AI: taking customer service to the next level.
The customer service industry of the future will need to be fast, personal and proactive. Fritjof Andersson, founder of RelationDesk saw the need follow the conversations on social channels to quickly identify customers’ needs and consequently, give better service. He then created RelationDesk, now giving service to thousands of customers daily.
How was the idea for RelationDesk born?
– I was in charge of social media for a big state company. My team needed a tool that would allow them to keep track of the customers conversations and that’s how I realised there was a need, and started my own company. That is how I truly understand the challenges our customers are facing.
Today it is quite usual to have digital customer service but how was it a few years back?
– It’s really interesting how digital customer service developed in the past few years. Just a few years back very few companies had a truly functioning customer service on social media and more remarkably, it was the customers who expected a professional customer service on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But today the situation is completely different. Many companies have quite good customer service on social media, and it’s growing fast.
But above all it is the users’ behaviour which has changed the past few years when it comes to talking with companies on social media; many customers expect accurate and fast replies every time they address a company online.
Companies using RelationDesk often answer several hundred of customers everyday on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For some, the number of customer service “cases” on social media increases up to 400% per year.
How does the future of customer service look?
– In the near future customer service will become even more personal and quicker. But in a few years customer service will change completely to be very advanced technically and absolutely necessary to stay competitive.
For example, AI and predictive analytics will help customer services to be so integrated in the customers’ use of the company’s core product that customers will not even have time to reach out to the company before being contacted by the supplier. It is the case for many clients of RelationDesk already today, we often contact them and start by telling them “You just had a problem, I’m contact you so we can fix it together”.
– Looking even further, when solutions like VR will become mainstream, then digital customer service will turn from written to spoken. It implies that a whole new set of skills will be needed to work in customer service. And when VR and AI will be combined, customers will be able to have constant dialog with all their suppliers whenever they want without ever having to wait.
Relation Desk is growing and you are recruiting on The Hub plaftorm at the moment, what skills are you after?
– We are looking to fill a key position in the company, our new Customer Success Manager will be responsible of all our relations with all our customers and will be constantly up to date with how our customers feel and how we can make them even more successful using our product. He or she will be working very close to me as I am the CEO and will have an impact on both the design and the sales process. It’s an extremely important recruitment for us. This person does not need to have had a very long career or education but must have strong social skills, be full of energy, smart, positive and really truly enjoy helping customers with very high standards. You can see our job ad on The Hub here.
What is the plan for the company?
– 2018 will be a very interesting year. We will not only launch big improvement to our existing product but also release a number of new ones. Including a completely new platform for planing & publishing for social media content. In addition we will launch an advanced API with the integration of many important IT system such as call centre solutions and case management system. RelationDesk is taking a step towards becoming a large and integrated part of the companies’ digital presence. 2018 will be a very good year for RelationDesk.
This is a translation from Nextconomy’s interview of Fritjof Andersson
The Hub is an open digital platform tailored to the needs of growth startups. We aim to give visibility to all Swedish startups and via the platform assist startups with the recruitment of talents, fundraising, best practices, useful tools, and also by listing all the relevant tech events out there. The Hub is in Sweden run bySUP46 and powered by Danske Bank.
