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.
For now, you can find companies trying any or all of these strategies. You can read success stories in each. But, at some point, it’s likely that one of these channels will become the dominant companion to voice. By that I mean it will have enough critical mass that it’s just assumed by consumers that any large company will offer it, in the way we assume any large company has a toll-free number and an email address.
Everyone involved in customer service wants to understand consumer channel preference. Otherwise, how can you allocate resources between phone, email, chat, SMS messaging and social channels?
![[Whitepaper] The New Customer Service Lexicon](https://fonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Whitepaper-The-New-Customer-Service-Lexicon.png "[Whitepaper] The New Customer Service Lexicon")
The world of customer service is ever expanding, making it a complicated and dynamic space to navigate. With new communication channels appearing and evolving every year, it’s a challenge to understand how they relate to each other, and how they should work together. New terminology can help our thought process, if we all agree on the meaning. Conversely, ambiguity about words like “digital” or “chat” or “call” makes the navigation harder.
Customers increasingly prefer chat over other communication channels, but chat suffers from an 
Customer service is arguably the single most important aspect of any organization. With that, support departments have to understand how customers wish to communicate in order to be successful.
Messaging is growing at a 
