Customer service trends change regularly and keeping up with it can seem like a daunting task for managers and business owners. Having well prepared customer support and the right mix of technology and workflows is crucial for any business in 2020 and the coming decade.

The most important areas to focus on this year

• Support at any time and where the customer is looking for you
• Simple and useful automation for customers and your team
• Combine all channels in one platform

Read on to learn about some of the customer service trends to watch out for in 2020. 

Utilise AI and Machine Learning

Even this year AI should be on your radar. Artificial intelligence is a great way to ensure your customer questions get their first reply quickly. Automated responses based on your customers questions will reduce the amount of tickets your team has to look at. Predicting the satisfaction of a ticket before it is solved can help your team to prioritise those or take extra care of the queries.

Chat bots can answer questions and even guide customers to their answer or how to use products. The method remains effective primarily because of how machine learning improves the efficiency the more a bot interacts with clients.

They come in handy because customers don’t have to wait for a human to react and can answer a lot of things themselves first. And if need be, the bots can even connect the clients to human customer representatives seamlessly. Which brings us to the next section.

Implement live channels

Customers want instant responses from any service provider. Research by HubSpot tells us that clients wish to receive answers within 10 minutes of placing a query. 

Live conversations via online chat on your website or messengers such as WhatsApp, Viber and Facebook are very popular choices. Your staff can react very quickly to incoming messages here. However, Small businesses have a problem with handling such expectations. It can be difficult for companies to meet the 24/7 expectations of their clients. 

Therefore automation mentioned above will come in handy for this. Another way to cover different time zones in an affordable way is to hire remote customer service staff to handle conversations at different times of the day.

Have mobile devices in mind

Our mobile phones – and especially smart phones – are a gateway between the physical  and the digital world. Have that in mind when designing the support experience for your customers. 

If customers can can reach conveniently from wherever they are it meets their expectations. Your team can build rapport with customers which in turn increases customer loyalty.

Enable your customers to help themselves

We are not talking about a static (and potentially outdated) online FAQ, we are talking about relevant content that presents your users the answers they are looking for. And that’s actually what most of your customers want. According to Zendesk, 67% of surveyed users prefer to find an answer themselves before reaching out to your team.

This means less people will reach out to your customer support. For this you need a good platform that incorporates tutorials, eg. as video or recorded webinars to provide answers to their questions in an engaging way.

User experience is important too

UX refers to the experience a client has spending time on your website and interacting with your products and services. If the product or service has an interface that’s hard to use, it’s likely you will get more queries in your support and/or high bounce rates. 

However, a user-friendly interface allows clients to navigate with ease and find what they came for in the first place. Consider the screen size too, eg. for smart devices as mentioned above. If your product or service is easy to use they will have less questions. If your support portal is user friendly and provides a good experience, customers are more likely to find their answers. It all plays together.

Customer Service in 2020 in a Nutshell 

Customers want answers that help them – and they want them fast and wherever they are. This is not new. But their expectations on how this support is provided, via what channels they can communicate with you and the type of devices is ever changing. 

Have your customer in mind. Be service focused. The customer service technology for 2020 can help your business to achieve this. If you thrive for great service it will become a differentiator for your company.

We can help you to prepare for this year and this decade.