A study done by Forrester found that improving customer experience is the top priority for 72 percent of businesses. With that being said, only 63 percent of marketers in these companies implement new technology to help improve a customer’s experience.
While the road to adopting technology in customer service might be slow, it’s still prevalent in today’s world. Here’s a quick look at both the efficiency and drawbacks of using technology to improve the customer experience.
Technology Speeds Up Help
In the past, to get help from a company, you would have needed to call in, wait in line and finally explain your issue to a representative. Naturally, wait times vary depending on the company you’re trying to reach. However, in a survey done by GetVoIP, the biggest offenders here were DIRECTV and Walmart, which made customers wait an average of 10 minutes 49 seconds and nine minutes respectively. If you’re a busy person, you might not have time to wait around for this long.
A modern alternative to calling in is to use customer service chat on the company’s website. In many cases, companies use an artificially intelligent chatbot to give customers instant replies to their queries. If they ask something easy to answer, they can spit out information immediately, meaning the customer will have a zero-minute wait time. If the problem is too complicated, then the customer can be seamlessly forwarded to a live technician.
Technology Increases the Time to Get to a Real Person
Modern customer service portals were created to reduce the need for a real person unless there’s a pressing issue. This way, frequent problems like pricing questions or shipping information can be handled automatically without wasting pressure resources. While this is more efficient for the company, it’s not so efficient for the consumer.
In a study done by New Voice Media, 55 percent of customers didn’t like calling a company because they weren’t able to speak to a real person right away. Instead, they had to navigate through the robo-menu to get to the live operator. This helps funnel calls to the right department without requiring the services of a live operator. While it speeds things up for the company, it slows things down considerably for the customer.
Over 70 percent of people said they wanted a quick response when they called in, so in this case, technology can be a big deterrent.
Technology Offers More Opportunities for Input
With technology, you can get feedback from your customers as well as answer their questions at numerous avenues. From your social media pages to your website to your product pages on third party sites, your company can be there for customers at every turn.
One way to do this is with the help of modern devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note8. With a smartphone like this, your customer service technicians can take handwritten notes for quickly jotting down a customer’s complaints. They can also take professional quality photos to help document the problem, as well as use Wi-Fi calling to ensure they never drop a call due to poor reception.
Technology Removes the Human Element
At the end of the day, many people still want to talk to a human when they’re having issues. In fact, 27 percent said that the reason they switched services was because they were unable to speak to a person when they tried to get help. Even the most advanced AI can’t replicate the feeling of expressing yourself to and interacting with another person.
Technology is the future of customer service, so it’s important for both businesses and consumers to begin embracing it. Overall, it provides a much more convenient option for both parties by speeding up help and offering more ways for input. Now all that companies have to do is find a way to weave the human element back into these interactions.
