Is your business up with current trends in customer service? Any medium to long term customer service strategy needs to pay attention.

5 Customer Service Trends to Look Out For in 2017

Is your business up with current trends in customer service? Any medium to long term customer service strategy needs to pay as much attention to external trends as internal capabilities. From a renewed commitment to the customer experience at the center of business operations to the unexpected decline of social media as a customer service force, we recap some of the key trends for 2017.

Customer Experience Comes to the Forefront

This is not so much a new trend as an intensification of an existing one. Lately, we’ve been hearing that the customer has to be at the center of every business transaction. This is at the heart of business strategy, for quite some time now. However, this wisdom is starting to be backed up with a considerable evidence base.Entrepreneur.com contributor Susan Ganeshan recently cited a Forrester study showing that those companies who are best at customer service outperform customer experience slackers by around 80 percent. It’s just these kinds of statistics that demonstrate why a concern for customer needs is not only good for customers, but also for the business bottom line. And what’s more, companies have started to ensure that consideration for customers is embedded throughout all levels and functions of the business. For example, here are some great resources on integrating customer experience include:

• What Customer-Centric Companies Do Differently by Helpscout
• Designing and Starting Up a Customer Experience Transformation by McKinsey
• How to Ensure the Very Best Customer Experience Each and Every Time by Salesforce

The Rise and Rise of Omni-Channel Marketing

You need to connect with your customers and get your marketing messages out there into the world. The last few years have seen a proliferation of new marketing channels, and there is every expectation that this is going to continue into the future. And not only that, but your customers are now going to expect that your brand experience and marketing messages provide a consistent story, no matter what device they are on or channel they are using.As Daniel Newman, writing for Entrepreneur.com notes, omnichannel marketing refers to the process of a brand providing a seamless (i.e. consistent and uninterrupted) brand experience to the customer across all channels and devices. In theory, it can sound pretty simple, but many businesses find it quite tricky in the execution. To get started with omnichannel marketing, why not check out these great resources:

• Omni-Channel Marketing Defined and 7 Tips – Marketo;
• 7 Inspiring Examples of Omni-Channel User Experiences – Hubspot
• Omni-Channel Marketing Without the Fear Factor – MediaPost.

Increased Customer Support Provided via Mobile Devices

We indeed have entered the mobile era. Current projections estimate that there will be 6.1 billion smartphone users by 2020. This represents around 70% of the world’s population. With such a large proportion of the planet using their mobile devices for all sorts of reasons, it makes sense that companies seeking to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty might explore mobile channels to provide customer support. For instance, one of the most straightforward ways in which companies can embrace mobile to provide customer service is to design an app through which you can address most commonly asked user queries. As Nicholas Klisht writes, one of the most important considerations, if you are to develop an app, is the customer experience of the app itself. To do this, you need first to need to think about what the user will be using the app for. Will they be seeking to lodge a complaint, look for instructions or lodge a return? Are they merely wanting to scan through frequently asked questions or seeking to interact with a real live person? All of these questions will determine how you flow a user through the experience of using the app.

Prescriptive Analytics Will Drive Customer Service

Among the top trends that Forrester Research, via Kate Leggett, announced would take the customer experience world by storm in 2017, one of the more novels is that prescriptive analytics will drive the customer service of the future. Prescriptive analytics is how companies make large volumes of data they collect useful. When applied to customer service, prescriptive analytics uses the power of advances in computer technology and big data to inform the process of customer decisions. Customer decision solutions are a layer within your architecture that allows you to understand what is happening within a customer interaction and determine the next best action. Your next best action depends on the customer. Prescriptive analytics cuts through the complexity to take pattern and context into account to determine what this is.

Social Media on the Out?

One of the more interesting predictions is the imminent decline in the importance of social media. This is particularly for managing customer service. We’ve been hearing over and over about the centrality of social media to just about everything. Of course, this includes marketing and customer service. However, you might be forgiven for thinking that the trend should be heading in the opposite direction. However, it seems that we’re all a bit over it. The Small Business Trends blog reports data from the NICE-BCG survey indicating that between 2013 and 2015 the number of consumers using social media for customer service shrank, whereas, for the two-year period before that, numbers had doubled. What is at the bottom of this decline? Well, customers talked about their reasons for not using social media for customer service. In the same study, they cited long response times, limited functionality and limited usefulness for complex issues. Overall, it seems like there is a role for good old fashioned in-person customer service after all!Customer service is in a state of constant evolution, with new technologies and communication channels emerging all the time. However, success is capable for those companies willing to embrace the change and try something new.