Six predictions for customer service in 2020

Emily Bencic
December 11, 2019

Retailbiz

Customer service is integral in any business and will continue to reign supreme, according to Pegasystems head of CRM, Jeff Nicholson, who has shared his six predictions for customer service in 2020 with Retailbiz.

1. Focus on blind spots

“Customers don’t care if businesses offer multi-channel or omni-channel support – they just want frictionless interactions. To achieve this, businesses will refocus their efforts on strategies that are not channel-led but instead channel-less. Whether powered by humans, technology or a combination of both – channels will work more seamlessly.”

2. Consumer data privacy and protection tsunami is coming

“New regulations are giving new rights to consumers to take back control of their personal data, with the power to command that business disclose what they have and demand they delete it. This creates a whole new set of responsibilities in 2020 that affected businesses will need to handle within the mandated timeframes or risk penalties.”

3. A renewed focus on efficiency

“With the potential of another economic collapse, businesses will step up planning for another downturn to mitigate the loss of business, employees or other assets. Robotic process automation (RPA), robotic desktop automation (RDA) and dynamic case management, can give businesses a quick win by automating repetitive and mundane tasks.”

4. Augmented reality and virtual reality find their place

“For years, AR and VR technologies have been discussed with promise for the enterprise but have only seen success in finding Pokemon. But next year, AR will find its niche in the customer experience realm.”

5. A new era of omni-communication

“A new capability will emerge in 2020 where the lines between spoken and written communication blur, and systems flex behind the scenes to translate voice into text, or text into voice, all in real time. Consumers don’t think in terms of channels, but rather in getting their needs met and gravitate to whichever mechanism is closest to them.”

6. Digital personal assistants to steal the service spotlight

“In 2020, businesses won’t just be worrying about unhappy customers. They will also have to deal with customers’ personal robots. They will call you, email you, message you – on behalf of your customer. Look no further than Google Assistant which can call up your local restaurant to book your next dinner reservation. This holds the potential to reduce friction for consumers but can also increase the complexity for businesses as they remove emotion from front-line service interaction.”