Best customer service brands 2023: A bear market shows its teeth
The brands with the best customer service in 2023 are great examples – but a down economy may lead to service cuts.
All the volatility of the last three years made customer service more important than ever. Customers leaned heavily on organizations for support, and businesses depended on the loyalty that good service fosters to weather rapid change.
In the year ahead, service will remain a priority as customers and businesses continue to face unrelenting pressure with inflation, global conflict, supply chain issues, and ongoing COVID threats.
The customer service trends for 2023 focus on the growing role of service in corporate strategies. With an eye on service as a growth driver, businesses will incorporate new approaches and technologies in order to deliver the support their customers need.
5 customer service trends in 2023
The difficulties faced by customers and organizations in dealing with crises mean service is undergoing big changes. Customer expectations are higher, and technology allows businesses to achieve more with the same resources – these sentiments are reflected in the 2023 best customer service brands list.
So while 2023 might not see any significant easing of complex problems, the opportunities to improve front-line service and make operations work better are huge.
Here are the top customer service trends we can expect in the next year:- Customer service can save — or sink — a brand
- Silo smashing becomes a requirement to deliver the service customers expect
- The rise of the robot: Automation and AI will continue to improve agents’ ability to do their jobs
- Service’s new role: Promoting and encouraging sustainability
- Customer service becomes part of the composable business
1. Customer care: Service as brand protector
Traditionally, brand protection has focused on intellectual property and product protection. Today, service has a big role as brand protector, actively shielding a company’s reputation by doing the right thing for its customers.
The service customers receive affects their perception of a brand, and how likely they are to remain a customer. After all, service is the main point of contact between a business and its customers – oftentimes the only point of contact.
According to a global consumer survey:- 60% of customers would buy more if a business treated them better
- 62% say that businesses need to care more about them
This represents an opportunity for brands willing to make the effort. Treat customers better and care more, and you’ll have a natural advantage over your rivals.
In a world where uncertainty is constant, empathy for customers goes a long way.
The economic and geopolitical headwinds that made 2022 so challenging are still blowing. Over the next 12 months anything that strengthens a brand’s reputation in the eyes of its customers will be welcome. If that advantage can be derived from existing infrastructure – i.e., your service operation – so much the better.
Discover the best customer service brands of 2023 HERE.
2. No more silos: Connected agents, better service
In its report, Changes Ahead for B2B Customer Service, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that nearly all survey respondents (95%) agreed that customer service is critical for delivering strong customer experience.
Most also view service as driving both brand value (94%) and revenue (92%).
However, the report also revealed a big gap between what organizations want to achieve with service and what they’re actually achieving. Only 58% are satisfied with the customer service they provide.
While 86% of survey respondents think cross-department collaboration is “very important to successful customer service,” only 53% reckon their organization has this capability in place.
That leaves nearly half (47%) that aren’t doing a good job of cross-department collaboration, despite knowing that it matters. Breaking down these silos will be a top customer service 2023 trend.
In order to truly help customers, agents need to be connected to the rest of the organization, including sales, operations, logistics and e-commerce. For example, they need to know what interactions the sales team has had with the customer as well as visibility into back-office systems to gain insight into order status, shipping and other details.
Quickly connecting agents with the right experts within an organization accelerates resolutions for higher customer satisfaction.
How does your customer service stack up to the competition?
Find out how top B2B companies are transforming service.
We’ve got the deets HERE.
3. Robots to the rescue: AI powers service for great outcomes
Increased automation, potentially involving every part of an organization, is coming. Gartner found that 80% of business executives think automation can be applied to any business decision. That could mean company-wide adoption of automated processes.
This is good news for customer service in 2023. The removal of repetitive, mundane tasks helps tackle the enormous problem of employee turnover. Make the jobs more fulfilling and you’re more likely to retain staff.
It also makes the job easier. Systems that use artificial intelligence enable agents to find answers fast by suggesting the best people to contact and the next best course of action.
This isn’t removing responsibility from agents; it’s giving them more time to deal with complex queries, the sort automation can’t deal with alone, and to spend more time with customers. Customers feel like they’re genuinely being helped and agents get to excel.
With AI, we’re heading to a world where problems can be solved in minutes, not days.
Customer service automation in 3 steps with AI and machine learning
Artificial intelligence and machine learning can provide intelligent, personalized customer service automation in three steps.
4. Customer service and sustainability
With sustainability becoming a priority for customers, service is poised to help in 2023. Customer service plays a role in promoting corporate sustainability as well as helping customers make eco-conscious decisions.
A recent study by First Insight and the Baker Retailing Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that 75% of consumers polled view sustainability as an important purchase consideration.
In addition, top businesses demand sustainable practices from their suppliers. CDP, a charity that helps organizations measure their environmental impact, found that 73% of buyers were “either currently deselecting, or considering deselecting, existing suppliers based on their environmental performance.”
Working on the front lines, service agents can help promote a brand’s sustainability message and values. Moreover, they can help a brand advance their environmental goals by helping customers make the right choices.
For example, agents can guide customers to products that use less energy, or help them make their products last longer through proper servicing. Or they can encourage customers to use paperless billing and support documentation.
Other ways that service helps boost sustainability include remote diagnostics and repair, which reduces carbon emissions. Proactive maintenance extends the lifespan of equipment.
How to embed sustainability in your business – and bottom line
To achieve real benefits, companies need to embed sustainability into their business practices and processes. Learn three ways to do it.
5. In 2023, service becomes part of the composable business
Customer service organizations are well positioned to take advantage of the composable business trend to help them react faster to change.
While the idea of a composable platform has been around for a while, the concept of a composable business that can adapt rapidly to new circumstances is a growing trend.
Boiling down the basics: a composable business is built from interchangeable blocks that are easily swapped and moved as needed. Those blocks can be anything from entire departments to social media channels to strategies; it’s not so much about the make-up of individual elements, but rather the ability to quickly move them around to create a different business model or way of working.
Service can benefit heavily from the composable business approach as it manages constantly changing customer requirements and macroeconomic conditions.
The ability to be stay agile and resolve customers’ issues quickly keeps customers satisfied and prevents them from switching to a competitor, which is why 2023 customer service trends focus so much on agility and simplifying processes.
The LEGO effect: Customer service and composable business
More than ever, business success depends on the ability to adapt quickly to changing customer needs and market conditions.
Customer service’s time to shine
As the main point of contact with customers, service is a chance to build, maintain, and strengthen relationships. It’s an opportunity that organizations can’t afford to pass up in 2023.Companies that listen to their customers and deliver service that truly helps them will rise to the top. With outstanding CX, they’ll win lifetime loyalty that fortifies a business and ultimately drives growth.
