Simply put, it allows businesses to build formative and fulfilling relationships with the customers that buy and use their product or service: the people that are most important to them. 

Customer support services offer an open channel for feedback that contributes to the visible growth and improvement of a business, giving consumers more confidence in the company’s ability to adapt and meet their needs.

The result of good customer support is clear, with recent research from Zendesk revealing that 77% of customers are more loyal to businesses that offer top-notch service; good customer support offers a way for companies to get one over their competitors.

However, over the past 18 months, the customer support landscape has changed. Businesses, both in and outside of the industry, have been forced to adopt hybrid and remote working practices to cope with the pandemic, and IT decision-makers across every sector have opted to integrate more tools into increasingly cloud-based, digital workflows.

As a result, customer service expectations have quickly evolved, with the introduction of video calls, intuitive chatbots and a whole host of new, unfamiliar technology – leaving both consumers and workers unsure of what to expect from the future contact centre, the home of customer support. 

That said, this rapid acceleration of digitalisation is not something to be feared. Even in a technologically advanced world, contact centres will all be ultimately focused on achieving the best for customers; it’s an exciting moment for the industry.

A multimedia experience

Over the last few years, video calling has been en vogue, particularly since the start of the pandemic – as we were all forced to move conferencing and social engagements to our own homes. In the years to come, that trend may remain across many contact centres, but perhaps not quite as much as one would expect.

With the prevalence of ‘Zoom fatigue’ on the rise, many are realising that video might not be the best mode of communication for every occasion. Voice-only calls can be much less daunting and, in many instances, have an added intentionality to them.

We can therefore predict that video will not be the only medium through which we communicate, and it will be up to contact centres to adapt their choice of tool to the task at hand. Video, for example, may be more useful when a customer needs a software issue explained in real-time. However, calls may be more appropriate when talking about the status of a customer’s account, or a more general query.

This brings to light the recent phenomenon of the metaverse, which is often seen as the next big thing to affect our lives from a technology perspective.

Recently, The Ministry of Health and Prevention in Dubai opened the world’s first Metaverse Customer Service Centre. There’s no doubt that there will also be a place for this in the future, particularly when it comes to businesses that ordinarily use the metaverse as part of their product. However, just like voice and video, it will ultimately be up to businesses to use it in the right context – rather than as a novelty – to achieve its true value.

More data, more value

Good customer service is characterised by the importance of knowing your customers – their interests, the way they like to be treated, and what they want from a business when they walk in. When it comes to contact centres, this side of customer service can often be lost.

By prioritising how quickly a customer is connected to a member of staff, which comes as standard practice within the industry, the caller is expected to talk to an operator that has little to no context about their history as a customer. This can be particularly tiresome when calling about the same, repeated problem.

With rich data and analytics, this is changing. Now that customer service platforms have the ability to gather and process call information on each individual customer, every operator will have an in-depth understanding of the caller. These intelligent customer service platforms are able to track customer details, offer a breakdown of customer history and pass other important customer insights to the operator – all in one comprehensive database. This not only increases efficiency on behalf of the centre, allowing businesses to achieve better results, but also means that customers are left feeling more valued by the business at the end of the call.

Integration for unmatched customer service

It’s important to recognise that due to the nature of the hybrid-working world, data is now collected by a whole host of applications and tools. The goal of this is to achieve a higher level of customer satisfaction, but too much data can be overwhelming for businesses, as it becomes difficult to use all of it in collaboration and to its full effect. This is where integration becomes key.

Customer service platforms are recognising that in order to be able to offer every customer the same level of service, businesses need to be able to access multiple applications in one place. Not only that, but every application needs to be compatible with one another to really achieve the best possible results. In turn, businesses are able to develop a 360-degree view of their customers, through which they can tailor their service to offer the best customer support possible.

These ‘application ecosystems,’ made up of partnerships between multiple vendors, will be key for the customer service centre of the future. We expect software providers within the space will continue to build platforms that can both easily integrate, and be easily integrated, by partner tools in the years to come.

This is a new age for the contact centre that sees technology taking centre stage through AI, data, application ecosystems, and maybe even the metaverse. It may seem foreign to the traditional approach of picking up the phone, but with a sharpened focus on customer importance, it will certainly prove a better alternative to being yelled at by a caller that wants to be passed onto the manager.