Guest Service

Can I start a controversial article being completely uncontroversial?  Thanks.  Here goes:  Good employee engagement is an absolute requirement in order to drive good CX.  Okay… now, feel free to refer to that as you read on, because I’m not trying to say that engagement isn’t fundamental; in fact, it’s a bedrock necessity if you’re going to provide a good Customer experience that you first ensure you are providing a good employee experience.

Tapping into your customers’ emotions can be a powerful way to connect with them and drive desired consumer behaviors. Emotional campaigns speak to the heart, and can create a different outcome than rational campaigns, which tap into the logical side of your customer.

They reflect the unpredictable and rapidly changing times we live in today. What, in effect, does today’s ever-changing environment imply for business and the world of customer experience in particular? It underscores the need for nimbleness and flexibility in business strategy and execution.

Intrinsically, customer experience cannot be separated from flexibility and change. Customers are human, and evolution is ingrained in the human experience.

The stakes for customer service have never been higher. Even before the pandemic, customer expectations were rising aggressively year-over-year. Now, more than 80% of consumers in the US expect brands’ customer service agents to be more empathetic or more responsive (or both) than they were prior to the pandemic.

These days, it’s hard to find a company that doesn’t say it competes on customer experience. At the same time, we know as both CX pros and consumers that many – some might say most – deliver mediocre experiences on a good day and flat-out crummy experiences most of the time.

Every few years, a new customer service channel arrives on the scene with claims that this technology will be the main service channel and the future of customer service. We’ve heard the same argument for decades, yet agents remain at the heart of the vast majority of customer service interactions.

The pandemic not only is changing how people live across demographics, it is causing unexpected consumer segments to emerge as key players of certain behavioral traits. Here are four areas where shopper activity indicates life stage-like changes that will likely be long-lasting, if not permanent.

Learn what customer service is and why it's important, plus discover the 16 customer service skills every support professional needs to thrive.