Digital transformation today is driving organisations to adjust their business models and adapt to the current consumer reality. Interestingly, this transition is not driven by an organisation itself but rather by the customer. With these challenging economic times comes an excellent opportunity for customer-centric brands to differentiate themselves from competitors that refuse to adapt to a digital environment or recognise the emerging trends customers are inadvertently providing. The tricky part is collecting and understanding those trends to equip employees with advanced resources to give consumers valuable experiences.
In 2019, top global pain points in customer service included long wait times for customers, the need to repeat information to customer support agents, and frequent transfers across customer service departments. Those flaws in customer service became even more apparent (and problematic) during the pandemic as online shopping increased tremendously in the MENA region. More specifically, these pain points are common in the contact centre because not many customer service departments can incorporate the right cloud technologies to organise customer data in real-time and handle multiple queries simultaneously.
Digital Cloud Contact Centres
Keeping customer information and interactions in one place is becoming increasingly crucial to the rapidly changing and predominantly remote customer service landscape in the MENA region. According to the Digital Journal, 90% of enterprises will be incorporating cloud technology by 2021, and contact centre businesses are no exception but rather the shining example. Cloud technology and agile digital transformation became a differentiator factor among workforces as more than 70% of customer service leaders turned to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic.
To complement this demand and avoid miscommunication and handling repetitive queries, implementing a digital cloud contact centre solution has become imperative for customer-centric brands. A digital cloud contact centre solution, such as Conversations by Infobip, allows businesses to manage customer support from all angles through a single interface. It combines the simplicity and strength of chatbots, which can usually handle simple queries. It enables customer care agents to seamlessly take over more complex issues with full access to customers’ communication history. The digital cloud contact centre solution allows brands to view all conversations history and transfer customer inquiries to another channel as needed.
Now, customers do not have to repeat the same information to resolve their queries. Digital cloud contact centres combine all relevant customer information from integrated systems in one platform and help agents deliver personalised customer support, boost loyalty, and ultimately drive revenue.
Cloud solutions that keep interactions in one place are not the only essential component in today’s digital contact centres. These solutions should also be channel-agnostic – meaning the system is easy to use and learns by the information it is fed. The benefits and ease-of- scalability of cloud adaptation make cloud technologies one of the most critical trends in customer service right now. The intelligence of the cloud infrastructures enables interactions between brands and their customers to serve a purpose in a multichannel platform by utilising popular applications on customer’s mobile devices.
Marketers have long used social media as a channel for building customer relationships. Adding Facebook to the brand’s contact centre can help improve customer service – by connecting agents and customers on a personal and popular channel. It allows the customer care agents to manage all queries on social media from a simple, user-friendly, and single interface.
Conversational Experiences over Chatbots
While consumers today are spending more time online using smartphones, they are inevitably engaging with more advertisements, which leads to an increase in sales and transactions through mobile devices. As a result, mobile customer support options are becoming increasingly popular to deliver value for both consumers and customer-centric brands.
According to a Facebook study, “53% of the correspondents said they are more likely to buy from a company which provides customer service via chat apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.” The chat and messaging markets have surged during the pandemic as AI and automation have saved the day for many customer departments struggling to handle increasing online support volume.
Integration of an AI chatbot into a digital cloud contact centre solution is helping more contact centre managers automate their customer support, resulting in less tedious work for agents and more productivity for the department. AI chatbots significantly reduce customer support costs while increasing customer satisfaction. However, the interaction is not artificial as chatbots can recognise customer intent and instantly provide information or seamless transfer to an agent for more complex queries.
When brands integrate a chatbot solution with a digital contact solution, the chatbot will collect all needed information during the conversation with the customer and route the conversation to the right agent based on the customer’s intent. The chatbot will eliminate any human errors by logging all details and ensuring the communication flow in the brand-customer interaction while transferring any inquiries to contact centre agents.
By offering customers an intelligent and automated self-service option like Infobip’s Answers, brands are improving the efficiency of their contact centre agents by offloading FAQs to the chatbot and providing customers with fast responses 24/7 over their preferred channels. After all, quality customer service is about utilising technology and humanisation to deliver valuable experiences for the consumer.
Personalisation Over Omnichannel Approach
As mentioned earlier, one of the most significant global trends in contact enters is cloud technology. However, most customer-centric brands prioritise omnichannel capabilities that enable them to meet customers in real-time. For example, a customer may start an interaction over LiveChat but switch to WhatsApp later. By integrating an omnichannel approach, their conversation history and information would be transferred using the same interface regardless of the channel.
Research indicates that 75% of MENA consumers expect personalised advertising. Through an omnichannel communication strategy, brands can personalise their customer engagement by communicating over multiple chat apps and modern channels such as WhatsApp, voice, and even their mobile app, guaranteeing to keep customers engaged at different touchpoints. Omnichannel customer engagement also helps brands successfully manage their customers’ journey and overcome churn by integrating with digital cloud contact centre solutions.
Infobip believes that with the variety of options available for customers today, every customer experience impacts the overall brand perception. Applying a human touch to the digital communication strategy will help brands gain a competitive advantage and build trusted relationships with their customers, to ultimately increase revenue. More is not always better when it comes to disrupting a consumer’s personal space. Infobip encourages brands to listen carefully to what their customers have to say, then use suitable approaches to provide tailored and personalised experiences. By implementing a strategy that focuses on customer engagement and personalised communication through customisable tools, brands can boost their customer loyalty and ultimately sustain the long-term growth of their business by deploying Infobip’s communication platform.
