Before each new year begins we study the industry, the market and the evolution of trends to put together our predictions for customer service trends for the upcoming year. Over the past few years, Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have continuously advanced and dominated the trends and predicted trends within the industry. As the world is now returning to what we know as our causal work and customer support environments it is predicted that automation will not progress to significant levels within the next calendar year.
Here are our customer service trend predictions for 2022.
Human touch
While automation is the future, even automation needs a human touch for enhanced service delivery. To develop the best customer experience organisations need to create the optimum balance of automation and human touch. According to ultimate.ai; 86% of customers would pay more for a customer experience (CX), this alone proves the importance of seamless CX.
Skilled professionals are now more important than ever in the customer service industry as the rise of automation has left humans with more complex and self-service daily tasks.
Clients, customers and employees will expect increased flexibility
While the world seems to be slowly getting back to the ‘old normal’ of working primarily from the office. It is expected that teams who have sampled many different working styles will be reluctant to return to strict office hours. Customer service has always demanded flexibility but even more so now.
As we are now also living in a candidate’s world, offering greater flexibility is required to attract and retain the best talent. As we already know, having the best talent can provide a competitive advantage and is more essential than ever now in the customer support world.
Increase in self-service
In this unpredictable time, and with consumers more likely to access online service than ever before, a solid self-service option is essential.
Over the last number of years, we have seen more and more organisations including banks and utility providers opt for self-service models to aid cost-saving measures. In order to promote self-service brands/organisations need to provide customers with the right tools to enable seamless self-service. Important tools and features include –
- a well developed Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section;
- accessible customer service to resolve queries in real-time in the form of a virtual assistant or chatbots;
- digital interactive voice response systems (IVRs);
- top class self-service portal.
Similar to the fashion industry, not all customer service trends will stick or survive the test of time. However, leading brands need to experiment and adapt to such trends to remain competitive and relevant in more saturated markets. As customer experience continues to be a differentiating factor between brands, it has become imperative to be up to date with these trends.
Since 2001, we have continuously evolved with the ever-changing world of customer service. We have introduced both new technologies and processes to best serve our customers throughout two decades. Our management team are looking forward to embracing these trends in the coming months and developing strategies for our clients to include the same.
