Stacy Gianoulis on How Technology is Transforming Customer Support
Technology is proving to be an incredible game changer for companies, improving the scope and speed with which they can engage customers and enhancing the level of support they’re able to provide.
While these developments are good for companies (and customers) in general, the rapid pace of technological change can also leave unprepared companies in the dust and at a severe competitive disadvantage, says Stacy Gianoulis of Boston University.
Gianoulis serves more than 40,000 students and faculty as the Assistant Vice President for the Client Services & Support division within BU’s IT department. In 2018, that division handled more than 100,000 inquiries through its IT Service Management System alone. Below, Gianoulis outlines a few of the key technological drivers that are changing the customer service game.
Self-Help Systems
One of the best ways companies can support their customers is by providing them with the tools so they can help themselves before ever needing to reach out to the company itself. FAQ pages have been a successful way of accomplishing this for years, providing a single location on a platform where customers can find answers to a wide variety of possible questions.
More recently, creating YouTube videos has also become a popular way for companies to guide customers through the various processes or procedures related to their products or services, providing video tutorials that can be far more effective than reading text.
Chatbots
A 2016 survey conducted by Oracle revealed that 80% of surveyed companies planned to be using chatbots by 2020. While not quite on the level of cloud adoption, it’s nonetheless an impressive surge for this emerging technology.
Chatbots are enticing more and more companies to give them a place of honor in the lower-right corner of their webpages due to their ability to not only handle customer support requests, but also sales and marketing endeavors.
And as adoption and usage of these bots spreads, they’ll become that much more efficient, says Stacy Gianoulis, as AI learns to recognize patterns and behaviors and respond accordingly.
Mobile Apps
There’s an app for nearly everything at this point, including numerous company-specific apps that let customers manage all aspects of their experience through their mobile devices, be it placing orders, getting more information on products or services, and receiving support for their questions or problems.
Artificial Intelligence
In addition to its role in guiding chatbots, AI is also proving to be a powerful tool for customer service reps, being capable of analyzing a caller’s word choice to understand their current state of mind and making real-time recommendations to the rep for how they should best respond.
Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is a form of AI/machine learning that is capable of crunching the numbers from multiple datasets to deliver insight on likely future behaviors. Stacy Gianoulis says that one of the many ways this technology will be deployed is to improve a company’s customer relationship management efforts, helping them make the best decisions based on a specific customer’s lifecycle with the company so they can better serve that customer and anticipate and avoid potential pitfalls before they develop.
Stacy Gianoulis believes that technology continues to shape the customer service landscape and has become a proactive means to enhance customer satisfaction. As companies continue to utilize innovative technology, he looks forward to seeing how he can better serve the shifting needs of his customers.
