For many people, the COVID-19 pandemic was the one that pushed companies to transform their physical shops into e-commerce. The pandemic forced these companies to show their hands and appeal to the customers, thereby putting the power where they truly should belong—on the consumers’ hands. But this is not right. There has been a digital revolution for quite some time now. The more digital the customer journey is, the higher the customer satisfaction. That was a reality even before the pandemic wreaked havoc in our lives. It is still a reality now, a year after COVID-19 upended businesses.
Think about it: what do your customers want more than anything right now? They want to read about you on social media. They want to be able to reach you to comment, inquire, and suggest. These things are only possible if you have a digital presence and allow digital transformation services to take command of your business’s customer experience and satisfaction.
What’s in It for You?
Of course, for businesses, the real concern is how they can benefit from digitizing customer service. Sure, companies want to serve their customers the best way possible, but they also want to make sure they won’t be left in the dust. They want an assurance that they’re going to get their cut of the pie, too. Digitizing customer service may be more beneficial for the company than it is for the consumers.
Think about it. Companies will save thousands of dollars—not to mention time and energy—when they use smart technology and artificial intelligence to serve their customers. Businesses can cut back on the expenses and time they spend on cold calls. Instead, they have to do social selling.
They don’t need to pay a phone operator to answer inquiries from customers. They need to leverage social media to meet the growing demands of their consumers. Do you know what the best thing about this is? Social media is a free-for-all platform.
How to Start Transforming Your Customer Service
The first thing any business has to do is identify where it is today. Are you fully traditional with your customer service? Are you already incorporating some forms of digital methods into your customers’ experiences? Are you semi-digital? To transform your customer service, you have to know where to begin. You have to identify what you lack in terms of systems, programs, devices, and apps.
Once you have a clear idea of your customer service’s strengths and weaknesses and the gaps in them, then you can begin transitioning to a fully digitized customer service program. The transformation, of course, will need to be slow and sturdy. These are the things you have to remember when choosing what characteristics of digital services matter to your customers:
24/7 Customer Support
The first kind of transition offers convenience at every turn. Make customer support available 24/7. How can you do that? Instead of hiring an actual person to man your social media channels, you can integrate a bot into your messenger. Artificial intelligence has become so sophisticated over the years that it can now set schedules, reserve a booking, and address complaints.
Accurate and Dependable
Next, you have to make sure that your service isn’t only immediate but also accurate and dependable. For this, you will need data analytics. Big data will give businesses an insight into what their consumers believe, why they behave the way they do, and what will make them stick to or change their beliefs. Data is an outlook; it is an overall appreciation of your customers seeing as data will push companies to give them what they need and want.
Personalized Customer Service
Finally, consumers want companies to call them by their names. Personalization is big in customer service. When you send an email, make sure to use your customer’s first name. If possible, personalize the content of the message, too, according to their preferences and even past purchases. Knowing that you are keeping tabs on what they want will help you retain them. From casual buyers, they could turn into loyal customers.
Digitizing customer service isn’t just a trend. It is here to stay. As consumers become more aware of the power they wield, they will use this to get what they expect from the brands that they support. Companies, of course, will do well to heed these demands. With the vast competition in the market, consumers must be front and center of every marketing strategy and customer service improvement that you can think of.
