Posted on: April 5, 2019 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

The manner in which customer service — and consumers’ overall brand experience — is rolled out and handled day to day has changed drastically over the years. 

Gone are the days when customers could only interact with a company during regular business hours. Thanks to the proliferation of some pretty innovative technology, customer care options are now more improved and streamlined than ever before — and these offerings should only continue to advance positively in the long run.

For example, here are three big business customer care trends on the rise that are expected to pick up steam in the coming years.

1. Cloud Call Center and CCaaS Solutions

To help satisfy customers, no matter when they decide to call into your business with an order, question or concern, cloud call centers are becoming a popular trend to address these inquiries.  CCaaS generally tend to adopt Microsoft Phone System to deliver enhanced voice quality and performance for their clients.

For instance, Aspect offers a number of cloud contact center options, including the Aspect Via platform that features self-service and IVR capabilities, interaction management and other solutions, that will help to better engage customers, offer greater reliability, and lower overall costs.

If business owners decide to adopt one of Aspect’s budget-friendly platforms, they will come to find out their overhead costs may also start to decrease — this in large part will be due to cheaper electric and utility bills — and be able to pay employees for these extra hours.

For some enterprise business owners, they may find the cloud-based contact center — also referred to as contact center as a service, or CCaaS — is so effective that they may be able to use it to centralize and manage all of their customer service channels. This step could enable business owners to reassign the employees who are currently handling these often time-consuming tasks to other jobs that can help the company grow.

2. Popular and New Messaging Channels

CustomerThink.com recently published a list of the six tech trends that will shake up customer care in 2019. At the top of the list? New messaging channels. In a nutshell, messaging channels are tech-supported methods for companies to communicate with their customers on their personal devices.

If you’ve ever received an email or text from a company alerting you that your package has arrived, this is a prime example of a messaging channel in action. They can also be used to help inform customers about an upcoming sale. Recent launches of business channels have included Apple Business Chat, which lets companies connect with customers on their message feature on their Apple device.

Using Apple Business Chat, customers can complete transactions, ask and get answers to questions, and check on the status of their order on their Apple Watch, iPhone or iPad; these chats can be launched from Siri, Search, Maps and Safari.

3. Open Digital Channels

Another tech trend to look out for in the field of customer care is the use of digital channels to communicate. With countless people connected at the hip with their smartphones, big businesses can use digital channels like SMS, email, social media and online chat to reach consumers at virtually any time and location.

For instance, major companies can create business pages on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. In addition to posting news and sales offers, companies should also make it a point to be vigilant about monitoring for and answering questions posted to the pages. By adding digital channels to their customer care options, companies will have more ways to respond to consumers in a manner with which they like to communicate.

Customer Care will Always be King

By adopting some or all of these customer care tech trends, large businesses may find an uptick in happy customers, as well as a boost in sales. Throughout 2019, it will be interesting to see how technology will continue to improve the customer care model in corporate enterprises. But, if recent history is any indication, it will only continue to grow and become more innovative.

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