From ordering a ride to sourcing a dog sitter with ease, many are drawn to gig economy platforms for their sheer simplicity and convenience. It is a unique structure, one that involves gig economy workers, and the customers they serve (the drivers plus the riders). How is customer support delivered by these companies, across various channels?

CX organisations come in all shapes, sizes and configurations. And there are challenges and opportunities in every single one of them. Zendesk surveyed nearly 5,000 customer service decision-makers around the world to find how their organisation’s adoption of customer service and support best practice improves its ability to deliver superior customer experience (CX). The resulting 2022 CX Accelerator report uncovers fascinating insights about real-life pain points and clear calls to action.

Multilingual support is a must when serving an international customer base: 75 percent of consumers from 29 countries say they’re more likely to purchase from the same brand again if customer care is in their language. That’s not only important for CX in general, but especially so in times when companies are tightening their belts and focusing on customer retention over acquisition: After all, wowing your existing customer base is 5x cheaper than acquiring new customers.

Nothing sweeter than new Zendesk app integrations. Learn all about how these integrations can help out your sales and support teams.

If you’re in a customer-facing role, you’re more likely to interact with difficult customers who may be angry, demanding, aggressive, and sometimes even abusive. Learning how to deal with difficult customers and win people over with quality customer support creates a positive brand perception while also contributing to your career growth. Your customers could have had a bad day, and a small bug might be enough to throw them over the edge.

Providing honest, good customer service is a low-bar to clear – or so it seems. A good customer service platform really just has to do one thing, put the customer first. On the outside, it looks like a simple grade-school high jump competition. The bar is low, it looks easy to jump, but once you get into all the technicalities of the Fosbury Flop, it starts to get a smidge dicey.

The software and cloud services industry has seen market-defying growth in recent years, but growth comes with its own set of challenges. As you add more customers and prospects, you’ll also find that you have more questions pouring into your support channels – everything from basic FAQs to the most complex technical questions – and your team is on the hook for every single one.

The above definition of ITSM is an excellent basis for introducing what ITSM is all about. How do end users, be they external customers in a B2B or B2C environment, internal employees using IT systems, or even wider through the organization employees interacting with HR, Finance, and Facilities, gain value from the products and services offered?

In today’s digital-first world, there are copious channels for conversations to take place. Chat, it seems, has emerged as the shiny new avenue for support, especially in the world of chatbots and AI, and email has fallen to the wayside. While email may be overlooked in lieu of its modern counterparts, in fact, our research team found that 47% of people prefer to contact a company for customer service over email, compared to phone and Web Chat, both at 23%.

If you wish to build a loyal customer base, you must be willing to go the extra mile to meet customer expectations every time you engage with a customer. That’s because customer loyalty is a by-product of high customer satisfaction. Many companies seem to think that their customer expectations will be met with whatever it is that they offer, but that’s rarely ever the case.

An excellent customer service experience depends on the customer service team. Here are a few tips on how to manage customer service employees and get results in 2022.

Customer Experience is king, with countless statistics that accentuate its importance. For instance, 78% of customers say that the quality of service is crucial to earning both their loyalty and repeat business. Looking ahead to 2023, how can you enhance your CX strategy? As you consider roles dedicated to the CX cause, Customer Experience Managers can be a valuable asset to your team. What do they do exactly and how can they help grow your business?

Humans and technology. Hollywood has long explored the relationship between the two, from synthetic intelligence in sci-fi movies like Ex Machina to androids living in alternate realities in HBO’s Westworld. In those films and television shows, technology is often depicted as being wildly disruptive, even malevolent. While Hollywood gives us exaggerated stories for entertainment, it does offer a lens into how technology and methodologies can upend how we live.

Workers on production lines, assembling industrial goods with wrenches is one image that usually comes to mind when people think of the manufacturing industry. But now that we’re in what’s being described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, that visual is as outdated as the steam engine. According to the World Economic Forum, “the First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanise production. The second used electric power to create mass production.

Congratulations on your big step to onboard a help desk system! You no longer have to worry about unattended customer inquiries or struggle to balance the workload evenly among your support team members. You get to effortlessly assign ownership for requests, track your team’s progress, and measure customer satisfaction. To realize the immense value of a help desk, you need to first set it up the right way for you and your support team.

The pressure is on healthcare companies to deliver a better end-to-end customer experience—otherwise, it is truly an insult to injury. The largest healthcare and insurance groups have their own legacy systems to untangle and integrate, but smaller healthcare outfits are also on the hook—and, arguably, at an advantage—to scale and grow with customers top of mind.

It’s go time for retailers, and no one hustles harder than small businesses getting their brand out there during the holiday season. But those on the small-but-scaling side of retail don’t have to hustle on their own, especially when it comes to delivering an efficient, scalable customer experience through the high season and beyond.

Most businesses maintain some sort of customer self-service tools, whether it’s a chatbot or guide bot framework or a collection of knowledge base articles. Chances are your business maintains some sort of a self-service option, but does your business do a good job of promoting that to your customers? Self-service provides customers the opportunity to solve a question on their own without directly involving your customer support team or help desk ticketing software.

As per Social Stamina, 64% of customers expect a reply within an hour of posting on Twitter, and 85% expect a company to respond within six hours. While this trend in customer expectations applies to almost all industries across the board, certain businesses – such as e-commerce apps – are witnessing an all-time high in traffic. Most companies may be crowded with service-related concerns, drowning customer support agents in an ever-increasing volume of tickets.

The SMB (small and medium-sized business) market is growing – in 2021, the number of small businesses in the US hit 32.5 million, making up nearly all (99.9%) of businesses in the country. In this digital-first environment, the needs of SMB owners will – and have already started – to shift. That is, as this market flourishes, it is increasingly demanding more digital products and services as it migrates away from strictly brick-and-mortar organizations to digital businesses.

There was a time when “growth at all costs” was the prevailing philosophy in tech. But times are changing, and as a result of today’s economic climate, more software and cloud services companies are focusing on profitability instead of growth. They are in protection mode. This drives a focus on quality customers rather than quantity, and a need to develop loyalty and reduce churn.

A customer can expect everything from the ordinary to the seemingly impossible. But whether or not a customer is asking you to take them to the Moon or provide a simple reporting apparatus, your business needs to be able to meet their expectations in at least some manner, or risk the consequences.

Healthcare workers were deeply impacted by the global pandemic. While other businesses shuttered their doors, hospitals and insurance providers pushed their limits to care for patients. Kind words and personal attention go far with patients, especially when they’re already stressed. People turn to healthcare professionals when they’re worried and sick, so great customer service is absolutely critical. But what does that mean in practice?