Recent forecasts and research insights on customer service beyond 2021 delivered by market advisory firm, Gartner addressed the potential market shifts occurring between 2021 and 2025 across customer service organisations.
Previous shifts toward enterprise-native mobile app experiences that occurred with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets are being abandoned by 80% of organisations as they shift the focus of their digital transformation toward messaging to deliver a better customer experience, according to Gartner.
Despite heavy investment and promotion, many service organisations failed to see adequate customer adoption of their service apps and many are retiring their native mobile app experiences in favour of messaging.
Philip Jenkins, senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice said “Messaging channels such as SMS and third-party messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat and WhatsApp have been widely embraced in the global market, making them ideal for service organisations,” said Philip Jenkins, senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice.
“By transitioning to messaging platforms, customer service and support leaders will reduce dependency on native mobile app experiences, reduce cost, increase digital and self-service effectiveness, and achieve a persistent experience for customer engagement.”
Gartner also offered other customer service and support predictions for 2021 and beyond, which forecast:
40% of customer service organisations become de facto leaders in digital customer engagement resulting in them becoming a profit centre by 2025.
Customer service will evolve from a cost centre into a profit centre by having greater responsibility for the customer relationship and journey. In a profitability scenario, the customer service function is likely to drive new business outcomes supported by new objectives, metrics and organisational structures.
10% of customer service organisations revamping hierarchical staffing models to create huddle groups by 2025.
In increasingly complex product and organisational environments, customer service leaders are finding that they need access to a broader set of skills than ever before. Gartner recommends that customer service leaders collaborate with cross-functional leaders to create huddle groups focused on customer groups — for example, by industry, product class or subscription type — as opposed to internal functions.
Proactive customer engagement interactions outnumbering reactive customer engagement interactions by 2025.
Reactive, rather than proactive customer engagement has resulted in high-customer-effort experiences limiting the effectiveness and profitability of self-service.
“An initiative to reach out to customers proactively creates a major opportunity for customer service organisations, said Brian Manusama, senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “Along with the cost optimization benefits of reducing call volumes and increasing engagement with self-service channels, customers feel a greater sense of appreciation toward the provider and its service organisation.”
Learn more about these forecasts in the Gartner report on CRM Customer Service and Support here: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-12-gartner-predicts-80–of-customer-service-organization