Growing customers’ expectations are forcing the world of online support to change its approach. Many surveys were used to determine if one company’s services were easily understandable, helpful and how plausible it is for customers to use them again.
Since technology is advancing every day, the need for face-to-face interaction is decreasing, while remote working takes over. This urges all Call Center Agents to rise their empathy and patience to the maximum level.
Social media had also taken part in this matter, raising awareness and pushing customer service right to the top, showing how customer’s loyalty dropped because of an inappropriate service. It was considered for years that call centers are a way of dealing with urgent, immediate problems, requiring accuracy and quickness, which made us deal with emergencies instead of adapting to the needs of customers.
However, experts predict that by 2030 85% of interactions between customers and companies will be without the need for a human agent. This can be seen even now on many sites, offering their consumers to fill up a form in order to receive further instructions, which are usually auto generated.
This might disturb the relationship between both parties, particularly because a machine can never replace a soothing voice and a promise that things will be taken care of.
Given how most consumers want support while online it is likely that web chats are the future of customer support. The simplicity and accessibility of this system allows users to communicate in real-time without formality, waiting in lines or doing small talk. It may be a human or virtual agent, but the statistics from 2018 show that 82% of all users rated service as good or very good. It was also noted that the sales increased almost double.
Furthermore, the new smartphone generation will require a 24/7 consumer service experience and on-the-spot assistance. It is inevitable that an average call center agent will need to have a much wider range of skills in the next 10 years, as well as be up to date with all technological updates.
The main idea is that the helping expert can be anyone, anywhere, available at any time of the day, meaning that the back-office will be in highest demand ever. This concept should assure many more job offers, give more career options, for all companies will eventually implement this simple contact with their customers.
On the other hand, being the client or agent, the channel will have its limits. Companies can no longer rely on their well-defined niche to keep them ahead, experience is all that counts, and the social turns every person-to-person/machine conversation into a public one.
At the end of the day it’s the customer who will always choose their preferred method of communication, their needs might change every prediction, no matter how accurate they may seem.