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?
So, we’re all involved in a little anthropology project. In my best David Attenborough voice: “Let’s observe this 35 year-old male as he wishes to find out why his order is late.”
In fact, it may be harder than anthropology because we are looking forward as well as at the present and the past. We also want to know what the preferences will be next year, and in five years. Otherwise, how can we plan ahead? Technology takes time to deploy.
It’s understandable that there is a craving for data on this topic. Every year, many analyst firms and research groups try to illuminate the future with surveys. And one of the most common ways to present results from those surveys is via the cohort chart. It seems to give us the exact answers we need, but can also be misleading.
These days, customers are savvier than ever. Generic, sales-heavy marketing campaigns no longer have the same impact they once did. Thanks to social media platforms, customers wield more power than ever before. Customer service and call center agents are certainly feeling the effects of this power: They are working harder than ever to successfully meet customer demands to earn rave reviews rather than damaging social media rants from customers. This can place a great deal of pressure on call center agents, so companies must find ways to keep their morale high.
Most marketing decisions today are driven by data. With CRMs, social analytics, Google analytics and e-commerce platforms readily available to most companies, marketing teams are able to pore over and analyze enormous amount of statistics, numbers, charts and trends. From product development to launch strategies and content planning, data is often behind many key decisions being made by company leaders.
Listen: We can learn a lot from cartoons.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: What a world we live in.
Every time a customer comes in contact with your brand, whether it’s in-store or online, each interaction is a touch point that contributes to the customer experience. Consumers are demanding more, and their choices are ever expanding, which means that better service will lead to greater customer loyalty.
What’s driving the enormous interest in chat bots right now? A year after Facebook’s launch of its bot platform (which TechCunch called “the new app store”) it now has 
Today, the customer experience is arguably the number one determinant of an organization’s success. Aberdeen reports that companies with strong omni-channel strategies retain an average of 
According to 
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back towards the technology, not the other way around. – Steve Jobs
