Nowadays, with the ever-changing technologies and a new generation of always more sophisticated customers, companies need to recognize the importance of customer support as the backbone of their business.
According to the Gartner survey, 74% of respondents reported that a seamless customer journey using assisted and self-service is “important” or “very important”. While meeting customers’ expectations, companies can benefit enormously from offering great self-service customer support. As a matter of fact, excellent customer support increases customer satisfaction and thus customer retention rate, and it leads to an increase in sales because of the effect of word-of-mouth.
Customer support is becoming crucial for companies
Covid-19 has drastically transformed how companies communicate with their customers. In particular, the pandemic has forced businesses to improve their online services. Now that almost every touchpoint takes place online, companies must ensure that these interactions are satisfying for customers throughout the whole journey. Companies worldwide now know they must design innovative methods to provide their clients with high-quality, personalized services.
On the other hand, as a reaction to the impulsive mode of consumerism, customers are becoming increasingly self-reliant: they want to solve their problems as fast as possible and are unwilling to wait for a response from your customer care representatives. This phenomenon is leading to the increased popularity of self-service, which refers to new tools and resources which help customers to find solutions to their problems without the assistance of a company representative.
Another notable revolution has been the emergence of AI and ML-assisted technology that will lead to significant progress over the next 10 to 25 years. AI will be able to perform even more tasks now performed by humans.
These mega trends can be broken down into more specific trends that will be presented below. It is important for your company to follow these trends to offer excellent customer experiences and maintain, or enhance, your competitiveness in the market.
8 Best customer service trends 2022
We have compiled a list of the top 10 trends in customer service that can help you design an excellent customer experience.
1. Enhanced Personalization
Personalized customer service refers to delivering customized services that meet the exact needs and wants of the customer. Thanks to the personalization of your services you will increase customer satisfaction, thus strengthening the relationship between your brand and your customers. By offering solutions tailored to their problems, in fact, your consumers will become more loyal and will be incentivized to promote your products or services.
According to Netomi, 80% of consumers are more inclined to do business with a company if it offers a personalized experience. In addition to that, a report from the Forrester survey stated that companies earned 6% more sales revenue and a 33% increase in customer loyalty and engagement when they applied customer-centric personalization strategies. These numbers show how offering personalized services is important to be successful in the market in 2022.
2. Use of artificial intelligence to enhance support services
According to Dataconomy, “in 2022, artificial intelligence will have progressed far enough to become the most revolutionary technology ever created by man”.
In the field of customer support, AI can play an important role in expanding and improving self-service support. Thanks to this technology, companies can automate some activities which should otherwise be carried out by agents, personalize their support services based on the specific customers’ needs and gather relevant data about customers.
Artificial intelligence makes it possible to provide excellent customer service while reducing costs related to human resources. Thanks to AI, companies can focus on designing a great customer journey and on solving more complex problems customers might face, while automating some more repetitive tasks.
3. Make customer service mobile-responsive
In 2022, the number of smartphone users in the world is 6.648 Billion, meaning that 83.72% of the world’s population owns a smartphone today. Customers want to solve any problems as quickly as possible and the fastest way is usually through the smartphones they always bring with them. This means that companies have to ensure the accessibility of all their services on smartphones.
Make sure your customer service solutions are available through mobile devices. When customers need to solve a problem they usually check the internet through their smartphone to find a solution. For this reason, ensure your website and other resources are mobile-responsive.
4. Use the power of video to communicate with your customers
Did you know that 83% of people prefer watching videos to accessing instructional content? That is why you should create a video tutorial for your customers to understand how to use your product. By creating engaging but short videos, you can offer your customers an enjoyable experience in learning more about your product and how to get the most out of it.
In addition to providing instructional videos to your customers to learn how to use the product, you could also offer them the possibility to talk with an agent through video call when they face a more complex problem with your product. Providing video support, especially for product installation, is one of the biggest trends in 2022. On top of that, video consultation often helps instill trust among users who often feel that they do not get adequate support from the brand.
5. Chatting real-time with the support team
Your customers expect you to be present whenever they want, and most customers may prefer to have live chats with the customer service team. The demand for real-time messages is a significant shift compared to the world of email.
Instant chatting is becoming increasingly popular, especially with the emergence of social media outreach and marketing programs. Using AI-powered communication tools, customers can often find the solution to their problems instantaneously.
6. Focus on self-service tools
Self-service is a significant trend that is dominating customer service and will completely change how customers get support from companies. Today more than ever before people are used to getting what they need or want fast and with a minimum effort. This is why self-service support is the best solution to create an excellent customer experience.
According to research by Harvard Business Review, 81% of customers prefer a self-help method instead of reaching out to live company representatives. Self-service customer support is essential to resolve end-users problems expediently and save company resources too.
The best way to offer self-service support is by offering your customers a platform where they can learn about the product, ask for support, and solve any problems. Layerise can make it easy for your business to make your self-service support shine, learn more about that here.
7. Better customer experience with omnichannel support
Another relevant customer support trend that is emerging is omnichannel customer care. With omnichannel distribution we refer to the capacity to deliver a consistent and smooth consumer experience across many distribution channels. In an omnichannel strategy, customers can get in contact with the customer service team through different channels, such as email, chat, social media etc.
Companies that adopt an omnichannel customer service strategy focus on creating a seamless customer experience across multiple channels by harmonizing and integrating them into a single system. This means that customers should receive the same support no matter what channel they are using. In case of more complex queries, your agents should be able to follow the interactions with customers in a comprehensive manner, independently from the channel they are using. That way, they will be able to offer support more effectively.
8. Make customer support time flexible
When customers need help they want to receive support at any time in the fastest way possible. Self-service support helps to meet their expectations in that sense, but not all the time problems can be solved through self-service resources. For some complex queries, customers might need to talk to an expert.
Customer service agents may be engaged from around the globe to meet customers' demands for help in real-time. Offering multilingual customer care provides the additional benefit of allowing consumers to get professional solutions in their language. Agents should be matched with customers’ queries based on the language they speak.
Companies must ensure that the employees are working flexible hours in a way that they can help customers in need to connect with agents who speak their languages, at their own pace and convenience.
How can Layerise help you follow these trends?
Layerise provides you with a post-sales B2C enablement tool that allows you to offer an excellent experience to your customers. Layerise solution combines all the newest trends to help you stay ahead of the curve and gain a competitive position in the market thanks to excellent customer support.
With Layerise you can provide your customers with interactive and engaging instructional content, exceptional self-service support tools, a high level of personalization of services, and real-time 24/7 support through the chat feature.
On top of a great customer experience, Layerise allows you to collect relevant data about your customers to design the best marketing strategy for your product. Thanks to Layerise you can build automated marketing campaigns based on your audience and make your send-outs personal and relevant to increase conversions.
If you want to learn more about how Layerise can help your business, book a free demo now!
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