6 Customer Service Trends You Cannot Ignore In 2020
In the following article we are going to talk about an important topic that is “6 Customer Service Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2020” and will discuss about it in details within the articles:Last year was full of grand ideas, innovations and surprises in the customer support field. And the biggest humbling realization was that price and product are no longer the only competitive differentiators that make customers stay loyal.But this year, the biggest differentiator is customer experience.Knowing the latest customer service trends is a good first step to understanding how to improve the overall experience that people have with your business this year and beyond.
1. Social Media Shopping Is Actually More Important than Ever
One important aspect of delivering an excellent customer experience is meeting customers where they’re and when they want it.
This means that you simply should step outside your online store and explore other popular channels where your customers are hanging out. “Other popular online places… like social media?” Exactly!
Customers or clients are already shopping on social media, as businesses can actually integrate their accounts with e-commerce platforms nowadays.
This makes it a whole lot easier to keep the method seamless and simple for the customer. Need proof that the investment into making social media a place to shop is certainly paying off?
More than 72% of Instagram users say they’ve bought a product they found on the Instagram app.
It comes as no surprise that this year, social media shopping is continuing to actually gain traction, as more people are getting used to the concept that e-commerce stores aren’t the only places to buy what they’re searching for.
In fact, the 2 biggest reasons as to why we actually follow retailers on social media is to learn about upcoming sales as well as new products, according to Surviving the Retail Apocalypse survey.
Furthermore, Brands are using social media to sell primarily with paid advertising as well as shoppable posts.
First, let’s talk about paid advertising. In the image below, an advertisement on the right appears in social media users’ news feeds, inviting them to the merchandise or product page or a Shopify store.
That’s convenient, don’t you think? Also, paid ads on social media are most frequently based on the user’s browsing history, numerous people perceive them as relevant.
The recipe here is pretty easy:
- Take a great-looking photo of a product
- Tag it in an Instagram post
- Use features such as Shoppable posts that actually allow you to tag products directly in posts as well as connect them to their pages on e-commerce stores
Connect the merchandise or product page to the post to redirect customers to your store. Here’s a typical customer journey to actually discover a product on Instagram with a shoppable post. Such a post has the “View Products” notification in the bottom left corner (see the primary image on the left, below), which a user can click to see the merchandise or product. After viewing, they will then click on the “View on Website” button.
If you are not producing shoppable posts on Instagram, you may be missing out on an enormous opportunity to increase website traffic and sales. Moreover, many businesses find quite a drastic difference between their actual sales performance before and after implementing shoppable posts. And we’ve actually got proof for that.
2. The Functionality of Customer Service Chatbots Is Expanding by a lot
Chatbot-powered customer service is here to stay, and this year we’ll witness its evolution and expansion.
Last year, chatbots were the popular communication channel when making online purchases for 43% of U.S. online shoppers. This actually applies to both e-commerce sites as well as social media business pages.
Yes, chatbots quickly went from an optional service tool to a must have or necessity in customer support. The ability of chatbots to truly provide real-time support makes them really desirable, but it’s not the sole or only thing businesses use to spice up customer experience within the context of customer support.
The functionality of chatbots is expanding. Moreover, at the time of this writing, it actually captures these customer service use cases:
- Assistance with navigating a web site, e.g., finding a landing page
- Help with simple and easy to understand service-related questions (submitting requests, order tracking, etc.)
- Providing 24/7 assistance regardless of geolocation
- Collecting customer input to actually redirect them to an appropriate and good human support agent
- Making reservations
- Providing customers with ideas for inspiration
- Offering discounts and collecting visitor emails
- Subscribing to a newsletter
For example, here’s how a chatbot at a simple click on Shop collects a visitor’s email address by offering them a good discount, which helps increase visitor engagement and encourages them to explore products.
Even if the visitor ignores the offer, they’ll get the discount later, because the chatbot is actually available 24/7. The integration of chatbots with Messenger also makes them perfect for those who wish to message brands through Facebook.
Furthermore, as chatbots get more functional, more customers will actually prefer them as a tool to contact a business. Some of the expected development avenues for chatbots within the next few years are:
- With assistants like Siri and Alexa now widespread, more people will actually be more comfortable using chatbots for customer service. Voice-enabled chatbots like Amazon Echo and Google Home also are growing rapidly, as voice search slowly takes over display search.
