COVID-19 has been hugely disruptive for service teams – scattering them across home offices, creating new obstacles and redefining how customer agents do great work.

And as the job got harder, customer expectations got higher. The total displacement of normality caused an understandable spike in consumer demand for empathy and connectivity.

In the immediacy of change, service teams were galvanised into a period of introspection and self-development – there was a lot of early momentum to quickly adapt to the new world.

That period of change is what the fourth edition of the “State of Service” report explores. We surveyed over 7,000 customer service professionals worldwide to understand how teams reacted to the crisis in 2020.

We’ve picked out three trends illustrating some of the challenges service teams face in meeting customer demands while evolving and futureproofing their core operations.

Download the report.

Trend 1: Rewriting the service agent job description

Internal and external forces are rapidly reshaping the role of customer service agents. 

The chief external driver behind this trend is one of the easiest to describe and one of the hardest to manage: people are afraid. Globally, 81% of respondents described callers as more anxious, and 54% faced a rise in case volume.

Meanwhile internally, as purse strings around the world tighten, 28% and 31% of respondents saw drops in budget and headcount respectively.

This pincer effect means agents have fewer resources to help them deal with more complex cases – more often from customers who are harder to satisfy.

But there’s also an opportunity for companies to build lasting brand loyalty. Companies that allay their customers’ most serious concerns now will be remembered tomorrow – and gain customers for life.

As a result, 85% of UK teams say they’ve changed policies to provide more flexibility to customers. With case complexity and customer anxiety rising in tandem, agents need to take on more strategic responsibility to serve effectively. 

And it’s clear that respondents aren’t just paying lip service to the idea of greater flexibility – 88% of high performing customer service teams have clear guidelines on how flexible they can be, while 83% have received empathy training.

Empathy and adaptability have become the hallmarks of effective service agents.

Counterintuitively, the report also revealed automation as key when meeting customer needs with greater tact. Automation serves two key purposes:

1. It frees agents from routine, often time-consuming tasks like data entry and lets them focus on resolving strategic and complex cases.

2. Automation increases companies’ self-service capabilities through chatbot functions (like gathering basic information and feedback), while integrated chatbot workflows let customers progress cases without having to engage an agent. This saves the frustration of repeating information and deflects low-complexity cases from service agents.

Now, the best customer service experiences will come from a synergy between more empathy for the ‘soft’ parts of the job, and more automation for the operational.

Honing this data input will be key to long-term success – given 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments, a shared hub of customer data will be needed to drive a more fluid customer experience.

Trend 2: Field service plus digital are key revenue drivers

The value of field service workers has become clearer than ever in COVID-19.

Despite a public health crisis in which social distancing plays a huge preventative role, 70% of consumers say they still prefer in-person service appointments over alternatives.

86% of high performers say field service drives significant revenue for their company, while 76% of UK service decision makers say field service is a key part of their strategy.

The traditional model of rigid appointment windows and nameless engineers is being uprooted, with digital now the core foundation.

46% of high performing mobile workers claim their companies excel at providing knowledge articles and relevant information, while 61% excel at communicating with customers.

Mobile workers can only be as effective as the information they have in the field. And with a proliferation of field devices available, on-site resolution is proving to be another invaluable avenue for customer support.

In uncertain times, customers naturally want more certainty. And as the people directly engaging with your customers, your field service teams are a key channel to convey that certainty.

This concerted effort to centralise relevant knowledge and improve customer interactions means field service has stayed effective during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mobile workers can consistently resolve issues on-site and provide the human touch that’s sorely needed in times of crisis.

And of course, customer and agent health has taken priority – 80% of global respondents claimed their companies have taken steps to keep them safe.

Trend 3: Minimising the tension between quality and speed

One aspect of customer service remains largely unchanged – 86% of UK service teams say their most important metric is still Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).

But significant change can put customer satisfaction in jeopardy – it's hard to maintain altitude while changing the wings mid-flight.

At the same time, 83% of customers expect to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company, and 82% expect to solve tough problems by talking to one person.

In the time of COVID-19, it’s an increasingly complex juggling act with increasingly high stakes. No wonder 63% of agents say it’s difficult to balance speed and quality, with 68% claiming both are equally important.

Attempts to relieve this tension have led to accelerated digital adoption – between 2018 and 2020, we’ve seen 17 and 15 percentile point increases for online chat and messenger app usage respectively.

This looks to be an increasingly vital tenet of effective and empathetic CX – pandemic or otherwise. Customers expect their affinity for digital engagement to last beyond the peak of the pandemic – unsurprising as 87% reported increased customer use of digital channels.

Throughout all this change, one thing is the same – the thing customers value most is  outcomes. 81% are accelerating digital transformation initiatives to meet customers in their desired channels as a strategy to build lasting loyalty and engagement.

Opportunities arise from crisis

COVID-19 has been a huge accelerant of change – and the relationship between service teams and end customers has been one of the most significant fronts. Expectations are higher and the job is harder.

But this disruption has created opportunity – for new policies, processes and workflows that serve elevated customer needs more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

We don’t know what 2021 has in store. But we take heart that customers in the UK and around the world are having more and more of their most pressing needs met by companies bringing digital and cultural transformation to the fore.

Want access to every single insight from service professionals around the world?

Download the fourth edition of the “State of Service” report.