Maintaining humanity in customer service

For the task to write a reaction paper I chose the article about humanity in customer service as customer service has always been close to my heart. I’ve been working in tourism industry for over 20 years now and there isn’t a position in this field of tourism industry that doesn’t require customer service skills. The chosen article was actually eventually kind of a sales pitch for the company Five9 services for companies that are in need of help in contact center services on intelligent cloud. Five9 has important message though how to provide more human experience in contact center customer service and on my opinion these ways apply to whole field of customer service.

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Brands realizing customer needs and aiming to fulfill them

The pandemic time covid-19 highlighted the need of empathy and the importance of relationships and human contact between brands and customers. The insecure times guided brands to offer comfort and positive support to maintain customer loyalty by maintaining humanity in the service level. Customers want and expect fast solutions, quick responses and respect to their time. It is also found customers prefer phone conversations over multiple-channels. More and more brands need to recognize the ways to get close to consumers when providing customer services on multi-channels. Not only through advanced technology but also by contact center services. Brands that are understanding how to get close to their customer will be able to respond their customers needs easily.

Two key points in taking care of customers and give positive and human customer experience

• Responsiveness
  • Beside being a human quality responsiveness is an important part of developing technology in field of agents at contact centers needing data and AI-assisted capacities
  • Agents must be able to trust technology when focusing on relating customers
  • Brands need to change and adapt to meet customer needs in all situations
• Empathy
  • More human contact center is able to provide more empathy than purely technology based call center and that way add more humanity to customer service
  • Empathy builds loyalty and reliable customer relationships
  • Listening and understanding customers makes connection to meet their needs

Five9 guide of 7 ways to deliver more human experience based on responsiveness and empathy

1. Know your customer and their history with your brand.
2. Meet your customer at channels of their choice, via phone, txt, chat , email, etc.
3. Empower your customer with wide self-service possibility.
4. Remember your customer by offering smooth switch from channel to channel without having to repeat the need.
5. Respect your customer and their time by not keep on hold and resolving issues on the first time
6. Support your customer by proactively anticipating customers needs ahead of time. Sometimes even resolving issues before they occur also for example sending reminders and follow-ups.
7. Assure your customer that you will be available when needed. Provide a secure and reliable experience.

All these ways are extremely important and relevant when delivering more human customer experience. Especially nowadays as technology is developing rapidly and multiple-channels are increasing. Technology is challenging the need of human contact in call-center work. For my opinion there is not a chance to replace humans in real customers service as only humans have ability to adapt in different and quickly changing situations and emotions that customers have. During my working years I’ve been also working in different type of call-centers for example accommodation bookings in hotels and in transfers booking center. There has always been customers service situations where you need to respond quickly and adapt to the customers need and emotion in the moment.

It is important that technology and humans are developing hand in hand also on customer service levels. As different customer types have different needs and ways they want to communicate. At the end of the article that I chose there are examples from three different companies how they have benefitted for these Five9 services where they guide companies to build their customer loyalty without forgetting the company’s much needed income. These example companies operate on technology field, medical field and educational field. So it is shown that more human experience in customer service is needed in all kind of businesses.

References

Making Customer Service a More Human Experience