Provide innovative customer support on any channel

Customers have different preferences about how they receive and access customer support—whether that means talking over the phone, messaging an agent on an app, chatting online, or sending an email for support. Regardless of the channel, support should always be easy to access. Focus on self-service, consistent support interactions, and effortless customer service to provide innovative customer support on any channel.

Self-service
Implementing a self-service strategy helps customers solve their problems quickly. In the Gartner report, “Why You Need To Rethink Your Customer Self-Service Strategy”, you can read about how to build strongself-service strategiesto reduce operational costs, drive personalized customer experiences, and increase engagement.

The Gartner report includes lots of helpful insights about self-service, including:

• A customer self-service strategy should be part of a larger, holistic strategy
• Self-service capabilities should be cross-channel
• Information across all self-service engagements should be consistent and relevant
• Self-service should take into account customer data insights for proactive support
• Mobile self-service should be considered in any customer self-service strategy

Consistent support experiences
提供customers with a consistent experience builds brand trust and enables them to orient themselves quickly to find support. Aim for a cohesive experience across all of your brand interactions—including customer service. Forrester Research offers recommendations for guiding a better and more cohesive customer service experience in the “April 2015 Brief: Focus On Three New Service Experiences To Thrive In The Age Of The Digital Customer” report. Their recommendations include:

• Getting on social media channels to provide customer service in real-time
• Using proactive notifications to connect with customers
• Embedding customer servicenatively into the product or service
• Investing in agent-assisted service
• Exploring virtual agent-assisted service

Effortless customer service
In the “age of the customer”, products, services, and customer support experiences need to be pain-free. Otherwise, they will be replaced with experiences that are less frustrating. According to the 2015 Forrester Research report, “Trends 2015: The Future Of Customer Service”, customers are often frustrated with the effort that it takes to receive customer service. In fact, 67 percent of US online consumers say that they’ve had unsatisfactory customer service interactions in the past 12 months. To create effortless customer support experiences, Forrester Research recommends that you:

• Proactively and preemptively engage your customers for service
• Personalize customer service interactions
• Focus on productivity for optimized service