5 Hot Customer Service Technologies
full meaning of what she reads, grasping context, applying logic, and inferring implications. Like any smart worker, she learns from her colleagues, and by observing their work, she continually builds her knowledge.
Amelia speaks more than 20 languages. Her core knowledge needs only to be learned once for her to be able to communicate with customers in any of those languages.
Amelia's technology is already being piloted within a number of Fortune 1000 companies in technology help desks, procurement processing, financial trading operations support, and as an expert advisor for field engineers.
In a help-desk environment, for example, Amelia can understand what a caller is looking for, ask questions to clarify the issue, find and access needed information, and determine which steps to follow to solve the problem.
Proactive Engagement
Just a few years ago, contact centers existed primarily as reactive entities, waiting for customers to call with their problems before fixing them. However, progressive companies are taking a more proactive approach by reaching out to customers before problems develop. Many customers look favorably on firms that do this. In fact, 75 percent of consumers want the companies with which they do business to proactively engage them, according to research from Nuance Communications.
Proactive engagement is considered the ultimate in customer care, addressing even the unexpressed wishes and needs of customers. It's through this kind of interaction that customers become truly committed to the brand and the company.
Through anticipatory customer service, an organization can send a service reminder via email, the phone, text, or regular mail. If a flight is going to be delayed, an airline now has multiple touch points through which it can reach a customer and even rebook him on a new flight, with very little input directly from the customer.
This new type of customer service relies heavily on predictive analytics and journey mapping, according to Leggett.
Other business applications that can further a company's ability to proactively engage with its customers include analytics, voice-of-the-customer solutions, surveys, social media monitoring, and enterprise feedback management. All of these applications can help a business to understand customers' interests and preferences, the issues that are important to them, how and when they want to be reached, and what they think of the company and its brands. Companies can then turn that information into an experience that goes far beyond just closing out trouble tickets and more toward fulfilling broader customer needs and desires.
Of course, whenever multiple methods of communication are used, there is a fine line between effectively communicating and badgering the customer, so businesses need to ensure that customers have a way to inform them of their preferences. Simple opt-out links on email and text messages can provide that outlet.
Gamification
Just two years ago, Gartner predicted that by 2014, 80 percent of organizations will have gamified at least one area of their business. While this year fell far short of these expectations, Gartner is now saying that by 2016, gamification will be vital for brands, and that by 2020, it will have a significant impact on all customer engagement platforms.
Fluss agrees, predicting that within the next two years, substantial research and development efforts will be devoted to gamification.
"A growing number of contact center requests for proposals for workforce optimization (WFO) solutions are asking vendors if they offer gamification functionality," DMG concluded in its "2014-2015 Contact Center Gamification Product and Market" report. "These capabilities are a logical fit for WFO suites, and many of the leading and contending WFO suite providers have already incorporated, or are planning to incorporate, gamification modules into their solutions."
John Wolf, chief marketing officer at Intradiem, a provider of intraday management solutions for contact centers, states that many contact center managers have shied away from adopting gamification techniques because of the manual upkeep involved in updating employee statuses as they earn rewards. But solutions are maturing, and gamification can now be seamlessly integrated into the contact center environment, he says. With the latest solutions, "business rules can automatically update agent scores and even update agent profile and queue assignments as agents complete specified activities," he says.
Experts further predict that gamification will soon find its way into other contact center systems, including performance management, quality assurance, and surveying, to name a few.
To further show the upward trajectory of gamification, RnRMarketResearch.com recently projected that gamification would grow at a 67.1 percent compound annual growth rate through 2018.
"It's now a practical tool that's easy to implement and gives the potential for real, significant benefits," Fluss maintains.
At the very least, "it will make working in a contact center a little bit more fun," she adds.
The nice thing about all of these tools is that they are available now. Though still fairly new by contact center timelines, they are already being deployed at some forward-thinking organizations, where they are bearing fruit. In most cases, because of their availability as cloud deployments, they are not as expensive as one might think.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. "We're seeing major changes in the world of customer service," Fluss concludes. "The cloud is driving a new wave of innovation in the marketplace. In a number of areas, we're seeing new ideas enter the marketplace at an alarming pace."
News Editor Leonard Klie can be reached at lklie@infotoday.com.