7 Customer Engagement Trends to Follow in 2017

With the beginning of the New Year, it is important to look at new trends and opportunities that might affect the business or work environment. 

As customers continue to occupy an important place in the life span of a business, it has become vital for businesses to come up with innovative communication techniques. 

Thus, it is becoming important to bring a balance in the innovative technologies that drive optimized experiences with the human touch, useful in winning the loyalty of customers, with Call Center Software.

Before we list down top seven trends customer engagement trends for 2017, let us look at a real life example to understand why it is important to look at customer engagement trends.

CASE STUDY:

Karan and Arjun, backbenchers studying in the last year of their graduate studies, have been allotted a project. Both of them are good at their regional languages, but however, are weak at communicating in English.

CHALLENGE:

As they begin their project work, they divide topics and work on the topics individually; forgetting that it is supposed to be a group project. They get all their work done and go to their professor and understand that the project is rejected. 

Now, the challenge was doing this project in a better way. They needed to take each other’s opinion and at the same time understand the professor’s perspective to make sure they were on the right track.

SOLUTION:

They needed continuous engagement from both the parties; they needed to communicate internally amongst themselves, as well as externally with the professor.

Now since they already had the customer’s feedback – who is the professor in this case - they began their work on improving the quality of the product (project). 

This time before they went to submit their project, they brainstormed amongst themselves to understand how they could work to improvise it based on the professor’s feedback. 

They gathered everything needed, divided topics, researched and executed it. 

After execution, they exchanged opinions amongst themselves to understand if it was up to the mark. They had a finished product this time which received lot of appreciation from the customer.

Since, we’ve looked at the need for customer engagement let us take a glance at 7 trends for 2017:

1.    In 2017, artificial intelligence continues to play a significant role in enhancing the customer experience. Chat bots will continue to support our conversations, driven by the context in which it was initiated. 

The technology facilitates a continuous conversation between customers and brands regardless of channels used. 

Furthermore, it has become easier to offer personalised recommendations, improvise on the product/service research experience, and eventually allow customers to purchase and resolve queries faster with precision. Hence, if you plan to pick Call Center Software Solutions, don’t forget to check if it works with AI.

2.    It is essential for companies to give utmost priority to customers. Thus they are now using Virtual Call Center Software to understand customer needs. 

Brands are expected to offer automated options to save time. Customer centricity has now become the new rule and is a profitable venture, as customer centric brands are 60% more profitable compared to other brands.

3.    Importance of Big data continues to grow, as brands recognize the need to collect data from customers to make improvements. 

This further helps companies to get a bigger picture and create effective customer journey maps to meet service requirements. Various sources used for data collection may include social media comments, forums, communities, CRM software, web and much more.

4.    Social media has gained its popularity in the years. It is now strengthening its position as a channel to get customer insights and feedback, delivering real time data. 

Additionally, apps have obtained there importance, surpassing the social media users. They have been successful in adding a personal touch with accurate customization. To establish brand presence companies are now using Outbound Call Center Software, for providing Omni channel support.

5.    The increasing popularity of the mobile apps shows the upsurge in usage of mobile phones. The usage of Smartphone’s is further expected to keep increasing, which not only depicts a rise in demand for mobile apps but also for channels such as SMS, voice and email. 

Companies are optimizing mobile channels based on geographic locations of the customer with scannable codes, easy click-to-call or chat buttons, and marketing offers which can further help customers. 

Additionally, brands now aim to get the Best Telemarketing Software to intensify the whole shopping experience for customers.

6.    The contact center market is expected to rise with its Cloud Contact Center Software. 

The cloud based solutions not only save money and increase the efficiency of work internally, but have also proved successful for many brands looking to exemplify scalability and flexibility providing better customer experience.

7.    The concept of ‘optimization’ draws a small line between Multi-channel and Omni-channel support. Companies are expected to use Customer Contact Center Software Solutions to provide qualitative experience and to meet demand. 

Optimization not applies to marketing, but also applies to internal operations such as training your staff and following the best practices.

In 2017, customer engagement has become the frontline of digital transformation and both are inevitably linked to each other. This shows you should get the Best Call Center Software to keep up with the changing trends.