How Cisco Technology Can Help Create Great Customer Service Experiences Online
Whether you are aware of it or not, consumers today increasingly interact with their family and friends through digital platforms such as social networks, instant message applications and streaming video services.
I recently wrote about the evolution of digital customer service, and what it means for marketers, on the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) website. But the impact of this evolution isn’t limited to your marketing team – leaders from all parts of your organization need to realize the digital shift that is happening, and how it will affect your bottom line.
Here’s why.
The average duration of a mobile phone call has decreased by more than fifty per cent in recent years as we talk less (and message more).
47% of customers expect a web page to take less than two seconds to load.
And if you didn’t know it yet – Canadian mobile web usage now exceeds desktop-based browsing.
Together, these statistics convey a clear message: Canadians are spending more time on digital channels (the Internet, mobile applications, etc.) and expect to be engaged by companies on them as well. And for many, many Canadian businesses your website is your primary digital channel. It is where your customers come for support, to learn more about your products and (in many cases) to make purchases.
Ask yourself: is your website doing everything it can to deliver great customer experiences? Can customers live chat with service agents, or read an FAQ to answer their questions? Is your website mobile-optimized and maintained regularly? Do you have technology like Cisco SocialMiner, which helps service agents deliver personalized experiences for customers who post on social networks? Or Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, which delivers intelligent contact routing, call treatment and multichannel contact management to ensure those calls are always answered, as quickly as possible?
For businesses to succeed, they need to prioritize the customer experience and provide great customer service online across multiple platforms and customer touchpoints. And technology will be the foundation those experiences are built upon.
One customer we worked with recently was SickKids Foundation, the largest charitable funder of child health research, learning and care in Canada (second only to our government). The foundation’s contact centre helps raise funds on behalf of The Hospital for Sick Children, and they recently discovered that, by implementing the Cisco Business Edition 6000 with Cisco Unified Contact Centre Express and Cisco Jabber – solutions that improve voice quality, intelligently route inbound requests, enable quick online collaboration and help eliminate dropped calls – they could increase call centre efficiency and improve the donor experience. The result? They were able to raise more funds to help more sick children.
To replicate the success of SickKids Foundation, your business needs to prioritize implementing the right technology that makes great customer experiences possible.
Because at the end of the day, the right technology can bring your customers and service agents together in powerful ways. That’s why it’s so important that leaders from sales, marketing, IT and customer service come together to understand how customers are going to interact with you in a digitized world. Because the right technology doesn’t end with online chat applications or social media monitoring, it starts with a secure, scalable contact centre infrastructure capable of managing your data and IP telephony needs for today and tomorrow.
Where it ends is up to you.
Interested in learning more? Join us for Collaboration Wednesdays where each third Wednesday of the month, we take a deeper dive into the world of customer care.
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