Customer service is a sequence of actions aimed at increasing the level of customer satisfaction that is, the formation of the customer’s feeling that a product or service meets his expectations. Customer service is an integral part of almost every business and is one of the main factors, from which the success or failure of the enterprise depends on.
Every year the service sector is now increasing its important aspect of the global economy, because, in spite of the automation and digitalization of the consumer sector, people still need the help of technical support or directly of the manufacturer.
This article discusses the various trends and developments in customer service, so let’s find out, which ones are positive, and which are negative.
Positive Developments
The customer experience should be prioritized. Nowadays, all successful companies are taking care of their customers. The practice shows that good attitude to the clients affects the growth of revenue in the extremely positive way. Companies with loyal and “glad” customers have a huge range of opportunities if we speak about changing or modification of the old products. Thanks to close contact with its clients a company is able to fix the existing problems and get the information of any defects very fast.
Providing quality service to customers should be the organization’s initiative. Satisfying the needs and wishes of each customer is the goal and initiative of the most world’s companies, which are successful and are willing to save their level (as we can see at the example of United Airlines). It’s much easier to get the loyalty of the customers for the company if it shows real care and attention to each client.
Customer experience is controlle by the customers themselves. Well-developed social networks and feedback channels provide an opportunity for the customers to influence the company’s policy and products.The most important issue here is that such initiative is welcomed by the companies. The more clients influence the company’s strategy– the better customer service becomes.
Negative Developments
The lack of social service. Many companies still don’t pay enough attention to their customers. Though we already said that many firms welcome the opinion of their clients some players of the market consider that this issue is not so important. It makes the customer not so effective and spoils the relations between buyer and seller.
Lack of consumer journey maps. According to Ganeshan (n.p.), consumer journey maps serve as diagrams, which explain the steps, to which the customers will go through during their engagement with an organization. They are significantly essential in terms of providing excellent customer experience. However, the problem is that the majority of the organizations fail to create correct customer’s journey. For an appropriate journey, mapping companies should capture customer’s feedback during the journey and only after that the conclusions should be made.
Some businesses employs the inside-out method. In order to improve the organization’s customer service, leaders should think about their clients first and business must be at the second place. The real picture shows that many firms are acting contrary.
There is a gap between social care and branding. A lot of famous brands still don’t meet the expectations of the customers. The balance between social use and quality is very important for each brand.
Perfect service is a personal service. On our opinion, the best service that can be provided by the company is when a client is accessed personally: “Natalie, we are glad to see you, we are glad that you came to us, here are your favorite shoes, deferred especially for you; we also have picked up a purse for them”. And this is the goal of all companies. They will try to identify the person, and for that purpose, the special cards will be introduced (IDs).
That it is already happening in some companies–shared services for men and women (as different people have various forms of communication). For example, many airline companies already created the children’s menu for younger customers. There is a distinction in service for children and adults already. And this division and the personification will continue.
We believe that the service will be down to fit each person; it will pick up on the history of the whole life of a particular client. The company will seek to understand what the person is breathing, what interests he has, his hobbies, his mood and the most appropriate thing that could fit him or her at the moment. I think everyone will strive to find the tools that will enable to measure and automate all that parameters. There will be tools that can estimate a person’s mood, his health, his needs and desires at the moment. It sounds fantastic, but it’s already being implemented.
Customer service of the future will be based on the knowledge of the person. It will be based on the understanding that each person is an individual with his problems, with his love, hate, with his desires. And when the company will know everything about a single person, they will be able to provide him or her with the best service in the world.
Works Cited
Ganeshan, Susan. "Good, Bad and Just Ugly Customer Service Trends." Entrepreneur. N.p., 2 Aug. 2016. Web. 5 Aug. 2016. <https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279316>.
