New service trends are emerging as digital-first customer experiences come to the fore, tailored towards the modern, autonomous customer.
According to McKinsey & Company, the customers "believe they can get whatever they want, whenever they want, within minutes.”
In keeping with these changing customer expectations, customer service is evolving. As such, here are ten digital customer service trends to keep an eye on.
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The Shift Towards Self-Service
Customers are increasingly searching for answers themselves through digital channels, such as websites, mobile apps, or chatbots - whether that is for finding information, resolving common issues, or purchasing products and services.
Indeed, customers appreciate the convenience of self-service, which may also save organizations time and money. A Nuance study even suggests that 89% of consumers want to engage in conversation with virtual assistants to quickly find information instead of searching through web pages or a mobile app on their own.
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An Uplift in No-Code/Low-Code Tools
Low Code/No code (LC/NC) refers to visual development platforms that allow business users to develop and deploy applications without writing code. These solutions use pre-built components assembled like Legos to create digital experiences.
As a result, businesses rely less on developers and expensive third-party platforms.
Beyond traditional use cases like chatbots and mobile apps, the low-code and no-code revolution is expanding as businesses wish to accelerate their digital transformation plans. LC/NC CRM enhancements are an excellent example of this.
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Customers Seek Simplicity
Customers today expect simplicity and convenience in their digital experiences. Many CX teams are striving to meet this goal through customer experience management (CXM), which aims to ensure a streamlined, cohesive experience across all touchpoints.
Many innovations are surfacing to support CXM teams. These include proactive support, remote asset monitoring through the internet of things (IoT), and conversational AI.
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The Rise of Hyper-Personalization
Hyper-personalization is the process of tailoring experiences to individual customers rather than audience segments or demographic groups. It begins with collating customer data into actionable profiles.
Such data then channels into recommendation engines, online forms, and marketing software for an experience that suits customer needs, preferences, and value. It is much more than addressing customers by name.
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A Push Towards Proactive Customer Engagement
Proactive engagement smooths over customer journey friction points to lower effort, increase retention, and enhance value. There are many ways in which it does so, including:
- Sending proactive support messages to online customers who are taking a long time to checkout.
- Offering recommendations based on website behavior, customer lifecycle stage, and other factors.
- Sharing personalized renewal reminders alongside other critical event notifications
- Anticipating queries that new visitors and prospects may have and providing helpful content.
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Smartphone-First Experiences
More and more customers use smartphones to connect with businesses, making it the most critical "vessel" for CX. As such, having a responsive website in place, which automatically adjusts to the device's screen size, is vital. It ensures that customers can always access the website, no matter what device they use.