What Are The Key Attributes Of An Agile Customer Service Organization?
As Brian Walker discusses in “Welcome To The Era Of Agile Commerce,” traditional ways of describing multichannel commerce no longer work because customers don't interact with companies from a "channel" perspective. As a result, eBusiness professionals must transform how they market, transact, serve, and organize around changing customer experiences.
This has a significant impact on customer service. Agile customer service means providing a consistent and channel-agnostic customer experience across all touchpoints. Let’s think about this from a customer’s perspective: An agile customer service experience means customers can interact with whatever touchpoints they choose — website, mobile app, kiosk, telephone, IVR — and all along the way, your organization has identified who they are, knows what their last interaction with you entailed, anticipates what help they might need, and can meaningfully recommend products or services that might enhance their experience.
I am writing a document to explore the attributes of an agile customer service organization and have been speaking with many eBusiness leaders.
The general consensus in the conversations I’ve had to date is that the objective is fairly clear but the path to get there is ambiguous.
At the same time, there is a sense of urgency because consumers are pushing us into technologies to deliver the experience they desire; customers are adopting social media, mobile devices, tablets, and other technologies, and they have increasingly high expectations about how these will help improve or simplify their lives.
I’m interested in your thoughts — what do you think are the key essentials to being an agile customer service organization? And are there examples of companies you think are doing this well?