There is a huge change in the way consumers want to interact with businesses. Modern customers don’t reach out for support at the first sign of an issue.
They want to communicate with businesses on the digital channels they’re already using such as—email, live chat, and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
And they expect a prompt response.
76% of shoppers expect to engage with someone immediately when contacting a company’s customer support team.
Hence, digital transformation and digital customer service go hand in hand and are the future of all companies.
Usually, before purchasing a product, people love to read the reviews. So your company must have a site where they can find those reviews and common problem solutions; otherwise, they need to ring the help desk at the first hint of the issues. It can be the cause of dissatisfaction as they want a speedy reply.
Now you may be concerned, what is the best way to improve your customer care? What strategies do you need to apply?
Here we come with all the insight into digital customer service you need to know to improve your service.
What is Digital Customer Service (DCS)?
Digital customer service refers to the use of digital channels like social media, chatbots, email, and website messaging to communicate and resolve customer inquiries, complaints, or issues.
Unlike traditional customer service channels such as phone and in-person interactions, digital channels enable businesses to respond to customers instantly and round the clock, without any time zone limitation.
Here are some more digital mediums that may serve:
- Virtual assistants or self-service chatbots
- Live chat support by text message or video call
- Web surfing and online form-filling
- Messaging apps
- Digital self-service
Consumers can research, read reviews, and communicate with the retailer about that product. So it reduces your client’s hassles.
Whenever customers have a question about the product, they may reach out to a customer service representative. In this way, it boosts the satisfaction and trust of a consumer.
According to the survey, leading customer satisfaction brands generate sales 2.5 times quicker and provide two to five times greater shareholder returns over the next decade than their sector counterparts.
Moreover, you can add FAQ sections and complaint forms to your website. These sections help your consumers to find answers to common issues.
There is still a place for in-person purchases, but digital channels now make up the bulk of client engagements. So still you are in time to adopt this new trend.
Key Benefits of Digital Customer Service
With a positive interaction, clients are more likely to increase their purchases from your company. Even if a consumer had a positive experience with your customer service, they are ready to pay a premium of at least 13% for high-end services.
So offering virtual customer service is beneficial for your company and your clients.
Here are some digital customer care benefits:
Enhance Customer Trust and Loyalty
Digital customer service creates strong emotional connections with your customers. It enhances your customer’s trust and loyalty to buy from you again.
Time Efficiency
Customer service is essential since automating it may save time and boost productivity. It reduces operational costs and saves the company’s resources and ensures a seamless experience for the customers.
Increase Digital Consumer Engagement
Customer service and satisfaction may be vastly enhanced with digital channels. Traditional customer service wastes the company’s and the client’s time with personal information questionnaires, face-to-face confirmation, and meetings. Digitalization has improved customer experience and reduced time by updating their account and information on their own time.
Acquire Meaningful Feedback
The feedback you gather will likely be valuable if you fix your clients’ issues in real-time. People are also more likely to offer feedback when it is integrated naturally into the experience that they are having with the product. It also adds an extra point to attract more consumers and increase customer loyalty.
9 Best Practices to Deliver Digital Customer Service
64% of companies with a customer-focused CEO believe they are more profitable than their competitors.
It is important to give your clients an exceptional digital customer service experience across each touchpoint to prove yourself customer-obsessed. For that, you need to have a solid strategy in place and to deliver digital customer care across all interactions.
#1. Provide Omnichannel Customer Service Experience
Adding more chat options in your system will be easier for customers. Massaging is quick, one-on-one, accessible from anywhere, safe, and asynchronous. It will increase a more personalized experience for customers.
HBR research found that omnichannel customers spend 10% more online as well as 4% more in-store than single-channel customers.
IKEA is known for providing customers with exceptional shopping experiences and they continue to expand the channels inside their omnichannel strategy.
They offer customers a “Click and Collect” option that seamlessly transitions online orders to in-store pickup. When customers check out and select this option, they can choose the location to pick up their order.
For example, a person can gather information about a product when he is on the way to the office through messaging. That time, a live video call may be a frustrating thing for him.
- You can open your company’s Facebook page to receive any kind of complaints, orders, or positive reviews on the product.
- Moreover, you can link WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram links in your “Contact with Us” features.
#2. Offer Self-Service Portal for 24×7 Support
Around 80% of customers anticipate a self-service site or content. Virtual engagement of consumers has increased a lot during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to Microsoft, 90% of customers globally expect brands or organizations to have an online self-service customer support portal.
Whenever they visit a site to purchase something, they try to find out about that product themselves. It’s simple to assist your customer. Moreover, it enhances customer engagement with the website.
- You can add a “Self-Service Portal” page to interact with your support team from the customer’s account team. It provides business, product, and account history and support request progress updates.
