What I can help? It is one of the most recurring questions in any company. To a greater or lesser extent, wherever there is a company there is customer service, just as there is a treasury. However, there is still a long way to go so that this service stops being the drain through which dissatisfied users escape and, for this to be possible, automation is imposed as a shortcut. It is one of the conclusions of the State of Service report, published by Salesforce.
This is the fifth edition built on the basis of the opinions of more than 8,000 professionals from 36 countries, 300 from Spain. The study analyzes the evolution of priorities and needs, revealing, in turn, how the perception of what is a good service and what is not is changing, beyond the management of the complaint. Above all, there is a maxim: almost 90% of the public affirms that the experience is as important as the product, 8% more than two years ago.
Or, what is the same, providing a good service begins with good attention, something that has been considered in times of pandemic, when companies have been forced to reinforce their online channels. In fact, the 2020 edition of the Salesforce report already highlighted that organizations were at an inflection point: as digital interactions increased, teams had to accelerate their digital transformations to deliver the same or more attention. .
Customer service has remained the cornerstone of organizations, although, yes, between changing and omnipresent challenges. The report reveals that the level of demand is higher and that poor, impersonal or slow service penalizes. So much so that 48% have changed one brand for another because the latter offers them a better service, while 94% say that good service is precisely what makes it much more likely that they will repeat.
"Customer Service has become a strategic area within all this digital transformation in which companies are involved," says Laura Abarquero, VP of Service Cloud, Salesforce Iberia, the Spanish division of the world leader in CRM. And the report confirms it: 60% of Spanish companies are aware that this area is an income generator.In this context, technology stands as "an enabler to be able to scale the service, offering the quality, speed and personalization that consumers expect.
If communication occurs when there is a sender, a receiver and a message, attention exists when there is a focus. Without it, there is dispersion and attention is diluted. It's what happens when a user says they feel like a number, something that 56% of those surveyed by Salesforce say they have experienced. The Oxford Languages dictionary is clear: attention is the act that shows that one is attentive to the well-being or safety of a person or shows respect, courtesy or affection towards someone.
Given the risk of impersonalization of an increasingly digital and less physical service (although the report indicates that the telephone is still essential), information is key. According to Salesforce, 73% of respondents expect companies to know what their specific needs and expectations are. And that translates into satisfaction: the organizations that have the best scores in customer satisfaction respond to their requests, queries or calls in an empathetic way.
Knowledge of needs and any background information that helps resolve the query is directly proportional to the level of performance of the agents handling queries. According to the State of Service report, 46% of the lowest-performing agents say they often don't have contextual information about a person's particular situation, a percentage that drops to 27% for the best-recording agents performance.
When information is scarce, disaster strikes. 60% of customers generally feel they are communicating with separate departments, not a company, while 66% say they often have to repeat or re-explain information to different people. In fact, 83% expect to interact with someone immediately after contact, the same percentage who expect to solve complex problems while being attended to by a single person.
Finding a balance between speed and quality is not easy, according to 78% of the service agents asked, a considerably higher percentage than the 63% who affirmed this in 2020. In fact, the proportion of those who value speed more is has more than doubled since that previous edition. It is a 'pandemic' effect that continues, such as the consolidation of digital channels with notable increases in mobile applications, online chat/live assistance and video assistance, a service offered by up to 62% of organizations in Spain.
To maintain a balance between speed of resolution and quality of service, 63% of service organizations in Spain use process automation. “It is increasingly important to work in two directions: on the one hand, efficient, scalable and fast processes that respond to requests and, on the other, ensure that customers “come back”, working on their loyalty as a direct contribution to generating of present and future income of the company”, summarizes Abarquero.
