Delighting customers with Tech Innovations in the rapidly evolving ecosystem

Since the onset of the pandemic, we have witnessed tremendous change in the way we work and communicate. As millions adapted to remote set-ups and retreated into isolation, businesses had the opportunity to step up and provide exceptional customer experience to their users which was the need of the hour. Customer service is about assisting and advocating customers in their discovery, use, optimization, and troubleshooting of a product or service. Today customers expect premium service to be built-in from the first interaction and carry through their product journey. The goal of customer service is to build long-term relationships with customers and delight them and turn them into brand advocates. It is not just about providing a seamless experience through product lifecycle but also position the brand as customer-obsessed that prioritizes its users before everything else.

Today, the most successful businesses are hyper-focused on fine-tuning their customer engagement strategies and leveraging innovative technology to help them deliver a better customer experience. Focussing on the current trends, brands are continuously evolving and innovating to match up to their customer expectations across platforms and ensuring that they are heard and catered to.

Customer Service Automation is the technological innovation that enables us to support our customers' lifecycles, improve customer engagement, and, ultimately, assist us in producing higher returns and better business outcomes. An effective CRM facilitates us to get a 360-degree view of our customers' needs.  The evolution of social media, chatbots, data management platforms, predictive analytics, enables us to look at a customer’s requirement. We can now serve and engage customers through a variety of digital channels, such as smartphones, social media, chats, emails, or voice-based devices. This allows us to get the most out of every customer interaction and serve them purposefully.

Here are few practices to adopt for increasing customer engagement and provide better satisfaction  through technological innovations:

Collect customer data to deliver a better experience

Customers are willing to provide information if the process is simple and improves their overall experience. Connecting the dots, analyzing data, and storing information in one location are all critical components that technology can help with. Data analytics is essential in building an effective database and identifying the customer needs to the core. New technology tools, such as predictive analytics, are capable of accurately predicting trends in customer response which organizations can now use to offer them resolutions before it turns into a full-blown issue. Predictive analytics can provide early detection of precursors to drive change in customer behavior. This enables brands to be more proactive, allowing them to tailor their messages in advance, effectively serving the customer before they are even aware of a new need. It's an approach that allows organizations to provide superior customer service much in advance.

Be available to your customers across multiple channels, in real-time

Customers no longer stick to a single method of contacting brands; instead, they switch between devices and channels. Use apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to meet your customers whenever and wherever they need you. It is pivotal is managing customer queries and keeping them engaged across platforms. The adoption of the mobile-first approach and the evolution of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is bridging the gap between consumers and brands. In many countries, these technologies are being already deployed by brands to provide better consumer satisfaction. These technologies clubbed with platforms across segments pave a path to complete ecosystem access that allows businesses to be present everywhere and every time a customer need. Another key element of customer service in this rapidly evolving world is to be present 24*7 as customer needs are sporadic and they expect support round the clock.

Focused services

To gain customer satisfaction and attention it has become important to give them clear-cut solutions. Because of the high-speed technology that exists today, people prefer timely and effective resolutions to their issues.  Navigation bars with concise and clear categories allow people to access information rapidly and easily help them identify the problem areas they need help with. Technology has ramped up these services and It is pivotal for the business to adopt this mechanism to ensure an efficient experience.

Better technical services

As virtual engagement has become a new reality; businesses need to provide better remote techniques to customers so that they can solve the problem themselves without any physical presence of an engineer. Better services result in customer retention and build trust towards the brand. Today, providing remote solutions has become extremely important considering the pandemic impact and people being more tech-savvy than in previous times. The customer experience team should have a distant troubleshooting mechanism that saves the customers a trip to the service center and also cuts down physical load on the on-site servicing team. If implemented accurately, this is a win-win situation for both businesses and the customers.

Meaningfully deciphering the customer asks

To gain a true understanding of what your customer is telling you, it is important to solicit customer feedback through multiple mechanisms, such as customer councils, online surveys, social media, and voice analytics. Customers are the backbone of every business and to keep them engaged in the future, we need to collect their valuable feedback at every step of the way and bring in developments and changes to address concerns. This further amplifies the relationship and encourages customers to be valuable members of the brand.

An omnichannel strategy with a strong focus on online channels is a must for a better customer experience. The pandemic pushed the brands to revamp their customer service and has encouraged them to combine offline and online approaches for seamless issues management. Going forward, brands need to build on simplified product content that is self-explanatory and can save users the hassle to go through the servicing process. This will further help them navigate easily through the complexities and find an answer to their queries in a simplified way. The aforementioned methods are some of the ways how the customer experience segments can integrate the right technology in the right place to ensure good customer service and create a pivotal change within the industry.

Rahul Goel, Senior Director, Market Engineering, Canon India>