These days, social customer service is ruled by the customer rather than companies. It is the customer who relentlessly determines how, when, and where he wants to be helped, and not the other way around. Therefore, seamless customer experience is upon us!
Customers demand real-time support with high-quality information. Although many companies still don't get it right, providing a seamless customer experience will be the key aspect to differentiating yourself from competition in the future. Therefore, it has become extremely important to provide customer service at the right touch point whether it be on Facebook or on your website.
Social Customer Service Should Be an Integral Part of Businesses
Social customer service is no longer solely a customer service team's responsibility. Regardless of what your function is in a company, whether you're the CEO or a particular customer agent, everyone should keep a close eye on the entire social customer service process and social customer journey to easily identify and understand the true attributes of quality social customer service.
Providing a seamless customer experience is the most valuable marketing opportunity out there, and it will be the key to remain competitive. The transition to ensuring customers have a seamless experience will, without a doubt, be tough, and many companies will struggle to tackle that daunting challenge. But, what will it take to provide a seamless customer experience?
1. Understand What Seamless Customer Experience Entails
If you'd ask your customers what a seamless customer experience implies, they will most likely give you a similar reply: "to get an expert reply, in real-time, and through the channel of my choice". But, customers expect brands to do more than just that. Companies need to engage. While this sounds extremely fair and simple, your efforts will be complex to meet the expectations of your customer and build those valuable relationships.
Use your customers as your most valuable point of information. Know, for your specific industry and company, what it implies to deliver a great customer experience. Don't wait until tomorrow to talk to your customers about it. Ask today, through short surveys, exploratory interviews, personal emails, etc. in order to make sense of every future customer interaction.
2. Don't Just Prioritize Changes in IT Infrastructure, Focus on Your Employees as Well
While a lot of crucial changes may be made in IT infrastructure, such as redefining processes and IT systems, employees remain a company's key asset. Unfortunately, there's already an increased pressure on customer agents who rely heavily on big data to bring together a broad range of data sets, and for the future of the digital revolution, that pressure will be more tangible to deliver on the next evolution in customer experience.
Customers will expect an extremely personalized interaction, and there's no other way to deliver on that than through empowering your employees. Big data may help you personalize every interaction in order to create a continuous dialogue with your brand. However, translating that information into a real, human interaction (or connection) will be the final decision point in determining the success of your business.
3. Contextual Social Customer Service is Everything
Knowing the context of each customer interaction is important to bring engagement to a greater level. But, more importantly, context reveals a lot about HOW companies and customers interact. While mobile has become the dominant means by which people interact with brands, customers demand contextual (cross-device) customer service that maintains their context across all channels.
Meeting these new rules of engagement is what Forrester refers to as the 'Mobile Mind Shift', implying the need for information is compatible with any device. Eliminate all other elements, and address the immediate needs of a customer to boost customer loyalty and customize each individual customer experience.
This article originally appeared on the Engagor blog.