It’s Time to Celebrate Customer Service Week

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Happy Customer Service Week! Today starts the annual week-long international celebration of the importance of customer service and the role it plays in successful business practice. This week we recognise all the hard work customer service professionals do to serve and support customers on a daily basis. Every good customer service professional knows that if you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will – and that someone else is going to be your competitor.

Delivering excellent customer service and support is a team effort, from employees that interact with customers face-to-face to live agents working in the contact centre to those responsible for developing and maintaining self-service solutions. Customer service is a key aspect of a company’s overall customer experience, and one that often determines if customers stay or if they leave for a competitor. Customer Service Week is the perfect time to revisit some of the customer service tips, trends and statistics shared over the past twelve months with a blog post roundup:

• The Contact Centre in its Current Form is Finished – Seamless, personalised smart assistants will increasingly automate everything the current contact centre offers, but this change won’t happen overnight. Organisations need to get on-board with this transition in order to give customers the effortless interactions they demand.
• Virtual Agents and Human Agents Join Forces for Customer Service in 2016 – Forrester reported that in 2015, web and mobile self-service interactions exceeded those over live-assist channels. Conversations with live agents were more frequently initiated as escalations when self-service options proved unsuccessful. With a combination of virtual and human agents, organisations can create a seamless, personalised and convenient customer service experience.
• 5 Questions to Ask About Digital Customer Service Improvement Plans – Digital tools allow us to serve customers better than ever before, but you need to ensure you choose the right solution and engage the right experts to help deliver on its promise. Asking the right questions before implementing a new digital customer service improvement plan will help you gain a clearer sense of how you can take better care of your customers.
• It’s Time to Embrace Digital Channels and Build Smart Help – Traditionally companies have invested millions in their contact centres in order to build their customer support capabilities. As customers have moved to digital channels, this approach is no longer enabling them to meet customers’ expectations. Organisations need to embrace the digital channels and build smart help online.
• Customer Service for the Millennium – There’s lots of buzz about the customer service expectations of Millennials. With this generation outnumbering Baby Boomers by nearly 8 million people, companies need to pay attention to these expectations in order to drive sales and increase loyalty.
• Messaging Apps: Over 3 Billion Users and Counting – With over 3 billion users around the world, messaging apps are quickly growing in popularly and provide a great new opportunity for brands to engage with their customers. Chatbots and virtual agents are perfect tools for offering self-service through both messaging apps and SMS, and can help organisations provide seamless, omnichannel support when implemented correctly.