Improving Customer Experiences in a Post-COVID World: Why the Human Touch Still Matters

Communication has always been a core component of the human existence, but it’s especially vital in times of hardship. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this abundantly: improving customer experience, customer experience during COVID, enhancing customer relations clear in more ways than one. Even in lockdown and isolation, people still feel the need to physically connect with others. Our modern world has made it possible for us to still connect with our loved ones through face-to-face virtual interactions. Many industries have also come to rely on digital communications and expand their technological capabilities to higher levels than the pre-COVID days to accommodate the sudden influx of call and email volumes.

Automation is a great technological feat, but when it comes to improving the customer experience during the pandemic, people still need to feel that personalized human touch that can only be offered by real live customer service agents.

The Power of Emotional Intelligence

Artificial intelligence such as self-checkout kiosks in grocery and department stores or automated machinery in manufacturing plants have certainly helped speed up transactional and industrial processes over the years. But there are two core complaints that a lot of customers have about automation:

1. It’s slowly taking away jobs from real, hardworking people
2. There’s a lack of emotional intelligence and a human connection

Oftentimes, customers like to make small talk with employees. They’re the faces of the businesses customers are supporting and there’s no substitute for the power of emotional intelligence in the workforce. No matter how much more convenient automation is at times, it simply lacks the emotional intelligence to be able to read a customer’s mood or answer their questions on the fly.

After being in isolation for the past few months, people need to feel more of that human connection with everyday people more than ever.

Enhancing Customer Relations with Direct Live Agent Communications

Direct live agent communications can help enhance customer relations. Customers are able to ask questions and get direct responses. Follow-up questions can also be answered instantly by the same live agent. Additionally, live agents can also offer a more personalized customer service experience that you just don’t get with automated programs. Live agents can show empathy through their tone of voice and they ask intuitive questions to try and provide the best possible solutions for their individual customers.

Automation has certainly come a long way. While it can mimic some aspects of speaking to a real live agent to a certain degree, there are still many limitations to this technology that don’t exist in human-to-human interactions.

Maintain Customer Service Consistency

One of the few downfalls of live agent customer service is that it can be difficult to manage each agent and how they respond to certain questions or issues. To maintain a level of consistency across the board, it’s important to regularly audit your customer service department. Provide regular and constant training, so that all live agents are always on the same page and offering the best possible customer service at all times.

Outsource Your Customer Service

In-house customer service departments are expensive to operate and there are no guarantees that they’ll work out the way you want. It costs money to train new employees and turnover rates in this industry can be high. Outsourcing customer service to 3C Contact Services can save you a lot of money and reassurance.

We provide in-depth ongoing training to all of our agents and we ensure that they have all of the tools they need to aptly represent your business and provide the highest quality customer service. Contact us today to learn more about our services.