- You may also include support materials like a FAQs section, webinars, and a knowledge base. From these resources, customers may discover answers without speaking to support staff.
#3. Employ Right Customer Support Staff
It’s vital to hire the right help desk candidate. Since these candidates refer to your company, they must be understanding and empathetic. Go out of traditional channels and select the right candidates.
They must have the patience to handle consumers calmly. Moreover, they must know the basic technical methods and have listening skills.
- In your job advertisements, you can post what expertise you need for your customer service.
- Hiring allows you to find someone with new skills and expertise. You should hire someone with different skills to give your business something new.
- Lastly, during the interview time, ask your customer service staff what training or procedures they want to learn. By doing this, you may understand their skill levels.
#4. Maximize the Use of AI & Automation Tools
An AI chatbot may promote your self-service alternatives by suggesting help center content. It also directs customers to where they may get instantaneous help, whether by email, chat app, product page, or checkout.
More than 88% of users had at least one conversation with a chatbot in 2022.
It handles your routine inquiries. Bots allow support staff to devote more time to issues that need customers’ involvement. It enables 24/7 customer service. It will improve digital interactions between you and your customers.
- You can buy chatbots from various platforms or build your own.
- Then, connect chatbots to your back-end systems. It enables them to access client information and make suggestions and recommendations based on users’ characteristics and past interactions.
#5. Use Technology to Assess Customer Experience and Agent Performance
Customer service department performance relies on key performance metrics. Set a benchmark of customer service KPIs and other measurements, such as post-call customer surveys, hold times, transferred calls, and call drops to smooth customer journey.
You can also measure agent performance by the average number of problems or tickets resolved and customer happiness score.
- In your support team, you can add CRM systems. CRM systems handle customer data and give sales funnel analytics. Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho, and On Pipeline are the best tools for managing CRM systems.
- Compared to PBX phone systems, cloud-based phone system software offers more voice-calling functions. You can take help from the Aircall cloud phone vendor.
#6. Connect Support Tool Data
Agents can’t customize interactions at giant firms with vast client bases since data is walled and spread across systems. Support tools work efficiently with your team’s tech stack to condense client data.
It helps businesses sync data across cloud-based apps. Agents may predict and customize services using consumer information. Besides, they will reach customer touchpoints.
- Tray.io is a useful tool for delivering support to your users. It’s a low-code general automation platform, so it will be easy for you.
- If you face a problem connecting SOA, SaaS and APIs, you can add the Anypoint Platform tool to enhance user experience.
#7. Integrate Collaboration Tools
Companies’ smooth transition to remote work was made possible through customer experience connectors with third-party apps like Zoom and Slack. Cooperation remains difficult. Only 60% of agents said they could quickly find what they needed in the knowledge base.
Agents may save time, energy, and brainpower by sharing information and working together with the support of collaboration tools. With collaboration tools, agents can help consumers more quickly by recording and sharing their expertise and paying attention to customer effort.
- To communicate with consumers, you can use Flowdock. It collects alerts from many sources, such as Twitter, Asana, and help desk software.
- For video conferences, you can use GoToMeeting. It allows users to schedule meetings and share screens.
#8. Analyze Data in Real Time
You can better meet the demands of your digital audience by adopting a data-driven strategy for the digital experience consumers have with your brand. Utilize all the customer online channels to collect the data.
Observing customer interactions in real-time helps to determine which strategies work best and make improvements. Real-time data analysis in today’s fast-paced society is paramount because it lets you learn about customer happiness, effort, conversion, and bounce rates.
- You can add the Mixpanel tool to analyze customers’ interaction with your product.
- Next, connect with Google Analytics to help you understand which works better as users A/B test their website or app’s landing pages.
#9. Be Available on Multiple Channels
Around eighty percent of buyers use multiple channels during the journey. Thus, being present in various media may significantly affect sales. While extra tracks may seem like a good idea, using more than necessary might waste time and energy.
According to marketers, most effective marketing campaigns employ four to six media. It will help to boost the authority of your business and ensure a proper digital customer experience.
- In your interface, you can add multiple channels like live chat, social media, messaging apps, video chat etc.
- Customer care bots handle 85% of conversations. When clients wish to talk to someone to clear up their questions in difficult situations, you need to have a human agent rather than depend on chatbots.
Examples of Digital Customer Service
Are you still confused about accepting digital customer service for your company? Then you can take these companies as an example for boosting your confidence.
World’s largest online retailer is Amazon. It is impossible to gain without truly emphasizing consumers’ interests and behavior.
Amazon’s business model had to integrate as it introduced additional items. Amazon lets you purchase anything in your native language with local currency. Amazon also launched Alexa, an AI virtual assistant for vocal search queries.
Its powerful system predicts what customers want and provides it upfront, enticing them to spend more. One-click purchases, speedy international shipping, a simple return policy, and 24/7 customer support keep people returning to the shop for their favorites.