- the power or ability of chatbots to actually grasp customer queries will increase due to natural language Processing (or to say NLP), a technology for recognizing as well as interpreting texts written in the natural language
- By tracking customer browsing behaviour on their websites, businesses will improve the ability of chatbots to provide more relevant and personalized offers.
That’s why more companies will actually consider hiring a chatbot for their customer or client service this year.
3. Taking Personalization to a New Level with Hyper-Personalization
Personalization is another critical component of customer experience.
Last year businesses have been integrating it with their business development strategies, and there will be an increase in demand for it across the customer lifecycle this year and beyond. Be it live chat, a chatbot, or email, e-commerce customers expect to be treated in a special way, so businesses will have to find ways to create a hyper-personalized environment.In fact, 63% of customers expect personalization as a standard. This applies to all touchpoints, and those failing to meet this expectation risk losing customers to competitors.
That’s why many brands are looking for ways to collect customer data in order to better understand where to start and how to personalize correctly.One common method is gathering feedback from customers with custom quizzes and surveys on websites. This can do with assessment software that allows marketers to personalize data collection forms to the needs of specific target audiences.
However, this year traditional personalization practices like addressing a customer by name in an email might not be enough.
4. Omnichannel Marketing for Better Customer Experience
The concept has grown in prominence in recent years, and we should see a lot of progress this year with the abundance of newly developed AI tools that can process tons of customer data and reveal insights for businesses. Starbucks is one such company making tremendous progress.
Example: How Starbucks Is Using Omnichannel Marketing
Starbucks uses real-time recommendations and other personalized marketing messages based on a customer’s transaction history to ensure a consistent brand experience. Here’s how they do it. Imagine that you’ve pulled into your local Starbucks drive-through for some coffee and a bite to eat. You’ve added your favorite coffee to the order, but…hmm…you’re not sure what else to buy….
Oh look, a pop-up message appears on the screen which invites you to take a look at a few nice food suggestions. You browse the options and there is the Turkey Pastrami Reuben sandwich you ate last week that you thought was great. “You had me at ‘Turkey’!” you think, and add it to your current order.
So how does Starbucks know what you might want?
They use machine learning to analyse the customer’s buying history and browsing recommendations – be it from a mobile app or website – and provide personalized suggestions.
5. Customer Experience-Driven Service
Customer experience-driven service means focusing on brand values, consistent customer experience, and marketing messaging when providing customer service. CX-driven service goes beyond typical brand values like honesty and ethics, because, well, every business should be based on that. We’re trying to find the values that make your brand, and therefore, customer support, stand out.
Here’s a simple explanation:
Your brand values should be evident in your customer service practice. Every customer who spends time with your customer support should be able to say something like this after looking at the list of your brand values:
“Oh yeah, they practice this. They didn’t just put it there because it sounds good.”Since customer service is a part of the larger customer experience, using the same brand principles and values to resolve support issues and answering questions is critical to shaping consistent brand perception.Customer experience has already become a critical factor for making buying decisions, but this year, CX is projected to overtake price and product as the main competitive differentiator.
In other words, people will be more willing to do business with you if you provide customer service that’s consistent with your brand values and ensures an overall positive experience.
6. Artificial Intelligence for Scaling Customer Service
The expansion of AI in customer service will continue this year.
According to Forrester Research, AI will take over repetitive support tasks and communicate with customers autonomously, allowing human operators to focus on interactions that require personalization and empathy. This, in turn, reduces costs for running a business, which makes the technology more attractive for businesses of all sizes.
And not only that, but AI technology is proving to be a great tool for decreasing your churn rates and, simultaneously, increasing your customers’ loyalty.
That makes sense. Machines do not have bad days, don’t complain, are always focused on the task at hand, and don’t even think of ignoring your customers when not in the mood. What could possibly be a better definition of a dream customer service representative?
Chatbots are the best example of AI-powered customer service software. This year, they’ll become more driven by machine learning, which will make them capable of handling ever more complex customer interactions.
They’ll become more effective at automating tasks, scaling customer service, and getting customer feedback. The most common customer support queries will now be taken by chatbots, which can also collect the feedback needed to connect a customer to an appropriate customer support agent.
As a result, AI-enabled tools like chatbots can help businesses scale their support team and increase their efficiency.
