The New Normal: How to Improve Your Customer Service Model Amid COVID-19

Delivering exceptional customer service during times of crisis is essential to realizing favorable business outcomes. COVID-19 has caused many…
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Delivering exceptional customer service during times of crisis is essential to realizing favorable business outcomes. COVID-19 has caused many businesses to initiate a shift in offering amazing services to customers, integrating automation to contact centers, and utilizing critical apps to manage workflow. How a customer interacts with a brand leaves a lasting impact on their trust and loyalty. In today’s world, the customer experience is defined by the empathy, care, and concern of the services that meet their needs.

Focus on care and connection.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has shifted the world’s attention to what matters most. People are navigating a new set of challenges by relying on extra information, guidance, and support to keep themselves and their families safe. Businesses can be a trustworthy resource that offers customers a sense of support and certainty by continuing to uphold company values and purposes. Customers value socially responsible brands that genuinely care about and connect with customers, employees, and the larger community.

The first thing businesses should do is reach out to their customers to offer support. Many businesses responded to the COVID-19 outbreak by launching initiatives that provided short-term financial relief to customers or provided donations out of their marketing budgets to health organizations like the American Red Cross.

Businesses also have to prioritize their employees as part of the customer experience. In an effort to save jobs and continue to pay employees, some business executives volunteered to take pay cuts and provided new tools, job training, and support for remaining employees. It takes a cared-for workforce to deliver an exceptional customer experience and favorable business outcomes.

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Meet your customers where they are.

COVID-19 has upset peoples’ normal patterns and daily lives. Basic activities like going to the grocery store, meeting friends, or dining out have become risky, challenging, or in some cases, prohibited. This upset has caused an overnight shift in customer demands. E-commerce sales have skyrocketed as customers turn to online shopping for all their household needs. This demand for online services means that businesses need an innovative delivery model. Digital, at-home, and low-touch options allow customers to get the things they need from the safety of their homes.

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Technology will improve the customer experience moving forward.

The shift toward online shopping is likely to become permanent as customers settle into the new normal. Brands have to dedicate focus on enhancing their online stores to deliver a memorable customer experience. Gone are the days of basic FAQ pages and only carrying limited products online. With many brands adapting to remote work, there’s a need to perfect remote support.

Bright Pattern ServiceNow call center integration combines omnichannel call center capabilities with the IT service management (ITSM) and customer support information from your ServiceNow platform to provide a memorable customer experience. The ServiceNow call center is a unified agent desktop that supports screen pop functionality, voice calls, and chatbots. The cloud call center solution helps agents deliver a consistent personalized experience that will boost customer satisfaction and increase productivity. The Now platform integrates with workflow apps that improve the agent experience, speed time, and digital IT workflows.

The Now platform allows large enterprises to manage business priorities by providing new insights on service health, service delivery, operations footprint, and control of IT chaos on one dashboard. The modern service management solution also offers a ServiceNow record, ServiceNow store, and service desk. The right technology can make the digital transformation of a business’s cloud contact center seamless so that agents can keep up with the workflow and customer satisfaction.

Keeping up with the changing customer service model requires agility, initiative, and the adoption of new technologies.

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