How to Close the 2023 Customer Service Expectation Gap

Customer service expectations have skyrocketed due to increased technology and customer options, and 83% of support teams are seeing an increase in expectations.

40% of teams are confident they can meet these expectations, and businesses should act fast to get ahead of customer expectations and close the gap. There are five tips to help achieve this.

1.To provide truly personalized service and stand out in a crowded market, leveraging first-party data is key.

With access to real-time customer insights, teams can quickly respond to customer needs and tailor services to meet their unique preferences. This enables businesses to differentiate their customer service, with 89% of support leaders citing personalization as a key competitive differentiator.

Studies have shown that businesses that offer personalized service are almost twice as likely to report higher customer satisfaction scores, retention, and loyalty. With the right approach, first-party data can be the difference between a satisfied customer and a lost one.

In order to close the customer expectation gap when it comes to personalization, teams can leverage automation. Automation allows teams to collect first-party data more efficiently, and offer customers personalized service whenever they need it, regardless of their location.

This helps teams create an experience that is tailored to the individual customer, giving them the personalized attention they desire. By combining automation and personalization, teams can build meaningful relationships with their customers and create a positive, memorable experience.

As a business, first-party data is invaluable for providing your customers with a personal, engaging experience. This information, which is collected directly from your customers, is much more reliable and effective than other sources, and can be obtained from sign-up forms and actions taken in your product or app. With the help of tools like chatbots, you can easily and automatically collect rich context about each customer, including their plan, transaction history, and any queries they may have had.

Additionally, you can use this data to set up personalized flows that activate in-product messaging based on customer behavior, allowing you to anticipate and respond to their needs right when they need it most.

In-product messaging is an invaluable tool for companies looking to provide an efficient and convenient customer experience. Not only does it help customers in the moment without forcing them to switch channels or devices, it can be used to guide them through your product.

This allows you to cater to their unique goals with a personalized product journey, while providing your team with first-party data that can help nail personalization and ensure customers are satisfied. By leveraging in-product messaging, you can save customers time and make sure they get the help they need to succeed. 2.Give your clients the option to self-serve.

At a time when businesses of all industries are dealing with an unprecedented level of uncertainty, customer service teams are being forced to do more with less. One way to make this possible is by empowering customers to self-serve whenever possible. Not only does this free up support teams to address more complex customer queries, but it also reduces response times and provides a better experience for customers.

Fortunately, customers are willing to self-serve, as evidenced by a survey we conducted at the end of 2022 that showed nearly four in five respondents believe there are circumstances where chatbots and online chat are preferable to any other form of communication from a business.

By encouraging customers to self-serve, companies can provide an improved experience for their customers while reducing the burden on their support reps.

It's clear that businesses need to find new and improved ways to manage their support costs and increase efficiency.

With research showing that 68% of support teams plan to invest more in automation in 2023, and 77% plan to invest more in self-serve support like knowledge base articles and FAQs, the importance of preparing an adequate knowledge base and help center is clear. A modern support tool like a messenger can provide a great way to present these options to customers at the Chat with us stage, and automate responses to the most common FAQs can also help to free up more time for support reps and reduce response times for customers.

Planning out the different types of content customers need at each stage of their journey can be incredibly useful to anticipate their queries. ChatGPT provides the tools for companies to build a comprehensive self-serve support system so that customers can quickly and easily troubleshoot and find solutions without having to contact customer service. This system encompasses comprehensive Guides for beginners, FAQs and How-Tos for novices, and Best Practices and Troubleshooting articles for the more proficient users. With ChatGPT, companies can build an automated self-serve system to alleviate customer service tasks, saving time and money in the process. 3.Aim to achieve the best possible response time. Automation is no longer seen as cold and impersonal, but rather a beneficial and convenient way for customers to get the help they need. As customers value both their time and money, it's important to make sure that customer needs are promptly addressed. By incorporating automation in response to FAQs, businesses can not only save customers time but also reduce inbound communication and improve workflow efficiency. Using a live chat tool such as a business messenger, informing customers when they can expect to receive a response from your company is an effective method of optimizing customer service. It's important to ensure customers understand that teams are unable to provide 24/7 services. However, it’s also essential for customers to know when their query is going to be looked into. Even though a customer wouldn’t usually expect a store to open at midnight, providing them with a timeline for when their inquiry will be addressed can help foster positive relationships and build trust. 4.Measurement and success-oriented optimization Customer service teams oftentimes have difficulty measuring success due to their utilization of a wide variety of tools. This lack of cohesion and a single source of truth leads to a disorganized and perplexing array of results. For improved workflow efficiency and an enhanced customer experience, selecting the right customer service tool that includes customizable, easily-readable reporting can be key. Investing the time to curate data can mean closing the customer expectation gap and making strategic, data-driven decisions — resulting in time saved for your team, and an improved customer experience.

