4 Customer Service Predictions for 2016

As businesses and their customer service leaders look back on 2015, it will be very apparent how far they have come with respect to customer experience and technical support. At the end of 2014, it seemed as though the year of the consumer was over. In reality, it was just getting started as individuals began interacting with brands across every channel imaginable. And now, it's even more obvious just how much control customers have over companies.

Despite all the challenges faced in 2015, some businesses managed to create new strategies and deploy innovative solutions to help them make customer experiences better than ever. The key to success was in planning: Leaders of customer service teams were able to predict their industries' trends, and after developing insight into the future of customer services, consumer interaction and other relevant sectors, those executives laid the groundwork for the year.

In 2016, organizations must do the same and create customer service initiatives with a game plan that makes just as much sense in January as it will in December. This means digging into expert insights and forecasts as well as extracting customer sentiment from today's behaviors in order to make accurate assumptions about the year to come in customer service.

Here are four customer service predictions that businesses should use to develop their 2016 strategies.

1. Every business will focus on customer service.
Thanks to the Internet's ability to quickly and easily connect consumers around the world, modern businesses must focus on pleasing those individuals. In 2016, this will only matter more: Customers know the power that they wield with Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and every other social platform. Their influence can stretch forever.

As such, every business will have to devote resources to developing a perfect customer service strategy that optimizes every interaction as well as ensures that every experience ends positively. But, more importantly, according to IDC Vice President of Research Vanessa Thompson, half of organizations will embed themselves in their brands' communities by the end of the year, meaning that a majority of companies are jumping head first into customer service.

2. Companies will be judged more so than ever on how well they interact with consumers and provide customer support.
With every brand offering its customers easy ways to communicate and interact, customer service will only be a differentiator if it is provided at an exceptional level. Therefore, by the end of 2016, businesses should expect to be reviewed solely based on their customer experience and support. In fact, it is already happening: On Amazon.com. shoppers leave negative product reviews even if the item they received was flawless - consumers want to be treated very well in the process.

Customer Think contributor Amrita Bhattacharyya explained that businesses will need to track Customer Effort Scores. These CESs will come in handy for companies with call centers and tech support teams, since the metric measures how quickly representatives not only respond to issues, but solve them. Bhattacharyya noted that CESs will help improve customer service on every channel.

3. Organizations will realize they cannot devote all the resources required to maintain high levels of customer service.
The importance of customer service will move these strategies up the priority list, but many companies simply lack the expertise, the hardware and the professionals to create a contact or call center, let alone run these departments with the care and dedication required to make them successful. While that might sound troubling, organizations don't need to worry: Just as the cloud has become an easy solution for rapid scaling, business process outsourcing will help the corporate world adapt to the new customer service-oriented industry.

Additionally, what worked in the past - a few call center representatives or scripts - will no longer suffice in the age of customer service. Therefore, businesses will look to call center services not just to supplement existing teams, but to replace inexperienced professionals and rigid scripts with experts providing dynamic, personalized interactions, according to David Ford, writing for Customer Think.

4. Great customer service will require new tools and technologies.
While many organizations will turn to outsourced call center services and other solutions to supplement their internal teams, in order to truly optimize every aspect of customer service, businesses will have to deploy tools and technologies that allow them to keep up with the pace of consumerism.

For one, Forbes contributor Blake Morgan suggested that consumers in 2016 will embrace video technology more so than in other years, with Amazon's Kindle Mayday, American Express's mobile app and Bank of America's video-enabled ATMs as examples of teleconferencing's popularity in customer service. Beside video, Facebook announced that businesses will be able to integrate Facebook messaging systems with corporate websites. In short, consumers will point to which technologies they want to use for customer support, and as such, companies must pay attention.

As 2016 kicks off, businesses should remember the four predictions listed above, as they will prove useful in creating a new customer service strategy. Check out the below video from our CGS blog to learn more about customer service predictions.