Digital-first customer service: The importance of offering unique service experiences

The role of customer service in a customer’s end-to-end journey has become so much more than addressing concerns and resolving issues. Service is now an integral part of the entire customer experience (CX)—from initial inquiry to product purchase, usage, and support.

Consumers’ expectations of the brands they choose are also transforming. According to a survey from Five9, 83% of the decision makers surveyed agreed that the customer service experience is of the utmost importance for retaining customers and overwhelmingly (99%) agreed that customer service is important and vital for their businesses.

In this third installment of our blog series on digital-first service, we’ll explore the need to keep pace with these changing consumer expectations by offering truly unique customer service experiences.

Unique service experiences are key to a successful digital-first service strategy

Given the new scope and significance of service, a customer’s interaction with the service department will likely be the most common—and most important—engagement for a brand. As a result, delivering digital-first service experiences that are unique and personalized to the customer is becoming a necessity—one that’s more within reach than you might expect.

Unique customer service doesn’t equate to concierge-level service for each customer or brainstorming a new solution for every problem. It all comes down to leveraging data to truly understand your customers.

Every business has access to a wealth of data obtained by sales, service, marketing, supply chain, and more. Break down your data silos and leverage that information to define your customers’ needs, interests, previous pain points, conversational styles, and channel preferences. From there, create and orchestrate service processes to help you enable unique experiences—ultimately resulting in happy and loyal customers.

For example, track web browsing data to improve a potential customer’s learning and inquiry experience by guiding them back to their desired webpage when they return days later. Track the shipping status of a customer’s order and immediately inquire if the package arrived as expected when they log in on your site following delivery. Or place customers into segments to receive tailored service experiences based on situational context, such as an approaching winter storm or their recent establishment of a payment plan. 

Three ways you can facilitate unique service experiences with Oracle Service

Oracle Service enables your organization to deliver unique service experiences. With features like Agent Insights, Digital Assistant, and a direct Oracle Unity integration, Oracle Service can help you:

1. Empower your employees with a single, dynamic view of the customer

Our modern agent portal gives agents actionable insights from real-time customer intelligence to drive personalized service. They can seamlessly leverage AI to identify next-best actions and provide a unique experience for each customer.

2. Deliver persistent customer intent

Use data from a customer’s history to predict what they’ll try to achieve during their next interaction with your brand—and distribute that information across all channels (digital self-service or assisted service) to make the experience as easy as possible. For example, if your hotel guest is scheduled to leave today, set all service channels to bypass the standard service flow and instead ask them about their interest in a late check-out.

3. Personalize interactions with modern assisted-service channels

Provide access to digital channels that consumers expect like live chat, social messaging, and SMS. For even more personalized service, offer high-touch visual engagement options like video chat and screen co-browsing.

Unique customer service is just one way for organizations to stay competitive and meet modern consumer expectations with digital-first service experiences. To learn more about Oracle’s latest vision for delivering holistic brand experiences with service, check out the previous installments in our blog series and stay tuned for the next post on enhancing your CX with hyper-convenient service.

Related posts:

• The future of customer service is digital-first service
• Digital-first customer service: Exploring the power of predictive service
• Digital-first customer service: Creating the convenience customers crave

Additional resources

Watch the replay of the Oracle Virtual Summit, “Deliver Service That Meets the Moment,” to hear the latest insights on the new digital-first customer service reality.

Looking for powerful and intelligent B2B, B2C, and field service solutions that connect relevant customer data across your organization to help you predict the need for service and deliver personalized customer experiences? See why you should choose Oracle Service over Salesforce or Zendesk.

Learn more about how Oracle Service can help you improve customer service, build customer loyalty, and drive revenue with the quick self-guided product tour below.