Unfortunately, limited reporting capabilities can be a major challenge – almost one-third of support leaders cited this as a challenge in their tech stack.

As budgets become tighter, it is increasingly important for teams to look for ways to make sure their tech stack is both efficient and cost-effective. According to 73% of support leaders, they need to improve their tech stacks over the next twelve months in order to make them more streamlined. As customer service representatives are tasked with many roles, the customer service tool they use needs to be able to not just enable a great customer experience, but must also be able to measure the success of their efforts. In the 2023 Customer Service Trends Report, a substantial portion of support personnel reported that the lack of reporting capabilities was an issue within their customer service toolkit. With an enhanced reporting capability, you are able to identify peak times and the most popular channels, allowing you to resource adequately and decrease the responding time. Ultimately, the performance in key metrics and costs can be tracked and greatly improved, boosting the customer service experience and operations. 5.Show your support team appreciation by investing in their morale.

Support teams have experienced a trying year characterized by headcount cuts, financial insecurity, enhanced customer demands and novel technologies. Understandably, the majority of support chiefs (51%) note dwindling team morale, and 44% anticipate that morale will decrease in the upcoming 12 months. Such a stifling environment will undoubtedly be sensed by customers if support staff are not sufficiently motivated. By 2023, over half of all support leaders are expected to be taking steps to keep spirits high amongst their team by investing in technology that improves their workload and minimizes aggravation.

In light of the rising demand for support teams, managers need to ensure that their staff remain motivated and satisfied with their work. It has been projected that by 2023, around 52% of support leaders will be investing in technological solutions that optimize team workloads and reduce frustration.

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Traditional customer service channels like email and phone calls can often create more complex issues, which may cause stress on your team. As a manager, it is wise to review what tools your team currently uses and if there's any room for improvement; you should be asking yourself questions such as:

• What value do these tools offer our business?

• How do we measure the success of the tools in question?

Start by empowering and upskilling your team to minimize any difficulties they may be facing, and look for ways to help them get greater satisfaction and success from their work.

In addition to focusing on the technical aspects of your team's workload, it is essential to pay attention to their emotional well-being. Over the last year, customer support teams have seen a growing number of potentially emotionally charged inquiries and 54% of support leaders have reported that team members felt "burned out" in the past twelve months.

Although this is a drop of ten percent compared to last year's results, it is a striking statistic that calls for attention. Intercom realizes that customer service teams are essential for achieving success in the marketplace. We strive to provide personnel with development and support opportunities, as well as benefits, that reflect this insight. As our organizational goal for 2023, 64% of support leaders will introduce flexibility in terms of working conditions and 54% will scale workloads for improved manageability. Moreover, Intercom works to cultivate a people-focused culture which values customer service personnel's work, encourages growth and provides them the platform to make more significant contributions.

Creating clear career paths for employees by setting achievable goals and developing relationships based on respect and inclusivity will help to foster a successful environment where everyone on a team can celebrate their successes.

With the rapid advances in technology and increasingly unpredictable economic times, customer expectation levels are inevitably rising.

To stay ahead of the competition, it's essential to prioritize experience for customers and support teams alike. But increased customer expectations are not the only areas of customer support which are transforming. Engagement, changes in customer behavior, and proactive support are just some of the key customer service trends disrupting the way customer service teams operate.

To remain competitive in the future, it is essential to leverage up-to-date insights, Keep raising the bar for customer support and ensure your customer service teams don't miss out.

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