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.
With the powerful tool of social media, customers everywhere now have an expansive platform with which to voice their feelings about their customer service experiences. This puts a huge amount of pressure on call center agents to perform. Of course, companies hope that their customers use these social platforms to sing the praises of their brand. But, of course, this is not always the case: An IBM study found that customer service operations are often both pricey and inefficient. Companies spend $1 trillion on 265 billion customer service calls each year and 50% of the complaints were unresolved.
While call centers continue to be a crucial component to a company’s customer service strategy, digital avenues are also becoming increasingly popular. In order for brands to remain competitive and provide the level of service consumers are expecting, they must take a multi-pronged approach to their customer service tactics.
Here at Fonolo, we understand the many issues call centers face in regards to staffing, spikes, hold times, call abandonment, and more. That is why we’ve tasked ourselves to research the best solutions to deal with these problems head-on. While nothing can beat call-backs in improving your call center experience for both customers and agents, we are happy to announce the findings from our years of research.
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?
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.