Instacart, a data-driven startup, connected its customer assistance solution with capabilities to combine consumer data such as contact details, recent purchases, vouchers, and credit balances.
Shoppers might also contact Instacart’s support staff more efficiently. Customers may now update orders through a live chat with representatives. The company’s online help resources are helpful.
Instacart has a 90% satisfaction rate with 175,000 monthly digital customer support requests.
Uber is one of the best digital customer service examples. Uber employees have pain points. They can remove each of the annoyances that cab-hailing customers experience.
Since you can track a cab in real time, waiting for it is no longer a hassle. Passengers and drivers rating each other is a great way to satisfy customer and business partner expectations. Credit cards are also acceptable. It is so convenient if you are carrying less cash with you.
Digital Customer Service Trends
After such a challenging year, the need to provide excellent customer service is more apparent than ever. Here are some emerging trends in customer service that will help businesses improve their support capabilities:
Social Media
Modern companies need social media for marketing and customer service. Social media is where customers find companies, shop, and purchase. They naturally expect corporations to help them on these platforms. More than sixty percent of US social media users prefer it over email and phone because social media simplifies customer service.
24/7 Live Chat
Live chat is the best approach to assist customers in getting what they need and resolving any issues by delivering accurate information and real-time help. It will minimize live customer support agent load, save time, and improve customer happiness.
Proactive Service to Customers
Proactive customer assistance addresses problems, complaints, and unreasonable customer requests and solves problems before they happen. This service minimizes client dissatisfaction. If consumers know in advance about shipment delays, new items, tracking information, and delivery date, it’s a big step toward a positive customer experience.
Co-browsing
Co-browsing is a great new way to assist clients. Co-browsing lets agents and customers navigate any online page together.
Moreover, co-browsing and video chat allow agents to personalize online shopping. It’s secure since the agent can’t view any other data on the client’s device throughout the connection. Agents may start co-browsing when consumers accept.
Enhance Omnichannel Support with Unified Dashboards
Today’s consumers demand cross-channel experiences. A centralized dashboard where agents can access client data from chat, email, and phone brings all support channels together. A unified dashboard allows you to coordinate your many channels and points of contact with customers to provide a smooth integration.
Top Digital Customer Service Tools
Omni24
Omni24 is an omnichannel customer experience management platform that helps businesses engage with customers at their preferred channels in real time and address their concerns. It offers a range of features including live chat, email marketing, and knowledge management to help businesses create personalized and effective customer experiences.
Key features:
- Omnichannel Inbox: Allows to engage with customers across their preferred digital channels (live chat, social media, messaging apps) and deliver excellent digital customer service experience.
- Knowledge Base: Help customers to help themselves without even reaching out to you with comprehensive knowledge base comprising of solutions for the common queries customers might face.
- AI Chatbots: Provide real time digital customer care, 24×7 when your support team is not available. Connecting with customers and addressing their queries in real time deliver better experience.
- Feedback Surveys: Conducting feedback surveys helps in understanding customer expectations and the gaps customer service strategy so that you can improve the areas significantly.
- SLA Management: Empower your support agents to plan effectively towards meeting their goals and digital customer service standards.
Veemo offers a conversational customer engagement suite for businesses to manage their customer interactions effortlessly. From attracting new leads to nurturing them through the entire lifecycle, Veemo helps businesses keep track of their customer journey in a single, easy-to-use platform.
- Omnichannel Help Desk & Ticketing: Engage your customers across their preferred channels in real time and resolve their issues. It delivers a great digital customer service experience.
- Self Service Knowledge Base: Offering customers a comprehensive knowledge base help them to resolve their issues in real time without connect to the support staff.
- Advanced Routing & Workflows: Helps in directing customer requests to the right team/agent to deliver relevant response with minimum wait time.
Acquire.io
Acquire is one of the best digital customer service tools for swift, streamlined, and satisfying customer service. It consolidates all of your digital channels into a single interface, enhancing agent efficiency and the quality of the customer service they give.
Acquire uses automation that helps you to standardize your approach to customer service, decrease response times to support requests, and maximize your return on investment.
GrooveHQ
GrooveHQ is a customer support platform with a shared inbox and knowledge base. It is designed for a small customer service team to save time and react swiftly to consumers with basic automation settings, including ticket routing, tagging, and prefabricated answers.
You may develop a branded self-service knowledge base to minimize ticket traffic and provide essential support 24/7. Groove also integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, etc.
Glia
Glia is revolutionizing the way companies provide digital assistance to their consumers. Glia’s Digital Customer Service (DCS) solution improves interactions with businesses through the web and mobile devices by introducing digital communication channels, in-app teamwork, and AI-powered support. Glia enhances customer experience and business outcomes.