The customer service industry is in the midst of a large shift in the digital customer experience (CX) as brands are responding to the connection between social media, marketing automation and analyzing the data all these integrations entail. CX leaders are in the midst of a massive uptick in the movement into technologies that will be strong disrupters with artificial intelligence, bots and digital self-service. AI (Artificial intelligence) analysis is supporting access to the answers consumers want, when they want and how they want to receive it.
As marketers, how you measure, what you measure and how you use that data can be daunting and complex.
Google talks about the importance of several factors.
- Trustworthiness - Is what you are sharing transparent? Is it easy to verify your credibility? Is it measurable?
- Intelligent - Going beyond simple reporting, pay attention to what really matters to your business and seek out those insights. You’ll need the technology to provide deeper insights.
- Actionable - Easy to react to with real-time analytics data to tweak your strategy. The impact on business success from this intel makes metrics a key player in overall growth.
With trends for 2018 focusing on the customer experience, the expectations for B2B are not much different. If you're a distributor in the medical industry, for example, you’ll want the same quick access to answers that solve why it is you need what you need and when you need it, for your customer.
- Digital over voice - no surprise as whole conversations happen with no personal contact. “According to Dimension Data's global contact center benchmarking report, digital interactions accounted for over 42% of all interactions taking place inside the contact center in the beginning of 2017.” Thus, the reason why digital is expected to overtake voice in 2018. Twilio research found that 89% of consumers want to use messaging to communicate with a business. We all are doing it. With pictures, video, all in a controlled setting, we’re able to communicate, when we want to, and for how long we want to.
- Advanced analytics tools supporting customer experience - provides insight into better customer service, real-time knowledge for product improvement, customer service support, critical problem solving and intel for that ever coveted competitive edge.
- Smartphone video/camera - If you thought your customer service was amazing before, now your customer doesn’t have to try and describe the problem. Very quickly, you will have an image, video, and description to solve the issue. We’ve all seen this on social when a problem is publicly shared, and an organization or facility in healthcare has been able to resolve the issue immediately. Whether it’s wait times in an ER or a product that has a defect, in the palm of your hand, is quick access to customer support.
- Customer care and Bots & brains - The onslaught of Bots brought an expectation that they would be the “end all be all” for customer service. The use of Bots is good, but we are seeing the triggers in place for adding a real live brain to support the customer. So yes, they’re awesome and will continue to improve, and yes, customer service still needs to be the brains behind the Bots!
The transparency trust factor is the foundation of why anyone would ever choose to do business with one company over another. B2B and B2C expectations will continue to grow in necessitating the improvement from analytics to delivery.
We saw this firsthand with Scott in relying on the supply chain to deliver the products he wants and has researched, while the manufacturer is readily available to support the needs of the patient with access to try new improved solutions and gain that firsthand feedback. This is a great example of full circle customer experience from B2C experiences to B2B expectations.
