What are Virtual Assistants?
Virtual assistants are those who provide assistance to the professional or company’s day-to-day tasks. They usually help with various tasks, such as scheduling meetings, booking flights, ordering groceries, etc.
What is Customer Service?
Customer service is how a company assists its customers. It involves answering questions, resolving complaints, and providing customer assistance. The main goal of customer service is to provide a high level of customer satisfaction. Customer service can be provided in person, over the phone, or via email.
The role of virtual assistants has changed dramatically in recent years. In the past, they were only used for administrative tasks such as scheduling appointments, etc.
Nowadays, however, the tasks of virtual assistants have dramatically diversified. Virtual assistants are playing an increasingly important role in customer service. They are now doing customer-facing tasks such as scheduling appointments, answering queries, or even managing social media. Moreover, they help human agents provide better customer service and act as a connection between the consumer and the company.
As such, a virtual assistant should know how to provide customer service. Customers are the lifeblood of a business. It is essential for them to feel appreciated and valued. It’s also crucial for companies to know how to handle customer service requests to avoid future issues properly.
Some benefits of knowing how to give good customer service include
- A happy customer is loyal. It means they will continue buying from you and vouch for your products to others.
- Customers satisfied with their experience will be more likely to return as repeat customers.
- It can help build a strong relationship with your customers, leading to increased revenue for your business from that company again in the future.
6 Customer Service Trends That Your Virtual Assistant Should Implement
As mentioned earlier, customer service is a crucial part of any business. Here are some customer service trends that your virtual assistant should know are:
1. Customer Service Automation
Chatbots or automated customer service were recently introduced with the rise of AI-powered technologies in business. Not all companies have an available 24/7 agent to meet their customers’ needs. As such, most have integrated the aforementioned technologies into their channel and website.
With AI and chatbots, customers find their answers whenever faced with issues or answer their inquiries regarding service, orders, etc. AI-powered customer service agents can answer any question and answer it in a matter of seconds. They are also able to provide personalized responses to each person’s queries.
This trend could help your virtual assistant minimize time-consuming and repetitive tasks, letting them focus on the more crucial matters of your business.
2. Data-driven Approach to Customer Service
Big data has always been an essential tool for customer service. Businesses use data to improve the customer experience and ensure they are being served in the best way possible. They also use data to predict customer needs and provide information about new products or services.
Likewise, the use of big data in customer support service should be adapted by virtual assistants. It can help them understand your customers better, predict their needs, and help provide them with information about new products.
3. Humanised Digital Experiences
The customer experience has evolved from traditional one-way communication to a humanized digital experience. In the past, customers had to go through a tedious and lengthy process of filling out forms and submitting them. Nowadays, customers can interact with brands on social media and get real-time feedback.
This new way of communicating with customers is more interactive and personal. Customers feel like they are talking to someone who knows them personally rather than just some random customer service representative on the other side of the phone.
4. Continued use of Live agents
While most of the customer service trends we discussed focus on technology. However, human agents are still a thing. As mentioned earlier, people look for a more humanized and personalized online experience.
The live agent role has been around for many years. It is still widely used today because it provides a personal touch many customers prefer when interacting with brands. According to a study conducted by CrazyEgg, about 38% of their consumer respondents are more likely to patronize a company if they offer chat support.
5. Data Safety and Transparency
As mentioned earlier, the use of data to improve customer service is being used by many companies. Most offer data-driven customer service to personalize customer interactions. By collecting and analyzing past interactions, they can anticipate what customers want, how they want it, and when they need it. This helps them save time and money while delivering better customer service.
However, this also resulted in a lot of data breaches and hacking. And thus, customers are starting to demand data safety and transparency as part of customer service. They want to interact with a company that takes data security seriously.
Likewise, your virtual assistants should adopt data transparency and let customers know how they and your company use their information.
6. Enhanced Personalization
To provide the best customer service, companies must customize their approach. In a study by Mckinsey on the importance of personalization, about 76% of the respondents said that personalized communication is a factor in brand consideration.
As such, virtual assistants must understand your customers and what they want. And this is where customer service or ad personalization comes in.
It allows companies to tailor their experience for each customer. This can be achieved by using data collected from the customers or that can learn about each customer and then delivering tailored content for them.
Conclusion
The advent of new technology and trends will constantly change customer service practices. However, as long as you cater to clients, you must be updated with these trends and practices. We hope that your virtual assistant will use these six customer service trends. When done well, it will substantially impact your business.