Customer care: is automated better?
Quality customer care is crucial for companies wishing to maintain an effective market presence. The automation of this service has been a subject of debate for some time. In order to be successful in this, the ability to listen to clients must be perfected, while careful attention must be paid to indicators like repeated questions, negative feedback on social network pages and the termination of calls. By proceeding in such a way, it becomes possible to anticipate your target’s needs and build the foundations for new forms of contact.
How customer assistance has changed and how companies can adapt
Customer care has changed considerably in recent years. Now that we are more and more connected to social networks and the phrase ‘Markets are conversations’ has come into effect, businesses must realise that interaction between people plays a crucial role when it comes to Customer Experience.
For this reason, it is essential to be aware of the latest developments in semantic technologies which, at least as far as client assistance is concerned, will in the future, be increasingly oriented towards the integration of hard and software. The customisation of content will also be fundamental, the key to guaranteeing a captivating experience with a high level of emotional involvement for the end client.
Automation of customer care: the status quo and possible developments
In the last few years, companies have made an effort to automate client assistance services with the introduction of web systems and IVR, which allow the end user to interact and ask questions without the need for direct contact with a member of staff.
What will future scenarios be like? Several studies have shown that is not sufficient to provide sophisticated technologies which are able to recognise both the human voice and natural texts. In the near future, it seems that customer care management will be oriented towards the creation of hybrid models.
These models feature both the smart use of technology and human input, resulting in an ideal combination, providing clear conversation which is an efficient tool in resolving clients’ issues.
What does the future hold for customer assistance staff?
The future of human work in the customer sector has been discussed at length recently, especially in light of delocalisation by major companies in the sector and the increasing use of RPA (Robotic Process Automation).
As mentioned above, it is difficult to contemplate complete automation. A good example of this is the case of call centres, an environment where human work will definitely not disappear. There will always be a need for human customer service assistants in call centres. These workers however will be gradually orientated towards non-repetitive tasks.
In fact, forecasts refer to a professional figure who, in the next few years, will work almost exclusively on persuading the end client to purchase specific products or services. Also among the duties of future customer care professionals, we will find the resolution of complex issues.
It is important to bear in mind that both calls and conversations via chat are generally much longer, more articulate and better structured because the end clients are better informed. Before contacting a call centre, they will almost always have already done some research online in order to find the answer to their problem. This scenario is an indicator that in the client assistance sector of the future, there will be need for fewer but better-prepared staff.
These predictions of a scenario featuring numerous de-localisations and staff cuts has led to debate over the need to enhance workers’ skills, in order to minimise the risk of their replacement by robots.
Translated by Joanne Beckwith
