Customer Support is Changing
Most of my professional career this far has been spent in customer service for digital organizations. It is my hobby, my passion, and am always looking for ways to improve it. Recently, there has been a shift in how customer service teams are interacting with their clients, specifically when it comes to digital corporations. I may be 17 years old, and there are others out there who are much more experienced than me, but as both a customer support agent and a consumer, I know that customer service is changing for the better.
The following article reflects my opinions. This is not an endorsement or advertisement for any of the following companies, and they are referenced in this article for the reader’s education of examples of customer support teams.
The last thing you want your customers to think is that you are a company.
People will choose another company over you just because of the style of their communication with their customers. The more available the team appears to be, the better. The more they can resonate with their clients, the better. Most importantly, the more human they appear, the better.
Take the Digital VOIP application Discord for example. In this day and age, there are countless competitors for talking to others over the internet. Recently, Discord has been dominating the VOIP market, but why? Other apps like Curse Voice and Skype have similar functionality, and services like TeamSpeak and Mumble have been around for much longer so why are people going to Discord? The answer lies in their customer support team.
Of course Discord has great features, but the biggest star is their customer support. When people start interacting with the company, they instantly feel a connection with the staff. Whenever Discord responds to a Tweet or a ticket, they use specific language that resonates with their users. It reminds you that there is an actual person on the other side who shares the same passions as you.
Discord’s customer service is a very unique case. I have yet to see a customer service team that is so friendly as they are. They use comedic slang, they produce humorous “commercials” on their YouTube channel, and they make frequent references to video games, which is the applications primary audience. Discord excels at ensuring that the last thing that their users think of is that they are a company. Their users talk to the company like they are one of their friends, and vice versa.
This is the way that customer service is moving towards, which is fantastic for the client.
Discord excels at their friendliness, however the tone of the customer service team is not the only factor that is changing the industry.
The more “live” methods that users have to contact you, the better.
I have seen more and more companies switching over platforms like Intercom for their customer support platform.
Intercom is a live chat widget that companies can embed on their websites. However, Intercom excels at promoting the human-aspect of customer communication and support.
Customers choose companies that are on the Intercom platform because of how readily available their agents appear to be. There is a picture of the agent and a small bio about them to remind the customer that they are talking to a human. The chat box is very similar to messaging apps that people use with the friends everyday, to combat the “corporate feel” of most live chat embeds.
Not only are companies who are using Intercom do better, the company itself is as well.
So, there appears to be a pattern here. Companies who take advantage of promoting human-interaction within their customer support platforms tend to stand out from the crowd.
Changing a “hi” to a “hey” can make a huge difference when talking to a customer. One sounds formulaic, and the other sounds friendly.
Corporations who adapt these human-interaction techniques into their customer service are obviously doing something right, which is why more and more organizations are taking a similar approach.
There are countless more examples of companies that are doing well because of their customer support, but those are just a few.
Customers appreciate the human-interaction with the support teams they work with, and the stats that Intercom provides proves it.
In conclusion, customer support is changing from “Dear Valued Customer, your ticket #68365 has been recorded” to “Hey Brian, your package has been shipped ☺” I think most people would prefer to interact with the latter, and I am glad customer service is moving towards it.
