Optimised customer service – why it is so important for businesses

We’ve all been in a situation where we’ve needed help but couldn’t get through to customer service on the phone. Opening hours on weekdays from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm – and rarely at the weekend – used to be the norm. Yet it was still a source of frustration.

Back to the future – what’s the state of customer service today?

What do we do nowadays when we can’t sort things out for ourselves? That’s right, we ‘Google’ it. Customers first turn to search engines and the World Wide Web for help to help themselves – also known as self-service. It’s rare for a search to return no results. People’s specific problems have already been discussed in various online communities and, in most cases, even resolved. The difficulty with these communities is that they are not monitored by the manufacturers and liability issues are rarely clarified.

Alongside the challenge of being constantly available, another important aspect of customer service is understanding and speaking the customer’s language. This is particularly true when it comes to self-help documentation, known as self-help materials. So how can companies meet the challenge of resolving customer enquiries as and when they arise?

The prerequisites for comprehensive customer service

This is where structured and actively implemented knowledge management comes into its own, serving both to preserve the knowledge available within the company and to make it available to the customer. In this way, the company’s own self-service content is displayed when the customer searches online, and the customer can be assisted easily even outside of service hours. Another key component of customer service is the implementation of an omnichannel strategy. This means that customers are not only assisted by telephone or email, but knowledge can also be made available to support them via chat (or chatbots), amongst other channels.

Rising customer expectations and enquiries, as well as new digital services, require not only knowledge management but also optimised and more efficient support processes and structures (e.g. swarming). In order to offer customers a consistent and value-adding support or service experience, processes must be analysed, optimised and, where necessary, restructured. New support cases reported by devices or machines (IoT) also mean that new channels must be taken into account and implemented.

The path to optimised customer service

To meet these requirements, a precisely coordinated system landscape (Enterprise Service Management software) is needed, along with constant communication between support levels, transparency regarding ticket status, and a shift in the company’s (service) culture. The various support strands within the organisation must no longer be viewed merely as silos with their own authorities, and tickets must no longer be passed on solely vertically within the support chain. Horizontal ticket/case escalation and collaboration between support departments are just some of the foundations of efficient customer service. It is important to recognise that a ‘customer’ is not necessarily just an external client (B2B or B2C). Employees are also customers of their own organisation, for example within the IT department.

Meeting all the requirements for optimal customer service – and thus meeting customer needs – whilst also aligning this service with new technologies presents companies with major challenges. Servitisation, Product-as-a-Service, traditional or hybrid customer service – these and many other terms are becoming increasingly important for a company’s service strategy.