TL;DR
Contact centers are increasingly essential to a business’ success, but what entails a great customer experience? Zendesk’s live chat setup has a lot to teach about this. Read more and find out what makes Zendesk’s contact center so enjoyable for its users. See how Subspace can improve your remote contact center by trying SIPTeleport for free now.
Estimated read time: 6 minutes
Customer service is central to a successful business, and your contact center is central to providing successful customer service. Statistics show that contact centers will become more critical in the future. Live chat is already a popular and effective engagement channel, and it can help your company grow.
Customers Are Looking For Personalized Service in Exchange For Loyalty
In every exchange a customer has with a company, more than their money is on the line. Each interaction represents an opportunity to earn a customer’s loyalty. Customer service is important. In fact, according to a report by Zendesk, 84% of customers consider customer service a major factor when deciding whether or not to buy from a company — making it a more important consideration than either convenience or reputation. Forbes says that, as a driver of loyalty, customer service is important to a whopping 96% of customers.
Seems easy, doesn’t it? Provide good customer service, and people will choose to do business with your company, now and in the future. But customers have high expectations, and each time they interact with customer support staff, they are comparing that interaction with the best customer service they’ve ever had.
Technology plays a central role in improving customer service, and that role will continue to grow.
Contact Centers Are Really Profit Centers
When companies invest in contact centers and recognize the importance of employee satisfaction as it relates to customer satisfaction, contact centers attract and retain customers. Consequently, increased consumer demand for goods and services — and expectations of quality customer service — will follow.
In addition to attracting and retaining customers, a contact center can also provide opportunities to upsell. Reducing latency, using AI and chatbots, and providing video chat when customers want it, are all keys to setting up a call center for success.
Want to learn more about the Subspace contact center solution? Check out this white paper here.
Real-Time Experiences Are The Key To Contact Centers That Operate Omnichannel
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends that were already emerging in 2019. For example, video chat wasn’t new, but in 2020, it became commonplace. In order to provide the level of service customers expect, contact centers must operate omnichannel — meaning that multiple methods of communication and service, depending on the customer’s needs, must be available.
Voice
Voice chat is the most well-known line of communication, and may be what customers most expect. When it’s of extremely high quality, is used along with automated assistants, and handoffs are smooth and pain-free, voice can serve as a gold standard for customer service.
Social Media
But many customers still expect more. Customers may turn to platforms like Facebook or Twitter seeking out customer service. WhatsApp is now a customer service channel, in part thanks to the many ways the pandemic transformed how people do business.
Live Chat
Live chat, too, has become a go-to for customers seeking support. Zendesk reports that nearly one-third of customers messaged a company for the first time in 2020, and most of them expect to continue using live chat as a channel for customer support.
Video
Finally, video is increasingly being deployed as a method of providing customer service. A report from Vonage reinforces the fact that the use of video chat as a customer service tool surged in 2020, and states that > “the U.S. experienced four years of growth in only seven months, with 43% of Americans now video chatting with businesses regularly.”
Live chat is the winner
Customers appear to prefer live chat versus other contact channels. Zendesk’s 2019 Customer Experience Trends Report showed that 92% of customers are satisfied with live chat as a contact option. During 2020, Zendesk reported that 74% of customers who had messaged companies through platforms such as Facebook or WhatsApp planned to continue using those channels for customer service needs.
But what happens when the problem can’t be resolved through chat or messaging?
There Is A Continued Advantage To Enhancing Live Chat With AI And Data Integration
Enhancing live chat means using chatbots, software applications that use AI to understand what people need. A smooth transition from live chat to a call, followed by an efficient exchange with a chatbot, can make the customer service experience better. CRM integration means that the customer service representative also knows about the caller’s history.
When customers can get what they need without having to repeat their story two, three, or even five times, they’re more satisfied, and when the customer service representative has all of the information they need to help the customer, the entire interaction is more pleasant for everyone. A connection that works without jitter, lag time, or other hiccups is paramount.
Proactive Service Impresses Customers
Beyond responding to problems, a customer service department can find ways to enhance the consumer experience. The basic expectation is to resolve problems when they arise, and Zendesk finds that > “customers welcome messages with a clear transactional benefit, including discounts, [updates on] issues with an order, and delivery updates.” However, proactive messaging that anticipates questions, rather than responding to them as needed, may be met with more wariness than appreciation.
Zendesk Is Pushing The Boundaries Of Live Chat
Zendesk offers a multi-channel solution that meets customers where they are to deliver a great service experience. It allows representatives to have a conversation across channels so that customers don’t need to repeat themselves. It’s flexible, so that if customers prefer a self-service option, they can use it. And it allows for messaging and live chat.
Real-Time Customer Service Requires A Real-Time Network
When your contact center uses voice, video, and even chat, your customers expect an exceptional experience. The experience needs to be as natural as talking with a customer service agent in a store. If the sound cuts out, the video freezes, calls are dropped, or it takes a long time to respond, customers will be unhappy. These kinds of problems are often caused by inadequate internet performance. But you can avoid these problems by running your contact center software on Subspace.
Subspace provides contact centers with a platform to operate, deploy, and scale their software. Subspace’s groundbreaking real-time network infrastructure and services platform provide the lowest latency, most reliable real-time and fully controllable network possible for the world’s biggest applications. Subspace’s easy-to-implement SIPTeleport allows you to get your contact center application on Subspace with a simple configuration change, and no hardware or software to install.
Your customers are comparing every customer experience to the best customer experience they’ve ever had. Run your contact center on Subspace to make sure that they are comparing everyone else to you.
