According to execs from Vimeo and Wipro email is dead – and it is mostly because of Gen Z.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023, held in Davos, Thierry Delaporte, chief executive at IT firm Wipro, said his employees are “25, they don’t care. They don’t go on their emails, they go on Snapchat”. Many, including Farhad Divecha, owner and managing director of London-based digital marketing agency Accuracast and Vimeo’s chief executive Anjali Sud, agreed.
Divecha said: “If I want something done quickly, I rarely rely on email myself. I tend to send a [Microsoft] Teams message, or even WhatsApp if it is really urgent. I might send an email with details, but over the past three to five years I’ve learned that email’s just not good enough if you want something done quickly.”
This is not just a workforce trend and while it started with Gen Z, it will likely catch on with others. Customers today demand to be served where they are, which means that brands need to modernize their channels to ensure they are reaching all customer segments effectively.
In this article CX Network looks at four customer support channels that every brand needs to stay relevant in a fast-changing world.
Video support enables empathy in customer interactions
New customer initiatives are increasingly focused on delivering digital experiences and one of the bigger trends we have seen here is an increase in the level of video support being offered to customers. The use of video in customer interactions has increased by 47 percent since 2020, demonstrating how brands want to capitalize on the level of engagement they can offer.
With 64 percent of customers claiming they feel more like tickets than people in customer support interactions, video support offers brands an opportunity to create more personalized and friendly customer interactions. By adding a face to your customer communications brands can remove that impersonal feeling and make customer interactions feel more like a normal conversation. This makes video support particularly useful for technical installations, complex purchases and even luxury retail.
Video support also allows agents to pick up on visual cues that may suggest a customer is feeling annoyed or frustrated and respond in an appropriate way, making the customer feel more understood and elevating their experience. In this way, brands can instill a sense of empathy into customer interactions which has positive implications for customer loyalty in the long run.
Mobile retail applications are on the rise
The rise of mcommerce – which is ecommerce through a mobile device – has been clear to see in recent years, with researchers now expecting 43 percent of ecommerce sales to be completed through a mobile device in 2023. Mobile retail applications specifically are predicted to remain popular over the year, as 60 percent of consumers have expressed a preference for mobile apps over mobile websites, due to the improved user experience.
They facilitate personalized interactions, they bypass email marketing and, in a similar way to loyalty platforms, they are an endless source of customer data. With this in mind it becomes clear that a major segment of retail customers will be making their purchases through mobile retail applications in 2023. This means that any brand which has not yet implemented or optimized its retail applications is ignoring almost half of its potential customers from the get-go.
Convenience and security, however, can make or break the experience as at least 45 percent of consumers have claimed that they would not download a brand’s app if they had security concerns. While having a retail application is a great start, brands can further capitalize on this trend by designing them in ways that deliver on customers’ demands for convenience and security.
Twitter allows brands to get creative – and funny
Social media has become a key channel in recent years, not only for brands to reach out or respond to customers but also for customers to air their grievances with brands, often with significant reputational consequences. Research has found that half of the customers who have a bad experience with a brand will complain about it on social media and 81 percent of those will not recommend the brand if they receive no reply.
As the use of social media has become more common many brands have taken steps to be available through it. Others, however, have even taken things a step further, using social media platforms such as Twitter to communicate with and entertain their customers. We have seen some brands replying to customers and posting humorous tweets and jokes on Twitter to make themselves stand out from the competition and to make themselves appear more relevant to their often young, social media-based customers.
For example, when Innocent Drinks made this customer’s dreams come true:
Or when Old Spice got creative with this unique poll:
The best part about the use of social media platforms like Twitter for this type of engagement is that it is entirely free and incredibly low effort, with many brands’ social media output managed by a single person.
Chatbots are fast becoming the primary customer support channel
Last year, Gartner predicted that by 2027 chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for roughly one quarter of all organizations. While the human touch has always been important in CX, research confirms that customers today, particularly younger generations, are not so fussed about it and would much rather have convenience.
It has been shown that 62 percent of consumers would prefer to use a chatbot rather than waiting for agents while only 23 percent state they would prefer a face-to-face interaction, and even then only for complex issues.
Ecommerce fashion retailer ASOS.com has recognized the capabilities of chatbots for years. In 2017 the brand implemented a “gift-guiding” chatbot to aid shoppers in navigating its vast Christmas catalog. In 2018 a more advanced bot dubbed Enki, offered personalized recommendations based on customers’ previous interactions. Enki was powered by Google, meaning it was available through the Google Assistant, making ASOS one of the first UK fashion retailers to sell through a voice assistant.
ASOS applied its previous experience in the implementation of a single point of entry via live chat, deploying a bot which helps agents to tackle customer care issues on the front-line, marking an important step toward service automation for the brand.
Joseph Vassie, head of insight and analytics at ASOS, says: “ASOS used to speak to customers through social media, telephone calls, emails and live chat. Some of these channels were more effective than others and customers were used to using the channels that were most convenient for them.”
Deeper analysis, however, confirmed that live chat was “evidently the space in which ASOS could create the best customer service experiences”. The implementation of this chatbot resulted in a 50 point NPS improvement within two years, made improvements in resolution rates and waiting times and saw attrition “reduced significantly”.
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