Image for Customer Service Experience Post - Stand outAre you offering “differentiated service”? That means you’re standing out among your competitors in order to grow your profits and gain customer loyalty.  Customers expect it, really, in the way that you are offering personalized, proactive and preemptive service, according to a recent report by Forrester Research. Here are other customer service highlights from the Forrester report: “Trends 2015: The Future of Customer Service.”

  1. Customers want to interact with you any way they can, in all the ways they can. They usually start online when there’s a customer service question, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want voice, chat and social media options as part of their customer service experience too.
  2. Customers want you to be available through the use of their SmartPhones to solve their customer service problems or to keep them updated on changes in their orders, etc.
  3. Companies will become more proactive in reaching out to customers BEFORE customers make contact with them to solve complaints or answer questions.
  4. Technology will increasingly be used to make it possible for companies to fix problems with their customer service experience even before the customer is aware of them.

Developing a Customer Service Experience Strategy

Many of these trends in customer service improvements will be technology-based, but to adopt some of these new technologies, businesses have to be very clear on the current state of their customer service capabilities and how well customers’ needs are being met.  To do that, Forrester recommends a technology audit, but also a customer survey that will provide thorough data upon which to make decisions for improving the customer experience with regard to service.