Posted by Paul Anderson
Customer Service Trends for 2015
NOW is the time when businesses are busy prepping themselves for the upcoming year. Plans are up on the board and managers are brainstorming ideas to come up with the best strategies for 2015. Just to ease off that pressure a bit, we have brought for you the compilation of three 2015 Customer Service Trends suggested by Micah Solomon – the renowned customer service consultant, customer experience keynote speaker and bestselling author.
Take a look –
1. Demand for Instantaneous Information
Customers expect devices to know their preferences. They expect technology to be easier, more instantaneous, and definitely more intuitive. For instance, if the customer listens to a fixed radio station in car every day, the expectation is that the car will take a note of this, automatically set the station in the memory and add it to a favorites list or similar to such. So the customer does not have to struggle manually setting the station every day.
And that’s not it; they demand the devices to store aggregated information and provide it at the spur of the moment, when required. They prefer to look to a smartphone for answers rather than inquiring with help desk executives. For them, the smartphone answers need to be faster and more accurate.
So the next time the customer travels to a new place, with just a few keystrokes into the phone they can find out –
What are the good restaurants within walking distance?
What subway line do they take to go to … place?
Unlike a few years ago where travelling to a new place would mean—settling into a hotel room, pulling out a laptop, checking out the local eateries and hub joints, today there are real differences. Specifically, with information acquisition! Surfing the net to look for stuff seems like a passé, with every customer preferring to have a mobile wiki (smartphone) in hand.
2. Acknowledgement of Customer Empowerment
Customers are seeking timelessness in their purchases today. They want the products to be delivered within a time that matches their edgy standards. Inconvenienced in any way, they are quick to lose interest and lash out at the companies. The reason behind this attitude is simple: power has shifted from the companies to the hands of the customers. As a result – Customers feel newly empowered in their relationships with companies and expect companies to accept their superiority.
Companies who are inapt in respecting this superiority face the brunt of the customers. Unlike the earlier times when peeved customers would drop in the shop and give the manager an earful or write a letter showing the resentment – today the ways have become more instantaneous.
With social media – technology has favored the customers by creating faster and more viral ways to express the annoyance felt.
We believe: The companies who understand the present scenario have invested in customer relationship management solutions to value customers’ empowerment. They have incorporated the system to manage and nurture customer relationships for lifetime.
3. The Green Trend
Environmental sensitivity has become common among all customers. In majority of cases, customers are testing the companies for greenwashing and using it as a parameter to test the moral values of the company.
At present the emphasis upon environmental sensitivity ebbs and flows from customer to customer. However, experts predict that there are strong chances that very soon much of today’s buying populace will join this environment sensitivity bandwagon.
So it’s advisable for companies (small and large) to embrace this green trend from now itself. Right from not doing excessive packaging to avoiding reruns of products – these small environmental precautions will surely place the companies in the hearts of today’s customers.
