What is customer service?

The face of customer service has been forever reshaped by the pandemic. Research has shown that in the wake of Covid-19, 80 percent of consumers now expect better service, whether this is providing solutions to issues faster, or being more empathetic.

In addition, the psychological and emotional pressures from recent global events are shifting customer values and expectations. Consumers are more likely to experiment with other brands, retailers and services as they swap businesswear for loungewear and focus more on function over fashion. In CX Network's Global State of CX 2023 report, 65 percent of CX practitioners said customers would switch brands if they were unhappy with their experience. 

With expectations at an all-time high, exceptional customer service has become imperative to prevent churn, but delivering it is more complex than ever before. This guide to customer service covers the types of service offered today, the tools changing the service landscape, the benefits of improving service and tips on how to get started.

Contents 

• Types of customer service
• Essential tools to improve your service
• How to deliver exceptional service
• The benefits of improving service quality
• Top tips for customer service

Types of customer service 

Customers may reach out to customer service at any point during their research, sale or post-sale journey. Broadly speaking there are two types of customer service: live service and self-service.

While live service is staffed by real human agents, self-service sees customers interact with advanced tech tools to address their own queries in their own time either through a computer, tablet or mobile device.

In addition to face-to-face service, companies typically offer both live and self-service as part of their omnichannel model. For example, email, social media and other conversational support channels can be handled by a human agent or automated with the use of a virtual assistant or chatbot integration.

Other tools, such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) allow customers to self-direct their queries to live agents, or in some cases complete basic tasks via phone.

As service suite tools become more advanced the number and range of queries a customer can address without the help of a live agent is growing. Not all customers enjoy using self-service, however and despite a proliferation of new channels and technologies, the phone remains the most popular way for customers to contact a company.

The 2023 Achieving Customer Amazement Study by Shep Hyken confirmed that 87 percent of Baby Boomers – who make up more than 21 percent of the US population – prefer the phone to any other channel. Among Gen Zs and millennials that figure drops to 21 percent and 20 percent respectively.

Despite this, 41 percent of consumers of all ages would spend more money if they knew they would never have to wait on hold for customer support help.

Essential tools to improve your service

Customers want personalized service experiences that are initiated on their terms and do not force them down a live or self-service route they do not want to take. There is no shortage of tools designed to help organizations meet this need and they can be grouped into these categories. 

Omnichannel

Service interactions begin when a customer chooses how they will contact an organization. This means organizations need a robust omnichannel service strategy that blends traditional channels such as phone, web, email and chat, with emerging channels such as video support and mobile apps.

Research by CX Network shows most businesses have made efforts to progress from a multichannel model of customer service to an omnichannel model. Brands that do not recognize the demand for omnichannel experiences, however, risk surrendering entire customer segments to competitors that do recognize the demand.

Chatbots and AI

The launch of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) is transforming the way customers interact with companies. These AI-powered tools can help companies solve customer problems earlier, supercharge their agents to resolve issues quicker and create content for marketing and engagement purposes. Two standout ways AI is deployed in CX is via digital listening and chatbots.

AI can help uncover potential customer engagements by using digital listening. AI can listen to a variety of public data sources including social media, review sites, forums, websites and blogs, to identify key words and spot interactions relevant to your business.

The system can then notify suitable agents, whether this is a human or a chatbot, so the information can be used to proactively support customers or be used to guide product and process improvements. This information can be used to rescue customers at risk of churning and provide predictive CX.

Chatbots can respond to large volumes of customers simultaneously, in addition to being able to administer customer care outside of standard business hours, allowing them to meet the 24/7 availability many customers desire.

The information mined by AI tools can inform a business on how it can improve everything from the customer experience and journey to business operations. It requires high-quality data, however, in order to deliver on its full capabilities.

Self-service

Since the Covid-19 pandemic forced people to work remotely, many companies moved towards optimizing self-service options for their customers. Self-service has become a requirement for many customers now, enabling brands to resolve customer complaints and reduce customer frustration. 

Effective self-service is one means by which to deliver support at speed. Our Global State of CX 2023 research found that 42 percent of practitioners agree that customers are now more willing to self-serve.

The channels offered to meet this demand should comprise a mix of both live and self-service options. Within the self-service suite, customers typically expect to be able to access chat, knowledge bases and FAQs, and sometimes online or community forums.

Social media

While technically a contact channel, social media comes into its own for customer service, allowing organizations to conveniently converse with customers as well as monitor their sentiment through social listening.
Customer contacts through social can be handled by both chat assistants or human agents, and monitoring to consumer feedback and responding to and managing customer complaints.

By making your customer service accessible via social media, customers are able to flag issues and get them resolved in an efficient manner that works for them.

Social media channels are also increasingly providing customers with an additional shopping platform. 

How to deliver exceptional service

Tools are a key component of service and as outlined can transform both the customer and agent’s experience of an interaction. But while we have learned how technology can supplement and replace the work of human agents, it is no match for the human touch. Regardless of how a customer accesses service, they still expect their service experience to be prompt, polite, professional and personalized.

Empathize with your customers

Introducing a customer-first culture and a voice of the customer (VoC) program can inspire employees to deliver empathetic customer service, as it allows staff to recognize customers as people rather than issues to resolve.

Suman Kargupta, head of customer experience at telecommunications organization Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, told CX Network that, “Most organizations outsource or delegate VoC programs to the service function. I always believe that doing so creates a huge chasm between the customer and employees. So, I created an enterprise-wide VoC program. Every employee was given a mandate to directly or indirectly interact with our customers.

“It completely transformed people within the organization. Employees started appreciating customer pain and issues and started identifying with them. Suddenly, the customer was transformed from a number to a person with aspirations, needs, demands and emotions.”

