Over the last few years, the competition has been growing among Customer Relationship Management providers (CRM development companies). This cause a fundamental shift in the way we interact or communicate with CRM. Innovation will drive new technologies that allow companies to continually improve the customer experience and deliver better support.
Due to advance technology, one can expect to see even more dramatic changes to how companies easily manage & deliver customer support. As it is crystal clear the businesses that adopt the new technologies and understand shifting customer needs will get a successful future while one who don’t anticipate and prepare for emerging trends will be left behind.
You can prepare yourself to be competitive in the future by understanding the below five trends and predictions that will also define the future of customer support:
5 Predictions and Trends in Future Customer Support
1. Self-service Support will Grow
As per basic human mentality, most of the customers across all industries prefer to solve their own issues by themselves before contacting a live customer support rep. Without even opening a help desk ticket, customers save time when they can easily find a resolution to their problem.
As clients prefer self-service, having a robust knowledge base on your website is an effective way to provide self-service support. You should also consider developing guidance and videos and make them accessible to customers through your website.
It’s obvious that if a company provides a way for customers to solve their own issues not it will not only save time for the customer, it also means one less support case for your team to handle and manage it.
2. Complaints on Social Media will Increase
As social media usage is a boom now. Each & every customer now believes on the reviews posted on different social media networks and as each consumer these days carries a mobile device everywhere they go so they have a chance to quickly respond on a bad experience they had with your company. So without waiting until they get home to complain about it, they can go straight to social media and share their experience publicly.
Now let’s see how does this affect the customer support. When a negative review or a comment gets posted on social media, it can spread like the rumor or like a wildfire if you don’t pull out the firehose as soon as possible. Custom CRM development services provide social listening and monitoring tools, from which your support team can receive notifications the time when there is a mention of your brand on social media. This ensures your support teams to keep an eye on all social behavior and easily react to negative reviews and comments before they get shared with others and start to impact your brand’s reputation.
Your support team also needs to monitor the company’s social inboxes because customers also ask customer support questions via direct messaging on social platforms. Customer support reps must respond to questions asked there. As expectations of customers around customer support and service are increasing, and they expect quick responses to questions asked through social channels. This will continue to be the case as we move forward.
3. Customer Expectations will Continue Rising
There is a rapid increase in the quality of customer support. Businesses delivering the world-class support to their customers have set the bar high, and now customers expect the same quality and kind of support from every company, regardless of industry.
You need continually improve the quality of support presence to remain competitive in the future. It will be easy for companies to improve and adapt to shifting customer needs and expectations if they stay up to date on emerging trends and technologies. Online surveys are one of the ways to evaluate the outcome of each support case. This allows you to identify areas for improvement and constantly monitor your performance.
A customer can easily leave your brand or a company for a competitor if you don’t provide great support and meet customers’ growing expectations. Customer experience and reviews are becoming important in consumers’ buying decisions. So by delivering world-class customer support is key to a great customer experience, which directly increases customer satisfaction and, through that, revenue growth.
4. Personalized Support will Become the Norm
When customers interact with your company they leave a trail of data. All the customer support cases will be tracked and monitored through CRM software development, as well as the behaviors customers display such as visiting web pages, opening emails, downloading content, etc.
The trail of data expands further if you integrate third-party app plugins—such as social media, accounting, or eCommerce apps—with your custom CRM application development. All that data forms an elaborate picture of their customer journey, including products they have purchased, who they have spoken to, the issues they have faced in the past, etc.
The more context a rep has about a customer and their unique use case and common challenges, the more they can personalize each customer support interaction. As customer expectations continue to grow, personalized support will become the norm. Personalizing your support efforts empowers reps to deliver more relevant answers that resonate with and address the unique needs of each customer.
5. Support Quality will Have a Greater Impact on Revenue Growth
Since customers will increasingly expect higher-quality support, not providing it will result in higher levels of customer churn. The customer experience may overtake price and product as the main driver behind consumers’ purchasing decisions in the future.
You’ll lose existing customers if your brand doesn’t maintain a reputation as a company that delivers world-class customer support. Even acquiring new customers will become more difficult. Your brand reputation will suffer if your customer support efforts are sub-par, customer loyalty and satisfaction will decline.
And guess what? Your revenue growth will slow down considerably without a positive brand reputation and satisfied customers. Satisfied customers lead to business and revenue growth. By maintaining an effective, powerful, and efficient support presence, you’ll maintain happy customers and grow sustainably.
Kanhasoft is the CRM solution developer in India and USA. Since 2013, Kanhasoft is providing Custom CRM Application Development for industry verticals like Sports, Manufacturing, Textile, Retail, Entertainment, Education, Food & Drink and Hotels. Share your unique needs with us and we will provide the best solution for your business.
