The Future of Customer Support
The Future of Customer Support
The world of customer support is changing. Customers are more sophisticated and have increasingly higher expectations of service providers. We are all raising the bar for each other, even across industries. The best service that one of us provides sets the bar for the rest of us, across industries.
New and innovative technologies are enabling companies to transform how they provide support. When considering the future of support, I see three primary areas of change:
1. Better understanding of the customer journey
2. Digitally transforming the support experience
3. Evolution of the workforce
These areas are all interrelated and are dependent upon the other to affect overall change, however I have also listed them sequentially. No matter what the future brings, helping our customers when and how they want to be supported will remain our core priority.
Understanding the Customer Journey
Advances in technology allow us to have better insights into what a customer did before they contacted support. Understanding a customer’s journey that led to them finally contacting support is important as it helps us determine the best way to respond to them. A call into support may appear like the first contact/attempt to get help, when the truth is the call could be the last resort after the customer tried social, communities and other self-help options. A common theme I hear from my peers in other companies is a focus on profiling a customer at a much more granular level (no longer based on products purchased, entitlement, geography etc) to look at factors such as how they like to be supported, tone of conversations and past support experiences.
Digitally Transforming the Support Experience
Technology is not only helping us to better understand the customer journey, it is enabling us to digitally transform the support experience. Our goal is to shift issue resolution as close to the customer as possible (for those customers who prefer self-solve options). Many issues that previously required contact with support can now be prevented or solved easily by the customer. For example, we know that Settings is a busy place in Windows and in the latest Windows 10 update, we added a Get Help app directly into the Settings page. Now, when a customer is in Settings and needs help changing their preferences, they can access a virtual agent with a single click instead of contacting support through a separate call, chat, or email. The virtual agent will assist the customer but if a customer needs more help they can seamlessly connect to a live agent at any time. And when they do connect to a live agent, they don’t have to start over. The live agent has access to the conversation history and recommended solutions that were already provided by the virtual agent, enabling them to get to a solution faster.
Evolution of the Workforce
As we shift issue resolution closer to the customer and inject digital scenarios into many aspects of the customer journey, we are all considering what this means to our workforce. The cases that need assisted support are likely to be more complex leading us to look at the hiring profile of those assisting our customers. In addition, we anticipate a significant shift of help scenarios to social and community platforms, introducing opportunities for a Gig workforce. We also anticipate new roles will be needed that did not exist before, as we materially expand the opportunities for digital transformation.
When I speak to my peers about where they see the future of support, I hear similar themes to what I’ve shared above. I find this encouraging in that we’re on the same path to transforming the industry together, however I also think there is an opportunity for more disruption. Einstein once said, “We can't solve today's problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them,” and I wonder if we’ve changed our thinking enough to leverage all that technology has to offer. I’m interested in hearing what you think the future of support looks like. Please share your comments below.
I’m glad I ran across this very insight post. Given the dynamics you referenced, I predict we will see more disruption in the Customer Support space over the next 5-10 years than the collective past. Thanks for leading the way.
Great post! When you change the way you see the world, you change the world you see... and this applies also to the future of Customer Support!
"...let's not forget that the job of any support individual or organization is to satisfy customers, not to fix problems, and those are not always one and the same. " Great message!
Prudent use of technology saves costs and has always had an important role across industries, including customer support. But let's not forget that the job of any support individual or organization is to satisfy customers, not to fix problems, and those are not always one and the same. As both technology and customers become more sophisticated, self-help resources and automated solutions will clear greater percentages of support needs. But of those that remain, the users needing help will require a deeper understanding of their needs and the unseen impact their issues have on their overall goals or business results. This will always require a good amount of empathy, a nuanced understanding that things aren't always as they appear, and an ability to figure out and solve what the customer really needs in each situation. So far, properly trained humans are much, much better at this than even the most advanced technologies available.
totally agree: Technology is not only helping us to better understand the customer journey, it is enabling us to digitally transform the support experience