Ensure your services are accessible for all

While emphasis is often placed on providing information to customers, equal consideration must be given to how the information is delivered. Self-service solutions like FAQs must be given in language that is accessible to customers, otherwise companies run the risk of alienating their customers and causing frustration.

Jonathan Frey, CMO of online electric bicycle retailer Urban Bikes Direct, explained how this can cause churn: “Overly technical answers will confuse customers that are already in need. At best, they may avoid your self-service experience in favour of any hands-on support options you offer, which is far from cost effective. At worst, they may seek answers from your competition.”

To avoid these issues, it is important to reflect the language of your customers and the tone they would expect from your brand. You can read more about ensuring customer service is accessible in this article on designing inclusive customer experiences. 

Break down data silos

When resolving customer service issues, customer service agents can be hindered if they have to sift through a mixture of silos to reach the information they need.

Ritanbara Mundrey, global consumer and marketplace insights manager at Nestlé, saw how this affected customer insights after realizing that that 84 percent of customer calls were being miscategorised as complaints.

“We were missing out on 84 percent of our customer insights,” she noted. “When we began to look into the way things were analyzed we realized that understanding the context and urgency of customer engagements is critical.”

For issues to be solved quickly and permanently, information silos must be broken down. When all employees are working together, the progress of an issue can be tracked from inception to resolution, ensuring that the process is completed efficiently and effectively.

Joe Fuster, head of CX cloud at Oracle, shares advice on how to break down data silos: “Ingesting data from data silos, integrating data from diverse sources and capturing data as it occurs, are challenges that can be overcome with a comprehensive set of capabilities. Initial hurdles can be addressed by: identity management, unified customer profiles and data collection in milliseconds, across channels.

“Enterprise customer data platforms provide the next set of capabilities at scale to observe the digital behaviors of individuals, apply AI and machine learning in real-time and then trigger in-the-moment predictions across CX channels.”

Data is also the primary ingredient needed to train conversational artificial intelligence models. 

Develop the customer service skills of your workforce

There are a number of customer service skills that are necessary to deliver great customer experiences, no matter what industry you are in. Ensuring your employees have these skills – and continuously developing them – is vital to the success of a business.

Communication skills, emotional intelligence, problem-solving and a collaborative mindset are among these. Check out our guide to the 11 key customer service skills you should ensure your workforce has. 

The benefits of improving service quality

If your company can deliver high-quality customer service, especially during unprecedented times, customers will notice. If your customer service remains consistently high, this will lead to an increase in customer loyalty and making them less likely to churn.

Likewise, if customers are having their issues resolved quickly and easily, they are more likely to be satisfied with your company as a whole.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s Kargupta said that introducing a VOC customer service program helped employees boost customer satisfaction by being more empathetic: “Employees started asking “why?” to themselves and to their teams, suppliers and internal customers. In the end that translated to better processes, systems, and outcomes and our customer satisfaction scores started galloping ahead.”

Top tips for customer service

CX leaders and practitioners, journey designers and service managers must implement effective tools, embrace accessible omnichannel-first service, and empathize with customers and break down data silos to deliver exceptional service. 

We also asked leading influencers for their tips on customer service.

Define the service culture

Jeff Toister, CX author and keynote speaker has several tips for creating customer-centric cultures in any organization – and his first tip is to define the service culture.

He said: “How do you boil your culture down to one simple sentence? Everyone in the organization should have one statement that describes with absolute clarity what they are trying to accomplish for their customers.”

Be memorable

According to Nicole Cable, chief experience officer for CareMax, Inc., customers are loyal to brands with outstanding, memorable experiences.

She said: “I always tell our team members that we need to deliver service so memorable, people will tell stories. It’s not your marketing or your sales, but your customers who are bringing in new business.”

Provide ongoing support

At GlassesUSA.com, CX goes beyond product and service and, according to VP of customer experience Doron Pryluk, the secret to keeping coming back is “stellar customer support”.

“This means setting up an integrated system that reaches out to customers through channels such as phone calls, emails and live chat. The team in charge of handling queries will need training on how best to address issues and more importantly, they must understand your company’s mission. Ideally, they will get feedback from each customer they speak with so they can learn which products are popular and what problems come up frequently in order to constantly be improving,” he said.

Be unique

All-round CX authority Chip Bell coined the term value-unique to describe the ability for an organization to give customers something different to its competitors.

Bell told CX Network: “People do not talk and tweet about good service, but they do talk and tweet about unique service. I don’t mean it has to be way over the top, but it should be an experience that makes a customer say “well, that was different”. Value-added simply means how do I take what the customer expects and adds more? Whereas I like to focus on what I call ‘value unique’ and how we create a unique and unexpected experience.”

Bring a human touch

Shirley Campbell, direction of CX for fintech Payoneer says that the technology driving your service suite is important, but for customers who want to resolve a service query the most important thing is empathy and connection.

She said: “When customers choose your digital channels, they look for an easy, personalized, fully self-serviced experience. They don’t care if your chatbot has the best artificial intelligence (AI) or the best neuro-linguistic programming engine, if the bot itself is not designed with the right mind-set around tone of voice, personalization or simple calls to action.”

Make everything effortless

There is no shortage of research confirming that customers want friction-free and convenient experiences.

Valeriia Chechotkina, CX production operations manager for Revolut, says that in 2023 the best word to describe good CX will be ‘effortless’.

She said: “In a fast-paced world, with a huge amount of information available and tasks to do, what our customers really need is to receive a quality of service that is intuitive, efficient and does not require additional input from them.

• This article was originally published on June 30, 2021 and updated on August 29, 2023