StrategicNYCSocial

Customer Service in the Digital Age

In 2013, customer service has become more agile as it has continued to move across multiple channels and devices, enabling the customer to begin communication in one channel and finish it in another. Although voice is still the favored communication channel, self-service and digital channels (e.g. chat, email) are now following closely behind.

The key trend of customer service this year is increased use of the Voice of the Customer (VoC) both in completing an end to end feedback process and also paying more considering to customer feedback as a direct measure of success. In previous year, key success metrics in customer service have been focused more on productivity, efficiency and regulatory compliance, but customer satisfaction is now being added on many scorecards as a new and equally important metric.

Harnessing social media for customer service use is also a growing trend this year. Vendors continue to add social channels to their customer service offerings and formalized policies are being formed around them as social channels move out of marketing departments and into customer service centers. Knowledge management is key to developing social networks as customer service touchpoints. Educating employees on social media policy, privacy concerns and recording data is important to the future success of the channels. Internal social networks provide great opportunity for community knowledge sharing and agent to agent collaboration, breaking down the traditional hierarchal structure of information distribution.