By michaelpace on December 16, 2013
Complete, wild guess predictions and thoughts by my cousin Pacefucious about the trends in Customer Service for 2014.
Note: The practice of adding “in bed” may or may not work with the following fortunes.
Customer Service Fortunes
Pacefucious say: Successful Customer Service leaders will be Customer Success Leaders
Even now, Customer Success strategies and methodologies have been mostly delivered in the Software as a Service (SaaS) world, and even there it may not be considered part of the customer service strategy. Customer Success is all about providing rapid value and adoption of your product or service to your newly sold customers or trialers. In a SaaS environment, delivering value to customers in a timely manner is critical to reduce churn and/or boost retention. In general, Customer Success strategies and methodologies place a considerably higher effort during the initial stages of the customer support lifecycle. It may involve a “coach” or “relationship manager” helping the customer better understand how the product or service works, appropriate marketing or learning materials sent with context, and hand offs to deeper technical support.
But there is no reason this level of service needs to remain solely in the SaaS world. Providing rapid value and adoption leads to improved retention, and every customer service leaders primary responsibility is to retain customers (quality of service is a driver of retention). Imagine if your newly selected bank contacted you to make sure you better understand the fee schedule or how you could save more. Or if you buy a tablet, learn how to find the best apps for childhood learning. Earlier in the year, I provided my steps for Customer Success; you find them here.
Pacefucious say: Mobile is the Combo Plate of Service – Everything at once
Mobile – it is probably the most discussed technology over the past few years. But what does it mean for Customer Service? Everything. First off, mobile is not channel; it is the combination of a device, ecosystems, and circumstance. A few examples:
- Using a smartphone to check prices at retail establishment through the general internet
- Purchasing an item through a company branded mobile application
- Calling customer service while driving
- Interacting with multiple screens such as tablet, smartphone, and TV while you are lounging on your couch at home
- Amazon texting you when you receive a package at home while you’re at the office
- Pay a bill while or deposit a reimbursement check from your office
- Tweeting feedback (positive or negative) to a company
- Browsing Flipboard while you are waiting for your spouse to finish up the dressing room
- A FitBit device uploading workout data to a user dashboard
- I hate this term, but yes, the internet of things
How could or would customers interact with your company? Do you have a responsive website or customer service site? Do you have a mobile app? What are all the customer service channels you can point to in a mobile situation? Can they connect via phone, get answers from your knowledge base, get their most general questions answered, link to a chat, send an email (yuck), provide feedback or answer a survey, or even just consistently perform routine actions?
Many mobile apps and sites are typically “controlled” by Product Development, and their goals may be different than the Customer Service Department’s goals. How can you influence them to include more customer service features and options? Start with understanding how, why and where your customers use their mobile devices. The mobile “movement” is still in its early stages (hard to believe), so survey and meet with your customers (whether internal or external).
Pacefucious say: “Your customers will be your most valuable customer service agents” (repeat from ’12 and ‘13)
I still find it puzzling that so many customer service organizations do not utilize communities to help solve their customer’s questions or problems. Some customer service organizations do not even have relationships with the people in their organization who manage their communities. I am not sure I have ever even been to a customer service conference where community management was a topic. Your customers, especially your advocates and superusers, have (collectively) considerably more knowledge than your support agents; why not let them help your customers too? I am not advocating for the end of phone or chat service (maybe email - see below), but having a shared community and knowledge base that can be added to and used by your customers is both incredibly efficient and can provide awesome service. I discussed this topic in an interview with Execs in the Know in March, find it here.
Pacefucious say: It may be Big Data buffet, but tummy still the same size
Big Data is all the rage. How do we incorporate Big Data into the customer experience and their service? Love this quote from Dr. Eric Topal at Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit, “Big data is like teen sex. Everybody is talking about it; everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.”
Big Data is a bit of hype. Yes, technologies have improved that enable us to gather and analyze more data faster. But data is still data, whether it is big or small. You cannot be big dead or big pregnant, it is what it is.
Customer Service and contact centers have been in the Big Data game for the last 20 years, and will be for another 20 more. Contact centers produce so much quantitative and qualitative data it usually coming out of their headsets. More often than not, service centers can gather immense amounts of data, but either do not have the ability, competency, or availability to do anything with it, let alone gain insight. Most companies still need to focus on the basics. Basics seem to be forgotten when we can look at or “need to look at” 15 different combinations of analytics. Odds are you not Amazon or Google. Don’t worry so much as to what Big Data is, and the promises that it can provide. Instead of collecting more data, revisit the questions that you are trying to solve.
- How do I retain more customers?
- What areas of the experience are pains for customers?
- How do we do this efficiently for our customers and ourselves?
- How do I hire, develop, and retain the best associates?
IBM’s Watson can probably give you the answer, or you can just ask the folks in customer service.
Pacefucious say: Why do you think the Menu has Such Pretty Pictures?
How can you be a company worth between $1-3 Billion (yes B), and still never create anything close to a $1 of revenue? Just be a company like Instagram or Snapchat, where pictures rule. Who knows how much Pinterest will be worth one day. The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” may need to be updated. My point is that we have become a very visually dependent society. And, there is nothing wrong with that, but it also means you may want to understand how visuals can reduce customer issues. If we know that visuals (images) are enticing and important to our customers, how can customer service leverage the power of visuals to provide proactive or self service?
- Use images to link to your most popular questions answered in your knowledge base
- Use slideshows to walk customers through longer step by step processes, better yet, link them to your branded Slideshare site (create virtuous cycles)
- Create short videos (no more than 2 min.) introducing new products or enhancements to your service
The Poo Poo Platter: Things that I hope will disappear down some dark tunnel
- Email for Customer Service – email is atrocious for customer service. Let’s take a typical email situation: question to company (waits), reply and clarification from company, customer clarifies (waits), company provides standard message to solve problem, customer needs more specific information, blah, blah, blah, blah etc… That is a horrible experience, and costs more than you think to provide. Use email to accept issues during your non-hours of operation, but make sure the customer knows the expectations of service.
- Bullpen / Open cube areas – I am not sure how the concept of the open cube area makes for a more collaborative environment came about, but let’s put a chopstick in this idea and call it done. All the bullpen does is make easier for you to see the person that is IMing you.
- NPS (Net Promoter Score) Monitoring – You got a score of 43 this month. Next month it is 44. Then it is 42. The score is pointless unless you know why. Also, gathering this information and not including it in your customer’s account information is even worse. NPS has become one of those things that we have to do, but people have forgotten why we do it.
© mpace101 for The Pace of Service, 2013. |
Permalink |
No comment |
Add to
del.icio.us
Post tags: Big Data, Community, Community Management, customer experience, customer service, customer success, fortune, fortune cookie, Leadership, Net Promoter Score, NPS, social business, Social Media
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh