Top 5 CX touch-points worth including in your 2020 digital customer strategy

In life and business, the only thing that remains a constant, is change. Embracing change throughout good and bad times is key to success. Why? Because, it is in the good times when the status quo needs to be re-evaluated, and in the bad times when those learnings need to be implemented.

No matter how many changes businesses go through, customers will remain their cornerstone. The winners in a post-COVID19 era will be determined by those who can successfully build meaningful 1:1 relationships with their customers, on their preferred channel – whichever that channel is. We call that the ultimate people-based customer experience.

But customer (experience) service through online and social messaging channels is hard to do right, and brands that get it wrong can undermine the brand-customer relationship. Communicating wrongly on live-chat, social media direct messages, or being awkwardly redirected to a human agent on a call or email with no context, can frustrate the consumer, and in turn, irrevocably erode their trust.

2020 will be remembered as the year we had to re-evaluate all our learnings, learn to learn, again, as in 2008. Not everything will change, that’s for sure, however things will evolve faster than before the crisis. The future of customer service is no longer focused solely on swift response times and a friendly tone of voice. Effortless service has set the tone in 2019 for what consumers deemed necessary, expecting convenience, in-channel resolution, and agent expertise all at once.

For the most part, brands look to adapt to consumer demands, some more successfully than others, to make “seamless experiences” part of their customer service architecture. Offering frictionless customer service will be even more relevant in 2020 than in 2019, all fast tracked due to COVID-19. Customer's expectations have matured rapidly, even without considering the current disruptions. 2020 is poised to be even more revolutionary, as Millennials and Gen Z consumers – the “always-on” generations – leave traditional archaic service channels behind, embracing digital channels due to lockdowns and social distancing measures.

What are the most relevant touch-points to generate frictionless and seamless customer experience, now that offline experiences are at their lows?

Messaging and automation

Social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns and curfews have exponentially increased online sales, and relaunched the golden era of e-commerce businesses. Digital adoption has been fast tracked due to this new normal, and as your customers mature and new generations come in to play, Millennials and Gen Z, new ways of servicing them are appearing. While 65% of customers believe that social media will drive a faster response, many brands have cut investment on “human” social care or community moderation across channels towards more automated solutions, like conversational interfaces (a.k.a chatbots), which can sit across channels – social media, instant messaging, websites or mobile apps.

By 2020, every business will need to be ready to offer messaging as a customer service channel, either from the in-house contact center, or through an outsourced third-party partner.

• Facebook Messenger: With 1.3 billion monthly users and growing, and 20 billion messages exchanged every month (10x growth in 2 years) between consumers and businesses, Facebook Messenger offers brands and consumers a real communication channel.

• WhatsApp: WhatsApp is one of the biggest messaging platforms in the world, with over 1.5 billion users. The quantity of messages sent daily is over 3x peak global SMS volume. In the UK, Europe, LATAM and India, it completely dominates other methods of communication.

• Apple Business Chat: There are more than 1.4 billion monthly active Apple devices worldwide. Although Apple’s Business Chat feature was first launched in March 2018 giving iMessage users the option to contact and interact with businesses directly in the Messages app, it is a sleeping messaging giant. In BETA still, be sure to look for further developments coming in 2020.

• Google Business Messaging: It is estimated that businesses will send an estimated 2.7 trillion SMS messages by 2022. RCS, with functionality that rivals customer-built apps, will allow businesses to use rich messaging to reach customers in powerful new ways. Watch for more news as we move into 2020/21. 

• Instagram Direct: Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users, with 80% of those users following at least one business. With the Instagram Direct API, which will allow customers to exchange threaded messages with business, rumored to be opening for BETA to CSPs in 2020, there is another messaging monster around the corner.

But why should your brand be investing in messaging channels vs. doubling down on traditional service channels?

Messaging channels are particularly valuable for customer service teams, enabling them to provide customers with a seamless experience, across channels and devices. Unlike traditional live-chat that lives only on a business website or app, customers can now connect with a brand across their website, mobile app and messaging channels (across devices - desktop, mobile, or tablet), and transition back and forth between them all seamlessly without losing conversation history and context.

Instant messaging combines full live-chat functionality with persistent identity and mobile notifications — merging all of the best elements of the traditional digital service channels, purpose built for the modern consumer.

Messaging channels are not a thing of the future, they are part of the present in today’s online customer service front, delivering in many cases the first interaction a customer has with a brand, and most probably the only one he/she will have until the problem is resolved. 

• Real-Time: consumers can switch between real-time, and non real-time conversations, depending on the urgency of the matter.

• Response Rates: brands can see 3x the response rate on messaging than on traditional channels, resulting in a more efficient service team and a brand CX model.

• People-based: brands can easily connect and interlink different audience-data layers to track and record customer complaints across channels.

• Channel and device agnostic: consumers can move between channels and devices seamlessly, depending on the convenience of that moment. 

• Automation-led: machine learning, AI, and natural language processing are changing the role of humans within customer service, moving towards overseeing and building relationships.

• Quantifiable: NPS (Net Promoted Score) and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) will give a clear picture on customer feedback and potential areas of improvement.

• Higher Response Rates: Brands can see 3x the response rate on messaging than on traditional channels, resulting in a faster service channel.

According to Gartner, chatbots will gain a prominent share on how customers interact with businesses. Bots can support interactions faster, more accurately, and with ease for both customers and agents. Adding bots in your social or online care strategy is a mature step for companies that want to remain relevant to their customers, innovating the way they interact with your brand, and most of all, through the perception of "care" associated with them.

Chatbots will power 85% of all customer support interactions by 2020.

and...

By 2022, 70% of white-collar workers will interact with conversational platforms on a daily basis.

With today’s business landscape where consumers have been adopting, more than ever, digital purchase behaviors, where does you brand stand within the digital customer experience?

Source:

• Gartner - SmarterWithGartner

• Conversocial State of Digital Customer Experience Report 2019