5 Customer Support Trends Not To Miss in 2022

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The pace of change in ecommerce can feel unyielding, bordering on relentless. Founders are expected to respond to rapid shifts in everything from marketing to customer retention to ensure their business can continue to thrive no matter the environment. Among all the turning tides in the entrepreneurial world, customer support is experiencing some of the most exciting trends.

Staying on top of customer support trends in 2022 is vital. It’s not just to field customers as your business grows and digitally transforms to meet requests, but it’s also to maintain the happiness and ability of your reps, or ‘“heroes” as we refer to them at Gladly. Let’s take a look at five current trends in customer support, so your operations can reflect this new era of business.

Radical Personalization for the Customer

Today’s customers are savvy and expect more from their customer service experience than a friendly interaction. Shoppers want their needs consistently met, to be treated like people rather than tickets, and to receive service on their preferred communication channels.

Personalization starts with having the right tools that allow your heroes to provide thoughtful touches. The right support platform will give you insight into individual customers, consolidate their communications into a single channel, and even allow you to match them directly with the optimal heroes to solve their particular needs.

Top Customer Service Trends in 2023 To Watch Out For

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Mobile Communications Driving the Support Conversation

While older demographics still have a statistical fondness for classic methods, like phone and email support, more than 90% of customers are using mobile app for experience-centric communication. This also supports the substantial 15.2% growth that retail m-commerce (mobile ecommerce) has seen in the past year.

Automating Service the Right Way

A seamless support process leads to more success with urgent customer requests, and it protects your heroes’ valuable time. This goes beyond common automation tools like phone trees and chatbots to stronger, responsive elements of support, particularly ones that better interpret the request and can more accurately provide a solution in real-time.

Customer service platforms should regularly employ automated responses generated through AI that identify customer requests. Automation is also essential to streamlining the request-response process, allowing workflows to solve each shopper challenge quickly and collaboratively.

Bolstering Self-service to Empower Customers

Strong self-service is becoming an essential facet for successful customer support platforms. The more businesses can give customers the ability to solve baseline issues and queries themselves, the better it is for both sides.

When building a support stack for your company, it’s important to employ the proper tools that don’t leave self-service as an afterthought. Using AI can provide an accessible knowledge base for customers, which helps brands develop accurate FAQs and quick-search answers to the most common queries. Shoppers can feel more confident in their purchasing decisions and overall positive sentiment about their experience with your brand.

Positioning Customer Support as a Revenue-driver

Revenue generation from customer support teams is becoming more important now than ever. Investing in your customer experience is now shown to provide 4% to 8% higher growth than other companies in the same industry.

Above all else, support heroes should be trained on the ins and outs of your brand and the important information you’ve collected from returning, high-value customers. Understanding their shopping behaviors and properly upselling or cross-selling to them will create revenue opportunities driven directly from a too often-overlooked division. You can even give heroes the tools to provide payment opportunities directly within each channel to make revenue generation easy.

What are customers looking for in 2022?

In 2022, customers expect brands to exist seamlessly in a digital-first world. They want readily available, personalized service, whether it’s in-person or online. They want instant responses that convey the vital details needed before purchasing.

The world of ecommerce moves fast, and keeping up with the industry means staying on top of the latest customer support trends. By meeting customer expectations, you’ll be able to properly navigate the new era of sales and ensure long-term success for your heroes.

About Gladly

Gladly is a customer service platform for digitally focused B2C companies that want to maximize the lifetime value of their customers. Unlike the legacy approach to customer service software, which is designed around a ticket or case to enable workflows, Gladly enables radically personal customer service centered around people to sustain customer loyalty and drive more revenue.

The world’s most innovative consumer companies, like Godiva, JOANN, and TUMI, use Gladly to create lasting customer relationships, not one-off experiences. Get started with Gladly to see how customer service can transform your business.