Impacts of the Pandemic on Customer Support

The covid-19 pandemic has pushed a lot of businesses to make shifts to virtual platforms to conduct their businesses. This has not only increased the number of e-commerce platforms today but has also resulted in various and significant customer care support changes. Customers throughout the world now prefer virtual platforms then physical spaces to shop and conduct other businesses. In times like this customer care support has become even more important and has also become a valuable factor in a buyer’s decision-making process. Businesses are now making more important and impactful decisions with respect to help desk management services. As a result of increased businesses conducted through virtual spaces, customers are still getting used to it. The Coronavirus pandemic has not only changed how customer service is being provided but has also revolutionized the field of help desk management in significant ways. 

8 Major Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Customer Care Support 

Increased Help Desk Tickets 

Every time there is a slight shift in the way business is conducted, transactions are made customers try to adapt to the new methods. When customers are making attempts to adapt to the new facilitations, integrations, services, etc. they tend to raise a lot of customer care tickets. These help desk support tickets are mostly related to logistical information or transaction-related information, etc. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of organizations have started using virtual spaces to conduct their businesses and this has led to an influx of customer care tickets. The overflow of customer tickets has led to a lot of businesses making switches to efficient automated customer relationship management systems like Kapture. 

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Self-Serve Portals 

Did you know that according to a report by American Express around 60% of US consumers prefer an automated self-serve facility, such as a website or mobile app, for simple help desk-related tasks? With the ever-increasing influx of help desk support tickets, customer service teams across the world faced various issues ranging from not being able to attend all tickets to facing a lack of labour due to a lot of help desk agents losing jobs. This led to a lot of businesses adapting or integrating self-service portals in their customer relationship management systems. The self-service portals helped customers to help themselves out whenever they had an issue with their products or services or logistics. 

Increased Use of Artificially Intelligent Chat Systems

The demand for Artificial intelligence chat systems is now more than ever. Not only big multinational corporations Roja small businesses and medium scale businesses have started adapting to artificially intelligent chat applications for their customer care service operations. Artificially intelligent chat applications can be excellent customer care tools particularly because of their natural language processing abilities (NLP) and machine learning capabilities. The help customer care teams provide the most contextual responses to customers which aid in better ticket remediation. Unlike traditional help desk management corporations, artificially intelligent chatbots require only a one-time investment. The chatbot also helps businesses significantly cut down on customer care expenses and also helps them increase CSAT scores. 

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Increased Use of Live Chat Support

Though artificial intelligence chat systems come close to imitating customer service agents nothing can change the effect live chat support has on customers. Not all customers love the idea of using artificially intelligent chatbots for their customer service needs. In situations like these Live chat support comes to the rescue. Integration of Live chat support facilities helps customers connect with the brands and businesses in a much more effective manner. Due to the real human touch provided by live chat support businesses can maintain higher levels of customer retention as well as customer onboarding. In addition to the mentioned benefits, offering live chat support to customers also leads to higher customer satisfaction levels. 

Predictable Customer Needs 

During the pandemic customers heavily relied on virtual platforms to shop and socialize. This helped businesses collect customer data through various sources like a customer’s in-app activity, website activity, search links, etc. This data enabled businesses to better understand what customers were looking for and expecting out of the brand. The collected customer data provided valuable insights into pandemic-driven buyer behaviour patterns and consumer trends. This allowed businesses to build better marketing strategies and sales strategies. In addition to this role to help businesses to build better products and services that catered to customer expectations. With better-anticipated customer needs curating offers and discounts has also become easier for businesses these days. 

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Omnichannel

An increase in the usage of virtual spaces means increased use of various social media platforms. The pandemic has also birthed a wide range of benefits for businesses one of which is omnichannel. Increased use of omnichannel support strategy has resulted in businesses building huge customer bases. Businesses now reach out to customers on various platforms and across various touchpoints. Businesses offering customer care support on multiple channels have enabled them to cater to their customers’ needs and issues in a much more efficient and effective manner. Having an omnichannel strategy helps businesses enforce their virtual presence whenever that target audience is. This not only leads to increased brand visibility on virtual spaces but also helps businesses collect customer data from various sources which can later be used to create better marketing strategies.

Personalization 

With increased virtual spaces the distance between customers and companies can only keep increasing. When businesses shut their physical doors as a result of the pandemic it made the brands and buyers more distant than ever. Adding a hint of customization of personalization to customer interactions is now appreciated more than ever. Hints of personalized elements are not only appreciated but also required to bring back the kind of bond that customers and businesses had before the shutdown of physical spaces. Arrangement of fossilization can also help customers feel special and valued which can lead to an increase in brand loyalty and customer satisfaction levels. In addition to this, it also helps businesses increase customer onboarding and customer retention levels. 

To know more about customer relationship management tools that help your businesses deal with the effects of the pandemic click here for a demo.