Episode Description:
This episode follows up on the Episode 38 regarding the future of marketing. In this episode we explore the crystal ball to unveil the trends that are driving customer service moving into 2022 and beyond. How can customer problems be solved quickly? Can they be solved before the problem even exists? Where will people look for solutions? How will solutions be delivered? How will problems be resolved? What will be customer expectations?
Action you can take right now:
- Is there a customer expectation you can better meet or a service you can provide in 2022? Write it down!
- Investigate if there are any integrations or historical data that could help PREDICT a problem before a customer has an issue.
Episode After-Thoughts
I believe this is really on the cutting edge. Large corporations with big data have an easier time identifying nuanced trends that lead to certain consumer behavior. Predictive service is not an easy task for a small business, but there are things you can do with onboarding and ongoing support and training to help customers avoid frustrations or pitfalls that lead to dissatisfaction.
Episode 39 Transcript:
Imagine a world where customer service is just a click away.
Solutions to problems are delivered nearly instantaneously or even a future where the answer is delivered to you before you even ask the question.
That and more coming up on the marketing and service.com podcast.
Second, Justin Varuzzo here from marketingandservice.com podcast, the podcast designed to help you build your business by creating incredible customer relationships.
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So in the last episode of the year 2021, I discuss the future of customer service. In the last episode I went into the future of marketing and the way I thought that marketers could connect with customers and consumers in the future, whether it be in the next year or the next.
Five years and I thought it would be worth because this is marketing and service to take the same concept and apply it to customer service.
How will customer service be delivered in the next year in the next three years or the next five years?
Yes, this is looking into a crystal ball.
This may or may not happen.
Customer service in the future will bring things such as predictive assistance, community support, and immediate access to experts through SMS or social messaging.
2nd, so I think it’s important to talk about why the future of service is so important and the number one thing that comes to mind right now at the end of 2020.
In this future, you’ll never wait on hold or wait days for an email response ever again.
One is rising customer expectations.
It’s no secret that the expectations of consumers is increasing every single day.
And to prove this and to give some data to support this, I looked at some studies, one from Zendesk, which is a very popular helpdesk solution.
And they found that 65% of customers want to buy from companies that offer quick and easy online transactions.
Quick and easy and I know we think about this and say well yeah buying anything online is quick.
Easy, but depending on what you’re buying, it’s not always as quick and easy as we would like it to be, and I think that we see that there’s things that some companies do to make things very easy.
We talked a little about that in past episodes.
For example upgrading your iPhone.
If you’re in the Apple ecosystem is so easy to do.
Everything is filled in.
Everything is ready to go.
The pre order process.
The entire thing from beginning to end is a very seamless solution to acquiring a new phone.
But on the service side there are things that are very important.
Customers seek companies that prioritize the things that they care about, right? So you hear so much about this these days, and in this particular study, 63% of customers are valuing social responsibility when it comes to the businesses that they deal with. 54% are concerned about diversity.
Equity and inclusion in businesses that they work with and 49% are looking for companies to provide empathy. And that’s an important value.
That consumers want companies to have.
So when considering these things, let’s look at some of the ways that service could be in the future.
I think the most exciting one in terms of something that’s not really happening a whole lot right now, but could really ramp up to a greater scale is predictive.
Predictive service means just that, predicting when you have a problem, imagine if there was a system that could predict when you have a problem and actually solve it for you virtually instantaneously, and there are some very small examples of this that already exist.
The most common one would be with a car.
Many newer cars, especially if they have navigation systems and big.
Screens they will predictively help you with service and maintenance, right?
You’ll this this started with the time for an oil change light that was a form of predictive service.
It was this little light that pops up and says hey, it is time to get an oil change.
That was something that did not exist in the 60s, seventies, 80s or 90s.
But for many cars.
Especially 20 on.
That’s a very common thing.
Now with the car is able to communicate and with Internet in cars that can be taken a step further, you can actually schedule your oil change right through the car with your dealer.
So this is a way that one the dealer is providing this service to you to make it very easy and you’re being reminded so you don’t even have to think about it.
The car is going to say hey you need an oil change now would you like to make that service appointment at your local dealership and you would say yes.
No, and then it could probably schedule the time for you.
Whether or not you would need a loaner vehicle.
What the approximate price could be?
All this stuff can happen right in the car and for some car models that is happening right now.
This is a real thing I think.
Another great example of predictive service, and it’s a little bit out of context for what?
We’re talking about but Netflix recommendations.
Netflix puts a lot of time into their recommendation engine, and they use a lot of incredible AI and past data to recommend things that they are confident that you really will enjoy based on past viewing habits.
Again, this is a level of service.
This service of curating content just for you so you don’t think of Netflix recommendations as customer service on the surface.
But when you actually really think about it, that is a service component.
When you subscribe to Netflix, you’re paying to have instant access to digital content.
But what makes it special and what makes it better?
Than most of the others, and what allowed it to grow so rapidly was the fact that the recommendations they made were very reliable and very predictable.
Based on your past viewing behavior.
And most of the time it allowed people to see a lot of new things they had never seen before, and they enjoyed the new things they liked.
