Curatti

Digital Customers They Are a-Changing. Are You?

  • Paolo Fabrizio

    • In less than 24 months the demand for Digital Customer Service has literally boomed, regardless of the country or industry. This acceleration is the result though of an ongoing revolution that had started a few years ago: more and more consumers prefer to use social media, live chat, or messaging apps when asking for support. So if you ask me what’s really new today I tell you that the customers, they are a-changing. In fact, such a digital support demand is not just a youngster trend, but it’s getting widespread up to over 65 years old. So how are you dealing with it?

    A Glimpse Inside Organizations

    As Digital Customer Service is here to stay more and more organizations are embracing it with different approaches:

    Offensive

    Some are implementing a complete road map considering either short and medium-term results. Thus taking into account all strategic and operational implications (steps → investments → results). Such a choice implies more effort at the beginning. But it pays off in the long run because it has enabled the smartest brands to build up rock-solid Digital Customer Service structures.

    That means using great omnichannel platforms and upskilling their managers and front-line staff in order to master digital conversations as per tone of voice and engagement rules. By doing so, brands such as KLM, T-mobile, Spotify, Zara, and Asos have become best-in-class because they took care of each detail.

    Defensive

    Other brands instead have reacted to digital conversations volume peaks without any early planning. Accordingly, they just focussed on top urgencies (aka issues) in order to maintain customer relationships. As you may see they did not embrace Digital Customer Service, they just had to use it, due to well-known external and dramatic circumstances.

    As a result, they had quickly to decide whether in technology (platforms) in processes (workflows enhancements) or people (up/re-skilling). This partial adoption implies smaller investments at the beginning. However, costs are higher overall. This is inevitable to balance those pillars that have necessarily have been underestimated during the initial emergency phase.

    The earlier anything is caught and the better that things are planned for, overall costs are inevitably cheaper.

    Digital Customer Service IS Catching On!

    The good news is that more and more brands are becoming aware of this ongoing revolution. Therefore they’re getting prepared to cope with this new digital customer service scenario. You can see this demonstrated in the following infographic from the report ‘The future of contact centre’, by Callminer / CCW.

    Deep dive: how to leverage digital conversations to boost your KPIs.

    Over to you

    As digital customers they are a-changing and we, as consumers, know it very well time’s running up. Some organizations will jump on the Digital Customer Service embracing a new customer relationship culture, others will just ponder today and follow tomorrow trying to chase the leaders. What side you on?

    Have great conversations.

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    Paolo Fabrizio

    Digital Customer Service Consultant, Trainer, Author, Speaker. Paolo has been helping companies to harness digital customer service as a business driver. Founder of CustomerServiceCulture, author of books and speaker at conferences in Italy and abroad. Lecturer at the Bicocca University of Milan