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The past year brought a ton of transformations to customer service. Without a doubt, the pandemic deepened changes that were already happening, creating new expectations among customers and new needs in companies.
That said, empathy, immediacy and omnichannel solutions became the stars of customer experience in 2021. Let’s look at five key trends to include in your CX.
Trends for your CX strategy
Instant solutions
Long gone are the days of endless waiting, redirection and complicated prompts. Today, customers want solutions when they request them and with a few clicks.
If a customer asks about their account balance, they expect to get a number, not instructions on how to find it. In order to provide instant solutions, you need empathy to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and adjust any processes that don’t meet their needs. For example, offering a conversational bot that integrates with all your systems is a great step towards answering transactional questions immediately.
The experience integrated across multiple channels
The digital app ecosystem is getting bigger and bigger. Now more than ever, you need to be on every app to support customers on their preferred channels. But that's not all: first, companies have to provide an integrated and unified experience.
Right now, WhatsApp is the king of messaging, especially in Latin America and Europe. With more than 1 billion users, it’s one of the most-used messaging apps worldwide.
One practice that's taking off is IVR deflection to WhatsApp, letting calls automatically transfer to the app in order to start asynchronous conversations. This will give your agents the flexibility to support multiple conversations at once, especially if you have a conversational, AI-powered bot complementing their work.
Related article: Omnichannel Customer Service: Why is it important?
Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Instagram are other booming channels for customer service, besides traditional SMS, telephone and web chat.
Proactivity
If time is money, there’s a lot you can do to save your customers unnecessary queries.
Proactivity is just that: Being one step ahead of your customer and resolving their concerns even before they come up. How? Through notifications and automatic messages containing valuable information about the product or service you offer.
For example, you can send a proactive message to your customers letting them know about the status of their order, their current account status, outstanding bills and upcoming due dates.
Conversational AI as the first contact
In 2021, it's not about saying “yes” or “no” to automation anymore. In reality, automation is both needed by companies and preferred by customers. They want to be able to solve most of their queries automatically, immediately and without involving an actual person.
That said, the big question is how to automate efficiently and empathetically. There are different types of chatbots, but not all are powered by conversational AI. It allows for natural and fluid conversations with users, transcribes audio messages, uses emojis and gifs, and even understands multiple languages and regionalisms.
As the first customer service contact, it’ll be able to answer the most frequently-asked questions, decreasing service time and agent query volume.
Personalization and empathy
Above all, being empathetic towards customers is the most important thing. This means putting yourself in their place and treating them as individuals, not numbers.
Apart from what we already discussed, personalization can be a great partner in providing empathetic service. The more personalized treatment you give your customers, the more satisfied they'll be with your brand.
With personalization, you’ll be able to know their needs and preferences to give them what they’re looking for. For example, you’ll be able to make personalized suggestions based on their shopping history, offer special deals and send them notifications or emails related to their interests.
Now you can kick off your strategy
If you want to implement these trends in your strategy, you can schedule a call with one of our representatives to learn more about how our end-to-end customer service solutions can help you.
