How Microsoft is perfecting the art of digital customer support

Digital customer experience strategies

In order to comply with digitalization expectations from customers and wider society, many companies develop basic online self-help functions. However, Bernard Slowey, worldwide lead for digital customer support at Microsoft, maintains that this is simply not comprehensive enough.

Organizations need to evolve to have a dedicated team completely focused on digital customer experiences, and missing this important step is often one of the biggest mistakes brands make in digital customer experience – treating digital customer support as merely a bolt on to support capacities.

“A lot of companies treat digital as a bolt-on to their support organizations,” says Slowey. “They have teams of people focused on call centers and improving minute-per-incident and handle-time for voice calls with customers, but then digital support is considered as a bolt-on.”

Microsoft took this step around 18 months ago by building the digital customer support department, which Slowey leads. From the outset, the tech giant set the goal for the digital customer support team to fund itself in the first year. This would be achieved from the savings the team would accumulate by solving customer issues digitally and thereby reducing the volumes shouldered by more expensive support channels – such as voice.  In the first year, the team exceeded its target, achieving a 3x ROI (return on investment).    

Read: The Global State of Customer Experience 2020

He clarifies that many brands incorrectly assume digital customer experiences are only about shrinking a brand’s traditional support volume. “Actually digital support is all about giving customers choice,” he explains.

“If you implement and manage digital support really well, yes, you will probably reduce support volume, because the majority of people want to digitally self-serve, but the intentions behind digital are rooted in giving customers choice on how they wish to interact with your brand.”

Sign up to Slowey’s online session at CXN Live: Contact Centers for more great insights into how Microsoft is perfecting the art of digital customer support.

Image: Sourced from Microsoft Press Center - The Visitor’s Center at Microsoft Headquarters campus pictured July 17, 2014 in Redmond, Washington. (Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)