Presented by Bold360 by LogMeIn
It’s time for a look at the biggest challenges and opportunities for customer service now, in 2020 and beyond. Join this VB Live event for a review of the CX landscape, and learn what to brace yourself for in the future, why Gartner is bullish on chatbots, and more.
Customer service is the cornerstone of company success. It’s a key competitive differentiator: 89% percent of businesses now compete on the level of service they deliver to customers. It is directly tied to long-term customer value: After one poor service experience, 51% of customers will no longer do business with that company. That’s no joke: In the U.S., customers jumping to competitors because of a bad experience is costing companies $1.6 trillion.
It’s a trend that has resonated more and more with companies as they scramble to keep up with current customer service trends and jump on board the newest CX fads. But in 2019, simple choice was one of the biggest factors in customer satisfaction, says Katherine Hird, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Bold360 by LogMeIn.
“The way that we work and live and buy is evolving,” Hird says. “But you can improve the customer experience by making sure that you have the right variety of channels that work for both your business and your customers, to have them engage effectively and have an overall positive customer experience.”
Consumers from every generation (not just Millennials) expect to be able to engage with a company in their preferred channel – and 85% percent of customers said they expect companies to offer a blend of both physical and digital communication channels.
But with an uptick in the number of channels that customers are using to contact companies, it’s important to remain focused on creating a consistent and branded experience across all of them, with a focus on non-creepy personalization to make them feel like they’ve always reached the right place, Hird says.
During customer engagements, it’s also essential to create seamless customer experiences across channels – for instance, if a customer starts out chatting with a chatbot, but that interaction needs to be escalated up to a live customer service agent, or given any kind of escalation to another level of service during an experience.
“Customers get frustrated when they interact with a business and they have to repeat themselves multiple times when they go from one channel to the next,” Hird says. “That especially applies when you’re moving from chatbot to human.”
Companies especially need to take care in how they integrate their chatbot experiences, she says. They offer significant advantages for first-level customer service tasks such as requests for opening hours or return policies and other FAQ-style questions. But it should be easy for a customer to move from the chat experience to a live human, without any hassle.
But here in 2019, while chatbots, both AI-powered and rules-based, are becoming more prevalent because they’re both cost-effective and can level up the live service agent experience, some customers are still declining to see them as an effective customer service tool.
It’s called ‘fear of the bot,’ Hind says. It’s been declining over the years, but that worry still seems to be there. Consumers seem to be anxious about whether they’re talking to a human or a bot, and could they even tell the difference? Employees worry about bots taking over jobs and displacing them.
“As we transition into 2020, I expect that this fear will continue to subside,” she says. “I think what’s really important is focusing on the introduction of AI into the customer service experience overall, and emphasizing, both externally and internally, the fact that bots are not replacing humans – they’re helping make humans more efficient, and giving customers more efficient experiences.”
For more on the biggest trends of 2019, a look at the hits, the misses, and the ways companies can learn from both, and a round of wild predictions about the future of AI, bots, and customer experience, don’t miss this VB Live event.
Don’t miss out!
You’ll learn about:
- The future of customer engagement
- The challenges, opportunities and trends in universal accessibility
- How digital technology and AI impacts in-store experiences
- Finding the happy medium of personalization
- Why privacy and security is a customer service issue
Speakers:
- Ken Dodelin, VP Conversational AI Products, CapitalOne
- Prince Arora, Director Product Management, Albertsons Companies
- Katherine Hird, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Bold360 by LogMeIn
