Customers and their needs drive innovation in the service sector. Customer-centered innovations in technology support organizations in handling queries, resolving issues, and building loyalty. Today, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and automation tools help tech companies in serving customers efficiently, and customers have become more demanding than ever. They want to get answers now, communicate now, and share their experience instantly with their groups, which include other C-level executives, functional heads, and business heads. This raises the stakes, prompting companies to handle customer service challenges even before they develop. When it comes to tech customers, the stakes are even higher due to many factors: information availability, new releases and updates, etc. Therefore, getting to know the tech customers will help support teams to understand and serve them better.
TECH CUSTOMERS & support teams: the new realities
The nature of today’s businesses requires integrated work efforts as a team, not the siloed way of working. Therefore, today’s tech customer is a connected, social representative with many sides to him: an audience, a critic, a strategic partner and much more. With in-depth knowledge on technologies, the customer seeks insight and value rather than mere solutions when it comes to a product or service. In other words, the customer seeks continuous learning—not merely in processing or operations, but intellectual too—that can be applied to the value chain. Here are some realities you should know about the changing face of tech customers and the impact on service teams:
- Mobile-assisted support: Tech customers often prefer using an in-app help or a standalone app as an easy, accessible support tool. Customers prefer mobile-assisted support to engage in real-time chat and make use of various app features. For support teams too, using mobile apps may be one of the most important service touchpoints. Offering live in-app support to diagnose and fix problems is a great service differentiator.
- Real-time business intelligence: Unlocking the potential of big data analytics and gleaning valuable insights helps in taking critical decisions relating to business performance. Maintaining incident logs helps both the customer and support team to identify areas for improvement.
- Conversations on digital platforms: Customers are ‘always on’ and collaborate with professionals in their group to discuss and evaluate issues online. Support teams need to proactively monitor all channels (social, chat, mail, and search) to detect problem areas and have the workaround ready.
- Context-sensitive & self-service help tool: As customers have ready access to information and are technology savvy, they are curious not only about finding resolutions but also about knowing key incidents down the line. Enabling incident deflection with prescriptive self-help guides is an essential step that service teams should undertake (for instance, video guides are increasingly popular among tech users).
- Interactive videos: When dealing with a problem, lengthy descriptions or conversations often do not produce the desired results. Customers prefer to leverage interactive video support that pinpoints concerns and shows ideal solutions. Support teams would do well to integrate interactive videos to the knowledgebase and leverage such content assets.
- Knowledgebase & learning systems: Customers spend a sufficient part of their work hours poring over different content items. An integrated knowledgebase that includes various data sources organization wide is a handy tool. Support teams can leverage this databank to map relevant knowledge by incidents and by context.
Tech customers—across a variety of roles—look for value in each interaction and consider support teams as partners in the engagement process. It is, therefore, imperative for support teams to consider the above realities and keep the conversation going at all times, to help customers navigate the tech landscape.
