Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Online and offline retailers are at war. For years, offline retailers have been struggling to stem the tide of shoppers leaving their stores, abandoning them for the convenience of online shopping. But this year, finally, their efforts have seen some positive press. It’s not a matter of if, but when. So here’s the question for both retailers: How does online and offline customer service compare, and does it really make a difference?

Everyone is online these days. It’s a given that this is how we now live and interact. We would find it extremely difficult to guide our lives without the internet. But with this trend of interacting on a digital plane, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of the human side of our interactions. It’s only too easy to treat online experiences as mere “exchanges” instead of unique stepping stones for developing and understanding relationships.

It’s been yet another eventful month, with a number of new and interesting apps making their entry onto the Freshdesk Marketplace. Here’s a quick look at the new additions.

No matter what size your company is, big data can make a significant impact on your customer service. And better customer service leads to happier customers and increased sales. In fact, increasing your customer retention by just 5% can result in a 25% increase1 in profits. But the problem is that even many of the largest businesses around aren’t using their data effectively.

Customer service support is shifting dramatically, from a single channel model to an omnichannel one. Today 90% of customers expect to be able to move seamlessly across service channels, including mobile, chat, and online. But the problem is companies are still struggling to do this well. 61% of customers have not been able to easily switch from one channel to another when interacting with customer service.

Let’s face it, nobody enjoys dealing with ticket escalations. When a ticket is escalated, it means there’s a problem that your ground-level employees can’t solve. The customer will have to wait, rather impatiently, for a solution; and if it escalates beyond that, it indicates a systemic issue that will require your developers to pull all-nighters. It’s an unpleasant situation all around!

When you talk about your business’s customer experience, it’s easy to get caught up in the bigger picture of what you want to achieve. Meaning, it’s easy to just imagine the ideal experience you want your customers to have, but not actually focus on what will help you achieve this.

Every company has its own unique audience — and should have a unique approach to customer engagement to match. After all, when it comes to creating great customer experiences and achieving high levels of satisfaction, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach that’s guaranteed to work for every brand.

Measuring and analyzing your customer support team’s performance can be challenging. The quality of an interaction between two people is subjective, and given that customer interactions are ultimately what make up the majority of a support team’s work, standard metrics like costs and returns aren’t often the best way to gauge and improve quality.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has been a hot topic within the customer support community recently and there are many good reasons for that. By using AI intelligently (no pun intended) support teams can be more efficient and effective, and create a better experience for customers, all without sacrificing quality.