{"id":11009,"date":"2020-07-30T14:44:08","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T13:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/?p=11009"},"modified":"2023-01-16T17:31:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T17:31:47","slug":"what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"What Will Customer Service Look Like in 2025?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not long ago, the only option for contacting a brand was through phone and email. Now, if a brand values the <a href=\"\/gb\/en\/blog\/definitive-guide-customer-experience\/\">customer experience<\/a>, it will provide more channels to reach and engage with customers. Assisted by artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, real-time messaging, and more, companies can meet their customers where they spend most of their time, whether it\u2019s on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or any other messaging service.With changes happening so rapidly, what will customer service look like in 2025? Based on recent trends and current innovations, we expect four key developments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>More (and smarter) AI<\/li>\n<li>More companies migrating to cloud-based communications solutions<\/li>\n<li>More digital avenues for customer interaction<\/li>\n<li>More options for face-to-face and co-browsing support<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The desire for companies to provide exceptional customer experiences will drive these technological advances. In short, forcing customers to navigate through outdated interactive voice response systems will no longer suffice. Brands will differentiate themselves on the basis of customer experience\u2014 even more than they do today.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a deeper look at each of our four predictions:<\/p>\n<p>Increased AI integrations<\/p>\n<p>Many contact centers already use artificial intelligence\u00a0 today. From skills-based routing to information collection, AI helps make call center agents more efficient. So will bots replace human agents any time soon? The short answer: no. While the popularity of bots to assist and augment agents will grow, the fear of a robot coup can be put to rest.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the ability for AI to complete menial, time-consuming tasks will likely offer the biggest boost to agents. For example, most call centers use a post-call process called \u201cafter-call work\u201d that requires agents to enter additional notes from a conversation, as well as outline next steps. RingCentral Product Marketing director Fabrice Della Mea says AI could help automate this type of tedious data entry, allowing reps to move more quickly to the next call.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAI could help automate after-call work to a point where the agent only has to double-check and click \u2018okay,\u2019 potentially shaving off 10-15 seconds per call,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>AI could also help improve training for call center agents. Traditionally, once agents complete their training, they\u2019re expected to solve customer issues up to a certain level of difficulty. If they can\u2019t perform at the expected skill level, they get retrained or placed in a lower support tier to sharpen their skills. AI can help identify these patterns and show managers which agents need retraining.<\/p>\n<p>Steady cloud migration<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uctoday.com\/contact-centre\/uc-trends-2020-gartner-predicts-consolidation-in-customer-service-tech\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"undefined (opens in a new tab)\">Gartner predicts<\/a>\u00a0that by 2022, 50% of contact centers will use cloud-based communications solutions. The initial cost and work involved for companies to overhaul how they interact with customers may seem daunting, but the payoff is too big to ignore. For starters, brands that migrate to the cloud can stay updated with new innovations and integrate more seamlessly with other business software.<\/p>\n<p>The cloud allows companies to remain on the forefront of innovation. Let\u2019s use AI as an example again. Right now, third-party companies like Google Dialogflow and Amazon often provide AI solutions. But brands often want to integrate these third-party solutions with their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ringcentral.com\/gb\/en\/contact-centre\/overview.html\">contact center solutions<\/a> using an API. If that contact center solution is even five years old, however, those APIs likely won\u2019t exist, leaving the brand stuck in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next five years, we expect brands to migrate to cloud-based contact center solutions not only to remain competitive with those who are already on board, but also to attract customer service employees who value innovation.<\/p>\n<p>Expanded digital channels with better message integration<\/p>\n<p>Multi-channel support is no longer just a nice-to-have feature for contact centers\u2014it\u2019s a necessity. Requiring customers to use a phone number to reach a customer service agent\u2014and wait for who knows how long\u2014simply won\u2019t work anymore. In reality, reaching out to a company should be as easy as texting a friend. Today, customer service needs to be as frictionless as possible. Rather than forcing customers through channels they don\u2019t already use, brands should meet their customers where they are.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not always easy to keep up. Imagine an agent hopping between a company\u2019s Facebook page, Twitter DMs, and homepage, replying to several different messages on multiple channels at the same time. While it\u2019s good that the company interacts with its customers on multiple platforms, it\u2019s important for agents to receive all those messages in one place. While these tools already exist, experts say they will become more prevalent in the future\u2014especially as the number of digital channels continues to grow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat these solutions help with is aggregating all those different communication channels that your customers have access to and pulling every interaction into one interface for the agent,\u201d says Liz Gonzalez, product marketing director at RingCentral. \u201cIt helps them complete real-time interactions and keep their average speed of answer down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More face-to-face interactions<\/p>\n<p>While today\u2019s customer service agents may not frequently use video to chat with customers, that may soon change. The ability to put a face to a corporation adds a human layer to what many people see as faceless, impersonal brands. Of course, not every customer may want to chat over video with a customer service agent, but AI can help escalate them to that option.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we are going to end up with more expert agents,\u201d says Max Bell, another product marketing director at RingCentral. \u201cWhere we\u2019ve seen a lot of traction with video interactions is with high-skilled people like mortgage brokers or healthcare professionals. As agents get upskilled by automation, you will see more and more of it because there will be more appropriate people to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to face-to-face video interactions, co-browsing\u2014or screen-sharing with a customer to help solve their problem\u2014will also become more prevalent in the coming years. \u201cWhen the agent is able to see what the customer is seeing on a screen, the customer service becomes much more efficient,\u201d says Gonzalez. \u201cThey can just say \u2018right there, that button,\u2019 rather than, \u2018Can you see that little button in the corner that kinda looks like a bell thing?\u2019\u201d If you\u2019ve ever tried to explain an interface to someone who\u2019s not looking over your shoulder, you know how important that is.<\/p>\n<p>Customer service: A brand differentiator<\/p>\n<p>Because brands have fewer and fewer brick-and-mortar establishments, customers increasingly build a brand perception based on the interactions they have with customer support through digital and voice channels. To capitalize on this, brands must continue to evolve how they interact with their customers\u2014or risk being fossilized.<\/p>\n<p>Successful brands already differentiate themselves by how they serve their customers. To ignore this essential aspect of a business would be foolish, especially as technology increases the ability to provide superior, frictionless customer service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not long ago, the only option for contacting a brand was through phone and email. Now, if a brand values the customer experience, it will provide more channels to reach &hellip; <a href=\"\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What Will Customer Service Look Like in 2025?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":12032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-ex-cx.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Will Customer Service Look Like in 2025? | RingCentral UK Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"ot long ago, the only option for contacting a brand was through phone and email. 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Now, if a brand values the customer experience, it will provide more","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ringcentral.com\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"RingCentral Team","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":":\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/"},"author":{"name":"RingCentral Team","@id":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/cc4f043d2b478862a8622c28b0ebd08c"},"headline":"What Will Customer Service Look Like in 2025?","datePublished":"2020-07-30T13:44:08+00:00","dateModified":"2023-01-16T17:31:47+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/"},"wordCount":1133,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/#organization"},"articleSection":["Business Trends - CX"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":[":\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/","url":":\/gb\/en\/blog\/what-will-customer-service-look-like-in-2025\/","name":"What Will Customer Service Look Like in 2025? | RingCentral UK Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2020-07-30T13:44:08+00:00","dateModified":"2023-01-16T17:31:47+00:00","description":"ot long ago, the only option for contacting a brand was through phone and email. 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