What is the problem?

In today’s world, customers expect better service than ever before. Customer service is hard, since customers will engage with you on their channel of choice and you have to be able to respond successfully without breaking the bank or losing your mind. You want to be able to scale customer service but your costs are high because you have to have a lot of people available at all times, and if they’re not busy your money is wasted.

Call center challenges:

In addition to consolidation of multiple channels into a contact center, there are other challenges associated with call centers.

• Customers have high expectations: Customers expect contact centers to be available 24x7 and for the agents to be knowledgeable about their issues.
• Customer service needs to embrace new technologies as they arise: As customers become more reliant on technology in their life, they expect the same from companies.
• Need to resolve customer issues faster: Customers want quick resolution of their issues. Companies need to implement tools that provide better visibility into cases and improve collaboration between agents, engineers and experts in support groups.
• Need to better predict customer demand: Growing number of customers makes it difficult for companies to predict the number of agents needed during different time periods in day or night. Contact centers also need better data on hold queues, agent utilization and wait times so that they can make informed decisions based on trends and patterns.
• Need to improve customer experience and satisfaction: Every contact center wants happy customers and wants them to recommend your product/service/company to someone else.

Demand for self-service is growing

Self-service options are increasingly expected these days, but they’re also growing in popularity. With a self-service portal, your customers can solve their own problems and find answers on their own time, without having to wait in an interminable phone queue. This is more convenient for your customers, who may be busy or traveling when they run into an issue with one of your products or services.

Self-service portals are also better for your company. They’re more efficient to operate than traditional modes of customer service — like telephone support — because they allow you to scale up quickly to meet demand. Plus, implementing self-service means fewer agents will have to answer questions about common inquiries or issues that have already been addressed on the site. You can keep it simple by providing all the relevant information about a particular problem directly on the website’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page instead of forcing customers to contact someone at your company for every minor question that comes up.

Customer service interactions are becoming more complex

In an age of self-service, customers are asking more questions and assistance is becoming increasingly specialized. Customers expect a seamless and consistent experience across channels and faster response times. Agents are becoming more specialized to better address customer needs.

This means that your contact center’s architecture must be able to support an ever-growing number of skilled agents — and that agents need to be able to provide the right answers at the right time through the right channels.

Technology can help you address the evolving needs of your customers by providing modern, integrated solutions that drive operational excellence across your business.

Today’s customers expect a consistent, contextual experience across all their interactions with your company. Whether they’re calling in to speak with a representative or self-service through an app, the knowledge these customers have about your business will be accessible and relevant to the task at hand. Technologies like those provided by Salesforce can help you address the evolving needs of your customers by providing modern, integrated solutions that drive operational excellence across your business.

Here are four ways how:

• A single view of the customer: Provide one comprehensive view of each customer to gain insight into their needs and deliver personalized service experiences across every channel. Having deep visibility into each customer’s background helps you provide a better service experience, which in turn nurtures customer loyalty and trust.
• Single platform for process automation: Build a single platform to manage end-to-end customer service processes so that agents can focus on delivering high value activities and resolving issues quickly. This allows you to reduce costs while improving employee engagement and satisfaction — a win-win for both employees and customers alike!
• Single system of record: Have one system of record where all data is stored so that teams can operate more efficiently with fewer errors in less time than before — and make better decisions when it comes time for them to choose between multiple systems competing against each other outside this single system (such as legacy solutions like ERP). This results not only in happier employees but also happier clients because they know their problems will be solved faster too! With this technology, it becomes easier than ever before to keep everyone connected within your organization; from sales reps who need access immediately after closing deals through project managers who rely heavily on CRM records being up-to-date at all times without fail!

Want to learn more or discover how your organization can adopt technology to overcome these challenges? Reach out to our Customer Service experts at Harrier.

About the Author

Jan Aertgeerts is a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect (CTA) and Managing Director at Harrier. Jan is passionate about building secure, high-performance technical solutions.