Trends refer to patterns that emerge, develop, and fade over time. Of course, no industry is spared from the power of trends — including customer support. Customer service is essential to any business, hence why it’s the backbone. Without customer support, people won’t be able to get the help they need.
With the ubiquity of AI and other advanced technologies, customer support has metamorphosed from a “must-have” into a pivotal element of any business strategy. Presently, customers have high expectations for a brand’s customer support. Most of them (73%) are ready to jump ship to another competitor if customers have repeatedly experienced low-quality customer support, as reported by Zendesk.
As customer needs evolve and new trends emerge, businesses must keep up to ensure their delivery of customer support remains timely, responsive, and satisfactory. Below are six customer support trends every entrepreneur must know.
1. Omnichannel Customer Support for Seamless Communication
Omnichannel customer service support provides a seamless, consistent, and integrated customer care experience through various communication channels. For example, if you talk to a customer service agent via phone and suddenly have an urgent meeting, you can continue the conversation through live chat without repeating your query.
Omnichannel customer support, though, is different from multichannel customer service. Although the latter offers multiple ways to contact customer service, it doesn’t provide an integrated experience compared to omnichannel support. This means you’ll have to repeat your query every time you contact customer support through any of its communication channels. In other words, you can’t continue where you left off. For many customers, it’s frustrating — and rightfully so.
That’s why omnichannel customer support is superior to multichannel support. Not only is the former more interconnected and personalized, but it’s also more customer-centric. Of course, with customer-centricity comes increased customer satisfaction and retention. According to Invesp, 89% of a company’s customer base is retained due to omnichannel support. On the other hand, businesses without omnichannel support can cost them a 10% loss in revenue.
2. The Use of Messaging for Convenient Customer Service
Messaging is also a rising trend in customer support. While messaging has had a profound impact on customer service — especially with the surge of customers using WhatsApp — during the COVID-19 pandemic, it will not go away anytime soon. In fact, most customers (74%) who contacted companies via messaging in 2020 expressed their intent to use this medium of communication moving forward.
Besides the popularity of instant messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, they also help reduce the hassle of customers finding your business’s email address or enduring long wait times. Plus, the ability to send media files ensures ease of communication and resolution of issues for both the customer and the customer service support agent. Because messaging is a form of asynchronous communication, customers can take their time crafting a response, and customer support agents can attend to other queries and maintain their productivity.
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) for a More Personalized Support
Despite the criticisms surrounding the use of AI, there’s no denying its role in our lives and even customer support. For customer service agents, AI is a huge productivity boost designed to streamline operations and minimize manual tasks; for customers, AI is a tool that provides them the much-needed convenience of instant customer support. One popular AI tool is AI agents.
Though AI agents and chatbots are powered by AI, It’s important to differentiate between the two. Chatbots involve decision trees and follow scripted responses. This means they’re designed for routine customer support tasks, such as answering simple FAQs or providing order updates. If you try to go off-script and converse with a chatbot like a human agent, it will not understand what you’re saying. Unfortunately, a chatbot can only be improved manually.
AI agents, on the other hand, are the more sophisticated versions of chatbots. Unlike the latter, AI agents are more capable of understanding the complexities and nuances of human conversations. They also utilize a combination of large language models (LLP), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning to deliver human-like conversations. Not to mention, AI agents improve and become smarter with every interaction.
As such, AI agents make a great addition to a business’s customer service. These AI-powered agents not only deliver instant, round-the-clock customer support, but they also leverage customer data to add a layer of personalization and provide data-driven insights to optimize agents’ workflow. Since AI agents are faster than human agents, it’s no surprise that the former is preferable to the latter (51%) for immediate services, according to Zendesk’s CX Trends Report 2024.
4. Video-Based Support for Clearer Communication
Calling a brand’s customer support team is easy as pie: dial the hotline, wait for an agent to attend your call, and you’re all set. For email, you can send videos and pictures related to your query. However, there are instances when you can’t describe an issue well without a real-time visual aid. That’s where video-based customer support comes in.
With businesses adding video-based communication to their customer service arsenal, video support has become the new face of customer care. In fact, between phone, email, and live chat, video-based customer support trumps them all. Although video-based support retains the personal touch of customer service, it offers more visual and verbal clarity for both the agent and customer — thus eliminating the struggle of explaining certain details orally or in written form.
Through video customer support, agents can perform a live tutorial on how to perform a certain action or troubleshoot an issue, making it easy for the customer to follow the tutorial. On the customer’s side, they can also share their screen to show what the issue is and how it’s triggered, so the agent understands how to help them better. Besides live demonstrations, video-based customer service includes sharing short pre-made video tutorials on common FAQs and customer concerns. Not only can customers pause and watch the tutorials at their own pace, but they also free up customer agents’ time to resolve more pressing inquiries.
5. Social Media As A Public Customer Service Channel
Social media may be a hub for posting status updates, photos, and videos, but it has now evolved into a customer support channel. This makes sense as billions of people are active on social networking platforms, and what better way to provide high-quality customer support than to take advantage of the convenience of social media?
It’s a space where customers can ask questions and receive answers from the brand itself. Since customer queries are made publicly — either through a comment or a separate post tagging the brand — your brand’s quality of customer support is for all the world to see, potentially affecting your customers’ perception for better or worse.
As such, it’s easier to call out and hold brands accountable for faux pas or inappropriate content. If acknowledged, it shows how much you care for your customers and reputation. Conversely, failing to acknowledge and apologize for such mishaps can erode customer trust and loyalty.
Other ways to leverage social media for customer support are requesting customer feedback, uploading video tutorials and other customer-relevant content, and holding livestreams and webinars.
6. Self-Service Customer Support for 24/7 Accessibility
Did you know that FAQs, community forums, and help portals are examples of self-service customer support? As the name implies, self-service customer service means the customer is responsible for finding the answers to their questions. With self-service customer service, customers can explore a brand’s FAQ page and read help articles before contacting a customer service support agent. Think of self-service options as the main source of assistance and human agents as the last resort.
However, unlike customer service agents, self-service options are available 24/7. No hold times either waiting until the next business day. Because customers are preoccupied with their own research, agents can dedicate time to more complex and urgent queries. Overall — while the idea of implementing self-service customer support options is promising — businesses must ensure that their FAQs and knowledge portals are regularly updated to reflect the current and emerging needs of customers.
Outsource Digital Customer Support to KDCI Today
Customers deserve top-notch customer support. With a plethora of digital technologies at our fingertips, businesses have no excuse to upgrade their customer support. Hopefully, the above-mentioned trends in our article have helped you determine which ones to improve or implement into your business’s customer service.
Whether you’re forming your dream team of customer service agents or optimizing digital customer service channels, KDCI has got you covered. We are a Philippine-based BPO with over a decade of experience in outsourcing. Since 2011, we have provided clients with services ranging from administrative support to customer service.
When you outsource customer service to KDCI, you’re getting high-caliber talent possessing all the soft and hard skills of an experienced customer service agent. With our company’s onboarding process, our agents are more than equipped to adapt to your business’s workflow and provide the best possible customer care at a lower cost.
Start your outsourcing journey with KDCI today! Contact us for inquiries, and we’ll help you reach the pinnacle of success in customer service.
