Forrester: Three Top Service Trends to Be on the Lookout For

Companies today must understand the importance of offering customers a seamless, personalized multi-channel experience. In fact, in a survey conducted by marketing technology provider Neolane and the Direct Marketing Association, 77 percent of respondents said that real-time personalization was a primary driving factor of their customer satisfaction strategy. Furthermore, 43 percent defined real-time marketing as “dynamic, personalized content delivered across channels.”As customers continue to raise the bar on their service requirements, Forrester suggests that companies pay attention to three trends:

1. From Web self-service to communities, online chat, virtual agents, SMS and more, consumers’ channel preferences are changing quickly, and personalization is pivotal.
2. Moving forward, mobility – responsible for substantial increases in satisfaction – will begin to define the CRM space.
3. Customers will expect agile service (i.e. seamless interactions across multiple platform) such as initiating contact via Web chat and completing it via their mobile device. Forrester cautions that agile service is more important than multi-channel service itself.

The latest channel to be integrated into call center solutions is social media. A study by Deloitte Consulting notes that social media’s use in the contact center is expected to rise significantly over the next two years. Simultaneously, e-mail use will increase 46 percent, while voice will increase 32 percent.Meanwhile, top areas of concern for call center executives right now include productivity, finding room for improvement, keeping call time down, reducing idle time and making the most of unused time.