The Customer Advocacy team at Zendesk noticed a spike in ticket volume in the summer of 2019. There’s no way we could have known that less than a year later we’d be in the midst of a global pandemic that has resulted in a surge in ticket volumes across a wide range of industries. As the situation continues to unfold, self service is emerging as a practical solution for customers and businesses alike.
Hiring skilled customer service agents is the most important part of providing an exceptional customer service experience. But once you have the right people, in order for them to realize their potential, you need to equip them with the right tools. Now that 96% of people use cell phones, part of supplying agents with what they need is giving them a way to do their job from a mobile device.
Some have been slow to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as part of their customer service strategy, but as organizations face resource and staffing constraints due to the pandemic, automation is not just nice to have—it can really help. Customers still need support, and AI-powered tools like Answer Bot, our self-service bot, can help meet the demand without requiring hands-on help from an agent.
Studies of customer feedback already tell us that the majority of customers prefer to solve their problems on their own over contacting a support agent. It makes sense—self-service puts the customer in the driver’s seat, empowering them to be autonomous and find the right answers with speed. But self-service is also better for businesses. It enables them to do more with less and frees their support teams’ time up for higher-stakes issues that require a human touch.
Smartphones have become a common part of everyday life. Pew research reports that 96% of people in the United States use cell phones. And with their ubiquity, text messaging has become one of the most common forms of communication in modern life. Recent research from Text Request found that 97% of smartphone users had texted in the past week. For businesses, that makes text messaging an important channel to include in your customer support strategy.
In today’s omnichannel world of live chat, social media, email, and more, it can be easy to overlook the critical role that phone support still plays for many customers. In fact, phone is still the most common way that customers prefer to contact customer service at a company, according to Benchmark data.
Zendesk takes security very seriously—just ask the Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies that trust us with their data. We use a combination of enterprise-class security features and comprehensive audits of our applications, systems, and networks to ensure that your data is always protected, which means every customer can rest easy—our own included.
At any moment, there are more than 20 million containers at sea, transporting everything from raw materials like oil, steel, and wood, to consumer products like TVs, toys, and textiles. That makes operating ports complicated business, which is why companies like 1-Stop Connections, which provides SaaS solutions to keep those ports working efficiently, are so vital.
Not every company has the staff, tools, and skills required to meet their customers’ expectations of call center service. For example, 51% of consumers expect a response in under five minutes when they call a company, according to The Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2020. But for a small eCommerce team, meeting this expectation may not always be possible. That’s where a BPO call center comes in.
