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The Evolution of Customer Service

Holger Friesz, VP Commercial at AnyDesk, explains the Evolution of Customer Service.

Potential and Opportunities of a Future-Oriented Service-Desk – A Sneak Peek Into the Future

At the Service Desk IT Support Show (SITS), Holger Friesz, our VP Commercial who is responsible for the customer journey at AnyDesk, will share his insights about the transformation of customer service and the future trends he identified for Service Desks.

With the Service Desk & IT Support Show being just around the corner, we are delighted to be invited to speak in the online event about the core of what our industry is about: The transformation of customer service and how to manage customer success in the future.

While it may not be rocket science to build up and run a service desk or customer care department in the first place, there are many aspects that can have an impact on the customer experience and business success. As one of the world-leading Remote Support solutions, we at AnyDesk see a huge variety of ways that companies set up service processes.

Thanks to the strong partnerships we have with our clients, we’ve gained incredible insights across all industries and different company sizes. During the SITS conference, we will unveil three major trends and give an outlook on the future expectations of service delivery.

The Path to Smart Self-Service

The evolution of the Service Desk is mainly driven by the change of customers in terms of their age. While Baby Boomers and Generation X would generally prefer a face-to-face or at least human interaction when it comes to solving customer problems, Generation Y and Z are known for being self-driven, self-decisive, and look for self-empowerment.

This creates two completely different ways of approaching the same result. Example: While Baby Boomers and Generation X would still prefer a travel agency to book their holidays and speak to a customer service rep personally, Generation Y and Z would instead research for themselves, use portals and communities for recommendations and ratings, and book finally on their own.

This evolution needs to be taken into account also in terms of customer support. Those who provide a superior customer experience will win and keep the customer in the long run. It is vital to understand that the expectations of the young generation have changed. They demand instant access to information and expect around the clock troubleshooting, independent of time and location.

Why Setting Up a Help Center Isn’t All

The pandemic has changed the world and how we work together, not just with customers but also within business departments. In many cases, you cannot just walk over to a colleague any longer to get support or help, so people need new ways to easily find what they are looking for. With that being said, what steps must companies take in order to ensure the best customer service for every customer?

If you offer a help center for your products, make sure everything can be found with multiple keywords on Google or Bing and adjust them over time, as this is the first step customers often take when looking for assistance. They use search engines to look up their issues, hoping to find the solution online. Imagine the traffic you can create for your own website, if you are ranked as one of the top results. Customer service isn’t just simply responsive, it is proactive and includes technical strategies that make you business visible in a digital world.

To advance your service focus, enhance your product or service with intelligent in-product support. This is easier, of course, for a software company than for a manufacturing company, however, almost everything is running or supported by IT meanwhile. As soon as technology is involved, you should always think about the customer experience.

Customer Service Through AI

Giving the customer the possibility of self-service is only one component of providing an excellent customer service experience. Another way is to use new technologies, like Artificial Intelligence (AI), that are strong and reliable. While it may require training, once your company is up to speed, you can use AI in smart chats or even phone support with natural-sounding voices that you couldn’t differentiate from a human being.

Sounds too far out? Actually, it’s a reality already. Many booking agencies use AI on the phone when you place a hotel reservation. And I’m pretty sure, you didn’t even notice when you booked your room last time.

This will save your customer service team valuable time as many requests can indeed be handled through AI, chat bots, or help centers. Of course your service desk still needs to step in every once in a while, some customer issues might be too complex for help centers and AI, depending on the customer’s needs and the problem at hand. AI, however, is a great way to complement your service desk, especially outside business hours.

A Mixture of AI and Service-Oriented Passion

Besides exceeding your customers’ expectation of service, there is also a relevant financial factor to consider. AI scales very different from human interaction. From our experience, a good service desk today covers 80% of the tasks with AI-chat, phone or in-product first-level-support.

Second-tier support is then comprised of helpful and enthusiastic experts who are empowered to connect, analyze, configure or repair, make decisions and let the customer feel their service-oriented passion. It’s a mixture of both, human interaction and instant access to information, good customer service will have to provide in the future.

What’s next?

If you want to offer a customer high quality service, you need to consider the age and generation of your target group. You can improve customer satisfaction by implementing AI and Self-Services into your Service Desk strategy. Great customer service is more than just answering phone calls and emails, it’s more about interacting with customers in new, innovative ways.

The Service Evolution is only one of three trends we identified for the Service Desk. The bigger need of mobility, including the decentralization of your customers and requirements to fix machines remotely, will further impact and change the service desk as we know it. But this will be part of a separate blog post, so follow our series and learn more about the future of customer service.

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