How Mobility and IoT Change the World of Customer Service

A Sneak Peek Into the Future of the Service Desk and Customer Experience

In a previous blog article our digital expert Holger Friesz, VP Commercial at AnyDesk, and responsible for the Customer Experience, gave a quick insight into the Evolution of Customer Service. In today’s blog post, Holger will share his insights on the topics Mobility and IoT and how those trends change the Service Desk as a review of the webinar he held at the Service Desk IT Support Show (SITS) on the 23rd of June 2021.

Mobility

The Change of Service Desk Expectations in the Digital Age

A major trend within the evolution of Service Desk Management, and basically driven through the pandemic, is the idea of Mobility and the expectation to solve an issue immediately. A year ago, we could simply call an IT expert and get help immediately. Nowadays, when working from home or any remote place and running into any sort of problem, we want the same service experience. We want instant help – we don’t want to sit and wait for hours.

This expectation had to change due to the pandemic. People were no longer close, but connected to each other in a virtual manner. They were working from home, and they were not able to go to the customer because there was a legal obligation to work from home wherever possible. This created a totally new situation for Service Desks and Customer Support teams.

What exactly changed? The requirements to solving issues have increased, while the mobility was quite limited. In other words, you as someone providing a product or service, were not able to go to your customer, but the expectation was to solve everything immediately and provide excellent customer service despite the circumstances. At the end of the day, the Service Desk has to deliver higher quality in a faster way, but with limited “bandwidth” in terms of visiting customers and moving around.

Customer Service Experience Is Part of the Product

Under all these circumstances, how do we as service providers make sure, that the customers are getting the right training, the right onboarding, and the right value out of the purchased products? At AnyDesk, our customers, that provide service themselves, were hiring Customer Success Managers to make sure that their own clients get a good understanding of how they can use the products that they’ve purchased.

Processes have to be rethought and everything needs to be focused on the customer journey to ensure customer satisfaction. Customer Support is transforming into Customer Experience. It’s not only about solving an issue and answering customer questions. Simply providing a tool doesn’t solve any problems. If you don’t think about the customer experience in the first place and define how you want your customer to feel while they are working with you or your services, you will have a hard time keeping your customer base on the long run.

The consequence: A Service Desk is not just “after sales” and problem solving. It is becoming part of the product offering itself and part of the full customer journey and the customer experience. The focus changed and Support Centres shifted to Experience Centres. The companies that were able to make that shift, had also an increase in employee satisfaction of their customer service team.

Who doesn’t want to work with thought-through systems and well defined, customer-oriented processes to eliminate bad experiences for both sides? And with happy employees you will also gain happy customers. Why? Because it’s fun to serve them and customers will notice that.

IoT – The Internet of Things

IoT Is Now

Last but not least, another important trend we can recognize is IoT. Although it has already been around for more than ten years, IoT finally arrived in everyone’s life on a daily basis. IoT is now. Let’s clarify: What is “IoT” exactly?

According to Wikipedia, the Internet of things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects (“things”) that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the Internet.

This starts with running shoes with sensors or just a small valve in a pipe and ends up with your washing machine at home! There are lots of examples of IoT in our today’s surrounding: TVs, coffee machines, solar panels, wind parks etc. Even modern cars are a perfect example of IoT devices.

Let’s take my own car as an example: I can lock the doors and start the car with my mobile device. When my car is parked in the sun, I can turn on the air conditioning using my smartphone, so it is well-conditioned before I come back. Another example: It is telling my local car dealer or garage about the service it needs, so they can contact me for an appointment. Too salesy? Well, service-oriented can be another way to put it.

Imagine the following scenario: A vendor machine you typically find at train stations or airports is experiencing or identifying a potential upcoming issue. The technician in charge is informed automatically thanks to real-time data and smart processes. Either this person logs in remotely and fixes the issues or gets details information about i.e. broken parts to be replaced. This is customer experience at its best: The process is triggered even before something has happened and prevents a customer’s problem before it occurs.

Risk Prevention: IoT Needs Secure Communication

According to our observations, many companies entering the field of IoT are focussing on customer experience, which is quite a positive development. However, some of them forget one important aspect, that is unrelated to the service itself or the comfort it provides. It’s about the communication and the transmission of the data. 

Cybercrime has increased by over 300 % since the start of the pandemic. They are organized and well-structured and are watching global trends very closely. Famous examples of how an IoT service has failed to protect sensitive data or communication include i.e. the “Keyless Go” functionality of cars or the data theft of gaming station services. I’m sure we all remember the first cars that had “Keyless Go”. The service itself worked perfectly, however, the transmission of the data was simply not encrypted. It was very easy to spy on users and as a consequence, lots of cars got stolen.

The point here is: While it is great to think about the service experience for the customer, the data communication part is equally crucial to a successful IoT service. If you want to provide trusted value, you also have to think about how to make things secure.

In a nutshell: If I had to describe a trend, IoT is pushing much faster into the markets, just because the technology is meanwhile commonly available. And with the service, companies want to create an additional USP and differentiator to the competition. On the other side, cybercrime is ubiquitous and will always go for the easiest way to steal information. Hence, make sure, your service does not belong to this group.

Key Learnings

Remote Service is here to stay. The way of how we provide additional value to the service for our customers and improve their customer experience is going to adapt, due to the evolution of requirements and the needs of different generations.

Mobility is increasing as well as the expectation to get instant help. The need of having a Remote Access to wherever the customer is, is necessary in order to provide effective customer service.

Whatever you are producing, IoT is an ongoing trend and will have a big impact on our future lives. If you want to provide value like IoT, think about how to make it secure and a trustful service.

Watch the Webinar at SITS

Did you miss our appearance at SITS? No problem! Watch the recorded session here. If you want to get in touch with us and learn more about those topics, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us via mail sales@anydesk.com or LinkedIn. We are looking forward to hearing from you!