When you compare this with Blockbuster which tried to mimic this system, except that the things they were recommending were things that were most profitable for them, they might be recommending movies that they just published or got rights to and the recommendation engine.
Was terrible.
It would recommend all sorts of stuff that had nothing to do with past behavior and it made for a poor user experience.
So one thing to think about is Netflix recommendations.
In that same spirit, we can look at things like using data to predict bad outcomes or negative out.
Comes and this is easier to do as your customer service scales up and gets larger and larger and you collect more and more data.
You can use that data to predict negative outcomes and get ahead of the game.
And what do I mean by that?
Let’s take an example of a Verizon or an AT&T right. A big giant wireless carrier company.
They can take a look at customers who have deflected from their company to go to a competitor and they can look at 10s of thousands if not millions of these people who’ve left and kind of see through their customer relationship management.
What were the things that happened prior to this customer?
Leaving and what if we could come up with things that we can do that would prevent these steps from happening?
Right, so you lay out this whole lifetime communication with the customer and you say, OK, we messed up here.
We messed up here. This was the final straw and this customer then decided to leave Verizon and go to AT&T or vice versa. It doesn’t matter, this is just for the example.
But are there things when you look at those tidbits where you can say OK this thing happened and this caused a customer to leave and use that data to predict and overcome that outcome and turn that negative outcome into a.
Positive and that would be a form of predictive service. Let’s say you know that there’s some wireless service issues in a certain area, and you suspect that people are leaving and deflecting to other competitors because they have better service as a company like Verizon or AT&T, you might be able to say, hey, this is an area where we.
Really need to get a new cell tower up or boost the cell service that we have there and maybe get ahead of it and let the customer know.
We know that you’re having some trouble with wireless, and we’re working to make it better.
Just bear with us another few months while we get.
That done now I don’t know if the investment would always be worth it, but that would be an example of where you’re kind of getting ahead of it now that customer might think OK, at least they’ve acknowledged this.
They’re aware that there’s an issue they’re aware that they’re working on it, and they’re going to try to make it better, so those are just some things that I think are really cool with the concept of predictive service.
How can you predict the problems that?
People are going to have.
And what type of content can you create?
And we’ve talked a lot about this.
Or is there content that you can create to make the experience better?
Are there things or problems that customers have?
Maybe they’re not a problem with your product or service.
Maybe it’s just a problem of misusing it, but it’s a common thing where someone misusing this product or service, or they’re not doing the right thing.
And you could possibly predict it and say hey, let me make this video and send it out in the first week because we know in the first week some people might have a challenge with XY or Z.
So think about predictive service in the future.
How can you get ahead of a problem before your customer knows that problem exists and help them solve it so it never is a problem?
Something that’s been brewing in the business community a lot is community building.
We’ve seen this for a long time, I think throughout.
A variety of industries.
There used to be Internet forums, forums have turned into Facebook groups.
Facebook groups have turned into communities.
We’ve seen things like this in politics.
We’ve seen it with social media.
We’ve seen it all over the place, but the bottom line is that it’s very clear that people look to be part of a commune.
And if you can build a community around your product or service, this is a great way to help provide an enhanced level of service and reduce your own costs for delivering customer service.
By having that community there, things like getting that top contributor badge on Facebook.
I see this on podcasting groups.
That I might be in where you go into the group and there’s the top contributor and there’s these little things that gamify the community and make some people important.
And it gives them pride, and it ultimately helps solve problems and get some amazing answers to questions I mean.
I’ve had endless podcast groups on Facebook where I might ask a question about something and usually within minutes.
I have dozens of responses that are really, really helpful content, so I think in the future Community service is something we are going to see more and more of, because sometimes the Community just knows more than those delivering the service, and I always.
Go back to Apple a lot because I’m in that ecosystem.
But when I have an issue, I usually find the solution in the Apple forums.
Apple still has a huge form.
System that’s community driven.
So you go there and say, hey, I have this problem XY or Z and hopefully a dozen people within 10.
15 minutes will write back and say, hey, this is how you fix it or this was the problem I had and here is how I fixed it.
Maybe this will work for you.
I think another huge component of customer service in the future is obviously going to be through SMS.
Texting, iMessage, texting and WhatsApp and Facebook and all these messenger tools that are.
Out there over the last year, according to Zendesk, the use of messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger has soared.
Social messaging alone saw 110% jump in popularity in 2021 compared to 2020, followed closely by a 75% increase for SMS and texting.
One of my experiences with this directly is with the Apple Card.
If you have an Apple card, all of your support is done through the iMessage texting on an iPhone, and it’s a unique way to have service.
’cause you’re kind of getting that immediate response, but not having to be consumed by it, right?
So if you have to call someone, you got to wait on hold, even if it’s only for a minute or two and then you have to have a discussion like you have to be on the phone.
It’s very difficult to do anything else, but with texting you like anything you can text for a second, put your phone down, do something else you hear a Ding, OK?
