Good customer service can be hard to find. Conversely, bad customer service is easy to spot and, when especially ugly, it can go viral. With social media becoming a worldwide connector and a general display of the way modern generations communicate, the performance of customer service agents is increasingly hitting the internet as a result.
Whether it was good, bad, or ugly, 2019 was a heck of a year on social channels. From outbursts in restaurants, to caring agents looking after customers in airports, to racial incidents between customers that agents have to diffuse — all have had a place on the world stage, serving as instructive examples.
In this article, we round up some of the good, the bad, and the ugly customer-service interactions of 2019, and detail what people and companies can learn about the incidents to do better in 2020.
Text or talk? Voice conversations are still critical, but data shows that the former is becoming a bigger part of customer service interactions. This trend is driven partly by consumer preferences and partly by companies striving to lower costs. Companies are also leaning towards text because of the promise of increased automation, which is easier to do once a conversation has shifted to text.
Big question: How should text-based communication work alongside voice for customer service? In the dark ages, the only answer to this was email, in its own silo, and a call center, in its own silo. Then real-time chat came along. And then messaging, powered by massive platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, made an appearance. Meanwhile, driving in its own lane, is good ‘ol SMS.
