What will consumer care look like in 5 years? Here is what I think:
· The Need for Speed – Instant messaging, texting and twitter have all contributed to make consumers expect immediate responses to their questions. Consequently companies need strategies to address these rising expectations without driving up costs. The pace will continue to accelerate, factor that into your plans. Expect that your consumer care organization will need to react immediately to most inquiries received from many different channels.
· Collaboration Everywhere – Consumer care organizations are shifting from an “answer the consumers’ questions” mentality to a “consumer empowerment” mentality. Empowering consumers means that consumers can resolve their own issues – without humans. This trend will be at the heart of most consumer care strategies going forward. We are seeing communities arise everywhere; facebook, linkedIn, myspace, are just a few examples. Companies must develop methods to monitor and participate in these open communities (see our recent Cloud Monitor announcement). Plus, creating company specific communities presents an opportunity to build loyalty with consumers and leverage loyal enthusiasts to reduce consumer care costs if your consumers find them useful. You will need to empower consumers to self-serve 99% of all their inquiries.
· Work at Home Agents – Most of our largest customers are either using work at home agents or investigating their use. Work at home agents often have lower turnover, deliver higher consumer satisfaction and may lower operating costs as well. Really a win-win-win for consumers, employees and the company. Plan for it. Most of your care agents will probably not be in traditional contact centers.
· Mobile – Assume 75% of your consumers will be contacting you via mobile devices; consider how you will answer questions from online, SMS, IM, chat or something else not invented yet.
· Proactive Care – Advanced consumer care automation will look at trends and predict when things will go wrong for consumers. Some companies are already experimenting with these predictive technologies. Consequently companies who adopt these methods will be able to solve problems before consumers even realize they have them. Where would you be if your competitors could predict problems with your consumers, but you can’t?
While ubiquitous collaboration is a key factor, consumers today see fast and excellent response as the most importnat component of their experience with providers of service and product
The Chinese have the same word for challenge as they do for opportunity. Automating this process to an irresponsible level could bring forth a slew of unintended consequences, not the least of which is the lost opportunity to fix a customer’s problems with a creative and sometimes out of the box idea or solution that only a skilled customer service, living breathing human being can come up with.