that they’re valued. It can also be used to give accurate information about response times, ensuring that customers know how long they need to wait.
Customer Understanding and Empathy
It’s important that businesses are able to understand their customers and see things from their perspective. This is known as customer empathy, and it goes beyond simply recognising the kind of products they like to buy. Many businesses struggle to achieve empathy with their customers, but it’s key to building a strong sense of brand loyalty and delivering the highest levels of customer support.
Some companies have found a way to use technology to develop empathy with their customers, digging deep into their needs and understanding their emotions and pain points. Although relying on technology can sever human connections and make empathy harder, it can be a powerful tool when wielded correctly.
A good example of this is using AI tools to help develop a voice of the customer (VoC). This is done by acquiring feedback through surveys and other means. This feedback should include information on experiences, expectations, needs, preferences and issues. AI can be used to analyse the data collected in order to create a clear picture of how customers think and feel about the brand and their experience.
Aside from the VoC, technology can help businesses create customer personas and develop customer journey maps. These are key to understanding individual consumers and adapting the business to their needs. Using technology like AI and data analytics makes the process faster and more accurate while also helping to reveal insights that might otherwise have been lost.
About Post Author
