In his recent article, Jeremy Watkin discusses the rapid evolution of technology in customer experience. Companies are trying to capitalize on emerging channels like social media, texting and messenger platforms in addition to traditional channels like phone and email. These emerging channels have led to a variety of vendors trying to make a name for themselves as the best company to handle them. One example Watkin uses of a vendor service that handles emerging technology is taking text messages from customers and presenting them to to contact center agents in a similar format as live chat. The issue that can come from this is lag time or long pauses between messages that ends the conversation doe to a time out. This obviously can cause issues with the customer experience and lead to frustration and unnecessary follow-up communication. How are companies supposed to handle emerging customer service channels?
Watkins points out that contact centers generally don’t have specific agents for each communication channel, so it’s important to integrate emerging channels with existing channels via platforms like Salesforce or Zoho and cross-train agents. The most important thing to keep in mind when using emerging channels is how quickly customers expect to have responses to their inquiries. For example, customers expect to have a response on social media in under an hour and they expect a response to their text in less than two minutes. As a result of these expectations, handling every channel identically (e.g., putting texts and Facebook messages in the same bucket) can cause problems with the customer experience. Watkins offers the following three recommendations to help support emerging customer service channels:
1) Treat SMS (text messaging) and Facebook Messenger like a chat, not an email.
2) Treat social media the same but use a different platform
3) Monitor customer feedback for true expectation alignment
The goal for emerging channels, as with traditional channels, is to have a fluid voice of the company to communicate with your customers. People don’t view your company as multiple silos independent of each other, they want consistent information no matter which department they contact. Integrate your customer service channels and offer reliable and consistent service and you’ll be successful in delivering a positive customer experience.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
Should Emerging Customer Service Channels Be Handled Like Chat or Email? – Jeremy Watkin
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