Customer service and support trends for 2023
In these competitive times, brands need to be proactive, innovative, and creative in their approach to customer service to improve the customer experience (CX) and meet customer expectations. To achieve these goals, companies should consider incorporating emerging marketing trends into their customer service strategies. Here are just some of the customer service trends your business should take note of in 2023:
#1 – 24/7, multilingual, real-time live chat customer support
Today’s cutting-edge technology makes this possible, and it reduces customer frustration greatly. It also makes it significantly more likely that customer interaction will result in a sale.
Live chat is the ideal way to guide a customer towards the item they are looking for and help them with any difficulties they may be having. It’s the best way to provide them with accurate information and walk them through the relevant processes and services via real-time support.
Live chat is a potent marketing strategy that will benefit you and your customers in many ways. It will save time, boost customer satisfaction, and greatly reduce the load on your live customer service agents.
#2 – Dynamic, proactive customer service
Proactive customer support sets out to anticipate customers’ demands, issues, pain points and expectations. In essence, it seeks to provide solutions to problems and issues before those problems and issues occur! This goes a long way towards avoiding customer frustration. It smooths the way towards good CX by informing customers ahead of time about delays in shipping, new products, tracking information and date of delivery.
#3 – Easy-to-use, automated self-service
With more and more stats indicating that more and more online customers prefer self-service these days, providing this option for your customers should be a given. Many customers want to just find the answer themselves, so self-service is a vital part of delivering good customer support. Self-service leads to increased sales, cost savings, happier customers, and happier staff because they’re not inundated with the same customer queries over and over.
#4 – AI chatbots
The effective use of chatbots to augment and streamline customer support is a growing trend. It enables businesses to provide round-the-clock customer support more easily. In combination with AI and automated workflows, chatbots hold the key to 24/7 self-service functionality. Easy-to-use AI chatbots are a cost-effective and accessible way of dealing with the common day-to-day queries and requests of online customers.
Related content: The future of chatbots
#5 – Omnichannel support
Omnichannel support is a very strong trend in customer support these days. It far transcends yesteryear’s phone calls and faxes! Omnichannel support includes social media, live chat, phone, email, SMS, WhatsApp, direct messaging, and more.
Being available to your customers across numerous channels ensures meaningful interaction between you and your customers. You can engage with them whenever they need you.
The aim of omnichannel customer support is to provide seamless CX across multiple channels by integrating them all into a single system. By giving customer support agents a complete view of all the interactions with a customer, they can answer customer queries much more efficiently.
Related content: What are customer touchpoints, and why do they matter?
#6 – Personalisation: a key part of customer support
Everyone loves being acknowledged, so personalised customer care is key in developing customer loyalty. Great CX is all about providing customers with personalised interaction, and great CX plays a huge role in customer retention.
Always give your engagement with customers that personal touch. Use their name when you talk to them, and refer to their interests and purchase history. Show that you know what their requirements and personal preferences are.
#7 – Connect with customers via social media channels
Social media looms so large in many people’s lives these days that these channels have become one of the best ways to interact with customers. You need to have a prominent profile on social media and respond promptly to any customers that reach out to you on social media.
Make sure any customer requests, complaints or suggestions are responded to promptly, relevantly, respectfully, and competently. This will build your brand’s image positively.
#8 – Build trust by ensuring cyber security and data privacy
These days, businesses are having access to and storing ever larger amounts of customer data. Customers are concerned about how their data is being used and safeguarded. They want to know that their personal and financial details are safe and that your brand takes cyber security very, very seriously.
As governments all over the world strive to create and implement regulations to protect customers’ data, businesses must do the same. You need to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to instituting and maintaining sophisticated security principles, effective safety measures and transparency in dealing with your customers’ data.
#9 – Machine learning to improve data analytics, especially predictive analysis
Machine learning can help organisations to improve overall CX, particularly AI-powered live chat applications and predictive analytics. Potential scenarios can be created that will result in support calls being predicted quite accurately. Implementing machine learning trends in customer support can have significant positive impacts on the growth of your business.
#10 – Be mobile
Any business that disregards the online market driven via mobile phones is signing their own death warrant. As Thomas Husson puts it succinctly, mobile will not just affect your digital operations; it will “transform your entire business.”
The mobile channel plays a crucial role in the success of your customer support function and the effectiveness of your customer support team. Customer support via mobile phones is not just a benefit for your brand; it is one of the strongest emerging trends in customer service.
In conclusion
No brand should forget for a single second that the quality of your online customer support plays a determining role in your brand image. But we know that it’s a complex issue, so our experienced customer support team is always ready to advise you about solutions that’ll maximise the impact of your customer support function in 2023 and beyond. If you’re battling to implement any of the above customer support trends, we’re here to help.
