Explore what digital customer service is, its benefits and how your Digital Customer Service (DCS) can be optimized to ensure your business stays ahead of the curve.
What is Digital Customer Service?
At its core, DCS refers to the support provided to customers through digital channels. This includes platforms like social media, email, live chat and AI-driven chatbots. The transition from traditional, phone-based support to these digital avenues reflects a significant shift in consumer behavior and preferences.
Benefits of Digital Customer Service
- Improved Accessibility: Digital channels enable customers to seek support at their convenience, breaking geographical and time constraints.
- Efficiency and Speed: Automation and AI, such as chatbots and voice bots, offer instantaneous responses, significantly reducing wait times. Moreover, tools like Teneo’s Accuracy Booster significantly enhance the precision of responses in digital customer service. By accurately understanding and addressing customer queries, this feature facilitates faster resolutions and a highly personalized interaction. This is vital in building customer trust and satisfaction, as accuracy in responses directly impacts the customer’s experience.
- Personalization: Leveraging customer data, businesses can provide individualized support, enhancing the customer experience.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Digital Customer Service can reduce the reliance on extensive physical call centers, translating to significant cost savings.
- Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: The convenience and quick resolution of issues boost overall customer satisfaction.
- Rich Data Insights: Digital interactions provide valuable data, allowing businesses to refine their strategies and services.
Crafting a Digital Customer Service Strategy
- Understanding Customer Preferences: It’s crucial to identify and understand the digital channels preferred by your audience.
- Selecting Appropriate Tools: Choose platforms and tools that align with both customer needs and your business objectives. In selecting the right tools for digital customer service, the integration capability of these tools is paramount. Teneo’s AI Orchestration stands out in this regard, offering a seamless integration of various digital customer service tools. This orchestration creates a unified platform for managing interactions across multiple channels, ensuring consistency and efficiency in customer service. The integrated approach provided by Teneo’s AI Orchestration is essential for a streamlined and cohesive digital customer service experience.
- Integration with Existing Systems: Seamless integration with existing CRM and business systems is vital for a coherent customer experience.
- Staff Training: Equip your team with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively use digital customer service tools.
- Setting Goals and KPIs: Establish clear objectives and key performance indicators to measure the success of your Digital Customer Service initiatives.
What KPI’s should I use to optimize Digital Customer Service?
The most expensive channel for Contact Centers is voice and human agents-based phone service, due to the manpower and infrastructure required. Reducing costs is crucial for improving overall service efficiency and customer satisfaction. For an improved voice experience in Contact Centers, focus on:
- Decreasing Call Deflection
- Increasing Call Containment
Let’s investigate the tactics of call deflection and call containment.
What is Call Containment?
Call containment refers to the ability of an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to resolve customer queries without transferring them to a live agent. It’s a vital metric in evaluating the effectiveness of an IVR system.
Understanding Call Containment Rate in Call Centers
The containment rate is a key performance indicator that measures the percentage of calls resolved within the IVR system without needing agent intervention.
What is a Good Call Containment Rate?
A high containment rate is indicative of an effective IVR system. While the ‘ideal’ rate varies by industry and company, a higher rate generally signifies better efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
What is Call Deflection?
Call deflection is used to redirect a portion of your incoming customer service calls to digital support channels to reduce the burden on your call center employees. Research shows that the option of digital support can reduce contact center call volumes and operating expenses by as much as 30%.
Long customer wait times lead to lower net promoter scores (NPS) and lower customer satisfaction (CSAT).
Call deflection tools will improve your first contact resolution rate and minimize the volume of repetitive calls.
Which solutions can be used to improve call deflection?
Improved call routing with a smart IVR, such as Teneo OpenQuestion is one solution.
An automated support channel cost far less. Telefónica increased their IVR resolution rate by +6% in one million voice-based requests per month while supporting 200,000 customer requests with SMS and WhatsApp responses.
As an industry-leader, Telefónica Germany now represents one of the most successful examples of successful implementation and deployment in Europe as Contact Center operations have seen a reduction in costs, customer satisfaction. Read the full case study here to learn how to decrease Call Deflection.
How do you know if your IVR is good enough? By calculating IVR Containment.
How to Calculate IVR Containment?
To calculate IVR containment, divide the number of calls resolved within the IVR system by the total number of calls received, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage. This metric helps assess how well the IVR system manages customer inquiries.
Incorporating these KPIs into your digital customer service strategy can significantly enhance efficiency and reduce costs, especially in the context of agent-based phone services. Optimizing these aspects is crucial for a more effective and cost-efficient customer service operation.
What are the trends in Digital Customer Service?
- Advanced Voice Assistants
- Self service with Large Language Models
Exploring the trends in voice technology within digital customer service, we’re witnessing a significant shift towards more intuitive and human-like interactions.
This involves the integration of advanced voice assistants and natural language processing (NLP) technologies. These tools are becoming more sophisticated in understanding and interpreting human speech, making interactions more natural and efficient.
Voice technology is now capable of handling complex customer queries, providing personalized responses, and even anticipating customer needs based on voice cues. This evolution is not just about understanding words but also grasping the intent and context behind them, which significantly enhances the customer experience.
The use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in self-service is revolutionizing digital customer service by providing more sophisticated, context-aware, and interactive support options. LLMs can understand and process natural language queries, offering solutions or guiding users through complex processes. This enhances the customer experience by reducing the need for direct human intervention and allowing for immediate, accurate responses to inquiries. As a result, LLMs are becoming integral in self-service platforms, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Why Teneo in Digital Customer Service Technology?
In summary, this comprehensive guide underscores the pivotal role of DCS in today’s business landscape. We’ve explored the essence of DCS, its numerous benefits like improved accessibility, efficiency, personalization, cost-effectiveness, and customer satisfaction, and the importance of data-driven insights. The strategic focus on understanding customer preferences, selecting the right tools, and leveraging key performance indicators like call containment and deflection is critical. We’ve also highlighted the emerging trends in voice technology and Large Language Models, showcasing their impact on enhancing customer interactions.
See real results with the power of Teneo
We invite you to explore how Teneo.ai can transform your customer service operations. Discover the future of digital customer service with Teneo and stay ahead in the rapidly evolving business world.