Journey towards developing a Digital customer services unit

Being digital does not mean serving your customers through digital medium. With this strategy you only end up creating another channel and with millions of customers you might end up in a position when one customer is connecting you over various channels. Embracing digital customer services mean a lot more - developing and creating meaningful 1:1 relationship or supporting a brand determined to be a cultural change agent.

You will always have some customers at the far end of the spectrum who would still want to be in touch with you through traditional medium. Segmenting your customers and fine tuning the digital customer service strategy is essential. Customer services units also needs to educate customers and incentives them to connect through digital channel which is a win-win for both companies and the customer.

The benefits of having a completely digital customer services unit are :

• Lower costs - Digital chats costs ~ 56% of call-centre's costs (the baseline), while online forums and FAQs cost 12% of baseline, and community solutions are as low as 9% of baseline
• Enhanced customer satisfaction - Customer service units resolve commercial or technical issues for the customers’ entire service journey, and when a customer chose a purely digital service journey, research had shown that this journey drives a higher level of satisfaction at 76% as compared to traditionalists (57%) and mixed-channel (74%) journeys.

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• Richer differentiation – Almost all the large companies have implemented digital strategies to capture customer attention and influence decision by creating ‘a wow moment’. For instance, Tesco in UK have virtual shops at tube stations.
• Higher brand advocacy -  Organisations reward customers who are their strongest brand advocates (“ angel customers” and even drive referrals ) through monetary or non-monetary incentives like a badge, special invites to events, early product previews
• Digital migration- Consumers proactively rates and engages with new customers by helping them choose a product. In a way, consumers themselves respond to queries through blogs and online forums (two levels of P2P communication )  

A noteworthy example here would be how Skype manages its entire customer services through online communities and analysis based support center.

A 2013 McKinsey report found that 65% of social media users prefer digital options when seeking product and service information and support. No surprise, then, that Hubspot research found that 62% of brands used social media to address questions and comments in 2013, more than twice the 30% doing so in 2012.

Social and other forms of digital customer service and support are make-or-break operations for global brands. The digital option can reduce CRM costs, speed response times and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. That’s the good news.

Here’s the less-than-good:

• 20% of non-native English speakers are comfortable with English-only support, according to data from Lionbridge.
• 40% of customers who weren’t able to get their issue resolved ended up calling the company, according to the Hubspot survey. This “channel escalation” increases cost-per-call and puts unnecessary demand on call center staff. For example, Forrester estimated that unnecessary service costs from this activity average $22 million for online retailers in 2011.
• 11% of companies provide poor customer experiences, according to another Forrester survey. This impacts loyalty, satisfaction and referrals: 38% of people in the Hubspot survey reported feeling negatively toward a brand that didn’t address their customer service issue in a timely manner.

 
If you still need more convincing there is a plenty of fact on what social customer service is really worth: stats 

Author:  Debaleena Debnath and Suraj Poddar
Debaleena is a digital media consultant @ speradigital.
Suraj is the founder and CEO of speradigital.
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