This is what I need so to see how Apple is integrating this service and I’m also seeing that they are allowing other companies to interface support through I message which is which is really great because I message is a good messaging system and it’s essentially just like texting so it’s very comfortable for people who text on a regular.
Basis and of course, we see young people today are always texting. Nobody makes phone calls anymore. If you’re under 35, so we know that in the next five years support has to move to texting because these people are not going to want to call ever.
They’re not going to want to make a phone call. They’re not going to be comfortable making a phone call. They’re going to expect that they can just open up their text messaging app or their WhatsApp.
Or Facebook Messenger, whatever they might be using at the time and say, hey.
I need help with this.
We see it a lot on Twitter.
People always go to Twitter when they’re outraged and many companies come and try to help with canned responses and fake empathy.
But most of the time it doesn’t work.
There are some companies who really do listen to what’s happening and they really do reach out and they do help and solve those problems.
And it’s a great way to do it and.
With Twitter, it leaves that public accountability because now, not only are you doing it, but you’re really doing it in a very open form.
It’s almost the opposite.
Bit of a community. In this instance, the community is just so massive on Twitter that you go and say, hey I had a bad experience with XY&Z company.
They know there’s a potential for millions of people to see this, and they should.
Any company that’s on Twitter providing any level of support should take that extremely seriously because it is a really interesting concept.
When you think about word of mouth and if you have 123 if you get 1000 thousand people on Twitter saying something is bad.
But that can quickly quickly get out to millions and millions and millions of people in a matter of minutes or hours.
So I do think that just like we have online chats on websites, I think we’re also going to see a lot more of this integrated texting opportunity in the future, and I think we’ll see a lot of businesses that will be built to help businesses.
Facilitate texting as part of their support mechanism.
So if you have a CRM system and you have an online chat and you have email and you have a ticketing system, another component of that would simply come in and it would be in the form of a text message.
It would let you respond to it and fulfill a customer request through a text and what’s kind of neat about this.
Especially with iMessage being that it’s end to end encryption, it does allow for you to do some transactions that you couldn’t do through SMS.
Or through email like collect a credit card or make a payment.
Or accept Apple Pay all of these things I know specifically I messages to Apple, but WhatsApp of course is also an encrypted messaging service that could also safely facilitate.
The transfer of credit card information or banking information or things to just make the process again easier.
We don’t want to have to go to support.
Find out we need to buy something that we forgot to get and then have to go back to the website, go to a special portal, enter our credit card.
We just want to do it right then and there and say hey yeah I got my phone here.
Yeah, here’s here’s the 20 bucks for that part that I need.
Thank you, thank you so much.
Have a great day and now it’s done.
That again is making the process seamless.
One thing you should do right now is stop listening to this podcast.
Take a few minutes and really list out what are some things that you can do to improve.
Customer service over the next 12 months because I know that the things that are discussed here are not always easy to implement and maybe they’re not even possible to implement for your business, but my hope is that by hearing what other big companies are doing, and organizations are achieving through these new methods of service that maybe it sparks.
An idea where you say, hey, you know that’s a pretty good idea.
Let me see.
Maybe I can’t quite do that, but I could definitely put out this series of videos that could help with these common issues.
I could do some things online.
I have this great community so maybe I could make a little Facebook group with my community so people within the community can help each other.
And then maybe there’s a way I can reward those people.
It goes on and on, but you get the idea.
Just think about this a little bit.
Give it some thought.
How do you make it better in the new year?
Check out episode.
28 of the podcast. That’s the think smart. The best way to set and achieve goals. I think this is so important at the end of the year because I think to myself now is the time that.
I take especially that last week of December to reflect on 2021. What are the things that I accomplished?
What are the things that went well?
What are the things that didn’t go so well or what are the things that I wanted to accomplish?
But I I didn’t quite make it through the goal post on that one and then I also like to look forward of course into the new year and say.
What do I take from 2021 and apply to 2022? What are the new things and the new goals that I have in January week one month, one, the next three months, the next six months and the next year?
And you really need to write all those things out and think about what action you can take to make it happen and then take that action and make it happen every single day.
Look at those goals that you wrote down. Make sure those goals are smart and again, if you don’t know what that is, go to episode 28 and it’s all about smart goals.
And how you can set these goals?
You can write them down and like magic, they will come to fruition.
And with that I am closing out the last podcast of 2021. I have some great content already lined up for the new year, so I really look forward to seeing you in 2022.
And I hope you have a great holiday season and I hope you get that time to reflect and to look forward and to make the most out of 2022 as well as making the most out of your marketing and the most out of your service moving forward.
Because that’s what we are all about.
Thank you so much for listening.
Check out the marketing and service.
Com Facebook page, go to the website marketingandservice.com. I have all sorts of added notes for each episode along with the list of action items that you can take after listening to each episode.
Because I want you to listen to the episode and then I want you to go do these things that are in those action items right away because most of them are not complete.
They’re short, they’re easy to manage, and you will see success if you do them.
You can always shoot me an email.
IThe Facebook page you can send me a message, please don’t hesitate.
I love hearing from you and I like making these episodes for you and I look forward to 20.
22 Thanks so much. I’ll catch you next year.