The customer service center is the heart of the company-customer relationship. It should go without saying, then, that if the service center does not meet and exceed customers’ expectations, then the heart is likely to stop beating.To this end, here are five predictions that, if heeded, will help you build stronger customer relationships in 2014:
- Your customer base is growing more multicultural. It’s not enough today to offer just the major basic languages and call yourself multicultural. Analyze your own unique customer base to uncover the diversity that is drawn to your brand, and then employ language and culture experts to help them thrive as high-value customers.
- Digital natives are becoming adults. Today’s twenty-something’s don’t seem to remember a life without the Internet, e-mail, or texting. Remember that these are just the price of entry. Solving their problems and addressing their needs requires a different mindset and problem-solving skills.
- Your customers are growing older. The American population is living longer and is staying active longer, which means the range of ages across your customer base is stretching. As a result, you may have to increase the number of ways you address your customers’ needs.
- There are more people with smartphones than without. This year, the number of smartphones vs. all other cell phones crossed the tipping point into the majority, and the amazing ways that your customers can manage their lives through their smartphones is becoming the norm for them. Understand these changes in behavior and integrate them into your service offerings.
- Social media is a permanent part of your customers’ lives. While social sites themselves can rise and fall like the ocean tide, social media as an industry is completely embedded into your customers’ daily lives. Understand how and where your customers use social communities and include your brand in those circles.
The times are changing, and your call center solutions are changing with them. By shifting from single channel to multi-channel, adding proactive to reactive capabilities and branching out from on-premise to adding multiple offsite locations, your call center solutions can help you stay ahead of the customer service curve into 2014 and beyond.Click here to find out how Vocalcom’s call center solutions can bring you into the future.
