Digital customer service 2020 – 8 stats to help shape your strategy.
Whether you're putting together a business case, trying to convince the COO of the importance of digital, or developing your digital customer service strategy, it's important to take an informed approach. Research results and forecasts from industry experts provide valuable food for thought as well as information that can point you towards the path to digital customer service success. Here are 8 statistics to get you started.
1. There are 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide (Source: Statista). Need a "wow factor" when you're talking to the COO? This helps size the demand for digital customer service, and it's huge.
2. In 2019 a little over half of all internet traffic was from mobile (Source: Statista). This is another "set the stage" statistic. So, not only do lots of people have smartphones, but they're using them to access the internet.
3. In the US, there are approximately 80 million Millennials and they spend $600 billion annually (Source: Accenture). Still setting the stage - these digital natives are a large group and have a lot of spending power.
4. 55% of consumers — including 68% of Millennials/Generation Z— prefer digital channels over traditional ones (Source: Salesforce). Now we're starting to drill down into the data. This convincingly illustrates consumer preferences for digital customer service, especially among the younger groups.
5. In 2019, more than 35% of businesses said they planned to invest in their website and chat and email channels (Source: NiCE). Your competitors might be investing in digital customer service - can you afford not to?
Now that the data has made the case for digital customer service, let's look at some information that might help you narrow your focus.
6. Online chat, private social messaging apps, and email are the three digital channels with the highest customer satisfaction scores - 48%, 47%, and 41%, respectively (Source: NICE). One thing these all have in common is agent assistance. Consumers still value the human touch.
7. Online chat, email, and website are the three most preferred digital channels, in that order (Source: NICE). The importance of websites shouldn't be overlooked as a preferred tool of digital customer service self-servers.
8. Email, online chat, and mobile apps are the most often used digital channels (Source: NICE). Mobile apps are another popular self-service solution, while email and chat stand out as offering the convenience of digital and the reassurance of agent assistance.
Demographics, technical trends, and consumer preferences all make digital customer service a must have these days. It's hard to argue with the data!
NiCE CXone can help you achieve your digital customer service goals.
NiCE CXone is leading a new era of Smart Digital Conversations by eliminating traditional barriers to exceptional omnichannel customer experiences with new innovations across your contact center operations. Download our white paper, Digital-first Contact Center: The Innovator's Guide, for more ideas about developing and implementing your digital customer service strategy.
Your customers are trying to reach you for service on digital channels – even if you’re not there yet. How many SMS text messages go to your call center phone number with no response? Who’s trying to find you on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp and not finding you? Now with CXone it is easy to provide digital-first omnichannel service in all the channels your customers expect.
Personalized digital interactions: deliver native experiences in each of 30+ messaging channels, such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools.
Simple to Activate: pre-integrated channels make it easy to offer to customers and agents.
Easy to Say “Yes”: simple packaging removes barriers to offering all channels to customers and agents.
Empowered agents
CXone empowers all your agents to deliver a true digital-first omnichannel customer experience by simultaneously combining all customer interactions in one intelligent inbox across multiple digital channels and voice for agents to select ("pull"), while dynamically prioritizing the most time-sensitive or real-time interactions according to service levels ("push"). All delivered in a single application – complete with full customer context, journey history, and sentiment.
Single Interface: one inbox for all digital messaging and real-time (voice/chat) channels – retaining native experience of each messaging platform.
Agents in Control: ‘pulling’ work in natural flow, while dynamic prioritization maintains SLAs – and prevents ‘cherry picking’.
Customer Card: full customer context, journey and conversation history, plus sentiment.
Holistic management
With CXone, omnichannel interactions are managed holistically, from agents to supervisors and beyond. Integrated workforce optimization, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital and voice interactions ensure complete management across contact center operations.
