Customer service has been a staple and fundamental part of the business world. In today’s highly competitive market, satisfying customers and fulfilling their demands has become more essential than ever was.

According to recent studies, 96% of consumers stated customer loyalty is totally dependent upon customer service offered by a company. 73% of customers stick to those brands that offer out-class customer service.

If you’re offering amazing customer experience then your existing customers will stick with you forever.

The important question is how businesses are coping-up with this ? Well, there are right tactics and strategies required for this or a professional workforce. However if businesses want to make this possible they need to adapt the right and latest technology.

Technology plays a significant role to provide required customer service with a touch of personalization that is preferred by customers.

Now here comes the billion dollar question,

“How will innovation in technology affect the future of customer service?”

Since technology is progressing, it has also transfigured the way customer experience in the business world works. This new generation are highly knowledgeable and well-informed customers who demand efficient and faster services.

Keeping aside all positive impacts of technology on this industry, we need to also converse about the challenges it brings on the surface. These challenges include, the cost required to implement new technologies, training your workforce , and most importantly fear of losing employment.

Well honestly, these are nothing more than misconceptions. When it comes to the price, implementing technologies like chatbots or CRM, is just a one-time investment that will facilitate you for the next 100 years.

And don’t worry, you will not lose your job. In fact implementing technology in customer service opens a thousand doors of employment opportunity for people who want to keep working in this industry.

Moreover, it will also make it much easier. We believe a lot is yet to come so let’s wait and see what the future holds for us.

5 Ways technology is going to affect and transform the customer service

1.   Omnichannel service

Brick-and-mortar stores aren’t only the places where customers interact with brands. They now prefer to use multiple digital mediums to interact with companies. For this purpose omni-channel experience is required.

Omnichannel support is quite distinctive from multi-channel support, with omni-channel you can sync together all your communication channels so your team can seamlessly communicate with your customers to provide better support.

For instance, if a customer contacts you through a social media platform with a problem, if you’re unable to solve it by any chance with omni-channel service you can easily transfer the case to another communication channel so they can get better assistance.

Omnichannel service reduces the friction from the customer service because customers don’t have to log-off from one interface and log on to another to communicate regarding one problem.

Starbucks, one of the most popular beverages brands has successfully implemented omnichannel service by using advanced technology. Along with instore interactions, they use websites and mobile apps to stay connected with their customers. They allow them to order, pay and track and get updates on new offers.

2.   Live Chat service

This staple element of customer service is currently used across the globe. Email messaging is now out of the picture. It doesn’t mean that email messaging is not used now but customers prefer to have live conversations.

Live messaging services are much easier, faster, convenient and secured. Live chat services are beneficial for any business in 2 primary ways.

You’ll be able to provide customer support 24×7 and you don’t need to hire extra customer representatives for this purpose.

You can choose customer messaging services like Slack, Facebook Messenger, Freshchat or WhatsApp chat for quick messaging.

Freshchat is one of the most popular customer messaging software commonly used by eCommerce marketers that let you connect your customers through any medium they find convenient to engage with you.

Freshchat with Twilio integration, a powerful live chat solution that allows your customers to easily connect and communicate with your customer representatives through text messages.

It allows your customer to contact you to seek help from you even when they’re offline. It offers inbound and outbound messaging support (SMS and MMS both).

You can send automated responses and configure multiple communications channels though it.

3.   Bots and AI are here to help not to replace

Bots and Artificial Intelligence, the future lords? Right?

Well, no!

Chatbots are the latest addition in the customer service industry. Backed by AI, they are designed to offer exceptional and personalized customer support.

Chatbots sound quite expensive right? Well they’re not. Bots are highly efficient and affordable. These bots are capable of talking and responding like us, humans. They don’t just act as per knowledge they’re provided with.

However, it doesn’t mean this new technology introduced in the customer service industry will replace humans. Not every customer prefers to talk with bots, usually there are numerous tasks which bots cannot execute and for them humans are needed.

For example, if a customer keeps on asking the same question and a customer support representative is fed with answering the same question again and again, then this task can be transferred to the bot to save time and energy.

In this way your customer support team members will be able to focus on more important tasks.

4.   New employment opportunities in customer service industry

Just think, do you even know about a job called ‘social media marketer’ before the arrival of social media platforms? Well no.

So it is proved as technology evolves and new innovations come to existence, the number of job opportunities in customer service industry also increases.

As time passes by, we’ll see a rise in demand of customer service experts who have specialized knowledge and skills on customer support platforms and channels.

For example, only a chat expert can turn a visitor into a potential customer by using dynamic conversational skills.

Experts will be required even to run a specific social media campaign.

5.   Video communication service

Customers these days are showing more interest in using video calls to engage with companies. Video customer service adds a personal touch to your communication. It assures quick response in real time.

Moreover, video communication service is pretty much effective because it helps in identifying and comprehending the issues and queries of customers faster to solve them.

It also facilitates in building healthy and strong relationships with your customers to up-sell and cross-sell your services and products in less time.

If you haven’t started using video communication services to send video voicemails and have meetings with your customers whenever it is possible.

Key Takeaways

Technology is progressing at a very rapid pace. Accepting this fact and implementing it can facilitate you in offering better customer experience for your ecommerce stores and services.

Today big brands are taking necessary steps to improve customer service experience. Always remember offering better customer service will facilitate you to stand out among your competitors.