5 things to include in your digital customer service strategy.
Whether you’re just getting started on your digital customer service strategy or refreshing what you have, it's important to take a structured approach. Investing in digital customer service is too significant an undertaking to leave to chance. There are a lot of details to think through and decisions to be made.
To get you started, here are five things you should include in your digital customer service strategy.
1. Implement digital channels that make sense for your business
There are lots of bells and whistles in digital channel world. Don't get distracted or think you have to implement all of them. Gartner found that when companies offer more service channels, they receive more customer contacts, which is an unintended consequence of inserting more possible paths into the customer journey. Distill the digital channel options down to the best ones for your business and manage them really, really well.
2. Design with the customer in mind
Every good digital customer service strategy has the customer firmly at the center of it. This means customers should receive a consistent and integrated experience regardless of which support method they use. In other words, omnichannel. If a customer has to start from scratch when they switch from chat to phone support, not only have you not gained anything by having chat, but you may have just lost that customer.
3. Plan for the impacts to your contact center
Depending on the extent of your digital channel implementation, the impact to your contact center could be significant. Suddenly, your workforce management team needs to forecast SMS contacts, or your phone agents need to learn how to support social messaging. This will be a big change and needs to be incorporated into your digital customer service strategy.
4. Choose a software vendor that will partner with you
You don't have to be in this alone. Good software vendors will provide guidance and advice throughout the selection and implementation phases and continue that support when you transition into maintenance status. Seasoned vendors have seen just about everything and ones that are worthy of your business will share their knowledge with you. Make sure part of your digital customer service strategy includes a vendor selection component.
5. Measure and adjust
A digital customer service strategy isn't implemented and then over. Businesses need to monitor performance of their digital channels, including customer satisfaction and adoption, and make course corrections when necessary. However, change your digital customer service strategy thoughtfully in order to minimize disruptions to the customer experience.
How does NICE fit into your digital customer service strategy?
We're the software vendor that will advise and support you every step of the way. When you choose NICE CXone, our world class contact center solution, it comes with our expertise at helping clients transform their customer service operations. Find out more about our partnering approach here.
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Any digital channel
Your customers are trying to reach you for service on digital channels – even if you’re not there yet. How many SMS text messages go to your call center phone number with no response? Who’s trying to find you on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp and not finding you? Now with CXone it is easy to provide digital-first omnichannel service in all the channels your customers expect.
Personalized digital interactions: deliver native experiences in each of 30+ messaging channels, such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools.
Simple to Activate: pre-integrated channels make it easy to offer to customers and agents.
Easy to Say “Yes”: simple packaging removes barriers to offering all channels to customers and agents.
Empowered agents
CXone empowers all your agents to deliver a true digital-first omnichannel customer experience by simultaneously combining all customer interactions in one intelligent inbox across multiple digital channels and voice for agents to select ("pull"), while dynamically prioritizing the most time-sensitive or real-time interactions according to service levels ("push"). All delivered in a single application – complete with full customer context, journey history, and sentiment.
Single Interface: one inbox for all digital messaging and real-time (voice/chat) channels – retaining native experience of each messaging platform.
Agents in Control: ‘pulling’ work in natural flow, while dynamic prioritization maintains SLAs – and prevents ‘cherry picking’.
Customer Card: full customer context, journey and conversation history, plus sentiment.
Holistic management
With CXone, omnichannel interactions are managed holistically, from agents to supervisors and beyond. Integrated workforce optimization, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital and voice interactions ensure complete management across contact center operations.
