Seamlessness, simplicity, and self-service – the modern customer considers these three elements to be the most important characteristics of a frictionless customer service applications. Thanks to the influx of digital technologies in every walk of life, they’re more comfortable in navigating customer service applications on their own rather than depending upon your customer care executives. In fact, there are many reports and statistics that support our claim. Let’s have a look at a few of them –
- Around 89% of customers in the US expect brands to have a self-service portal.
- Almost 86% of B2B executives prefer to use self-service tools rather than dealing with a salesperson.
- By 2030, at least a billion tickets will be raised by customer-owned robots due to the deployment of AI in self-service.
Clearly, frictionless customer service applications are winning the battle to better conversion and brands should realize their importance sooner than later. However, ensuring self-service takes streamlined operations, automated processes, and quick response to changes – all of which require a modern low code application development platform like OutSystems.
With its model-driven approach and prebuilt templates, OutSystems combines the speed of modern technology with the excellence of traditional development techniques. In fact, we have wonderful examples of how it has helped organizations achieve a competitive advantage with quick CX transformation. But before we get to them, let’s explore the impact of frictionless customer service applications and the challenges that a business may face in building them.
How do frictionless customer service applications lead to better profitability?
Today, a customer has sufficient purchasing power and multiple options to choose from. What they lack, however, is time and the brands that are successful in accelerating their journey tend to become their favourites. They are no longer impressed with out-of-the-box designs, clever phrases, and long customer service calls – all they want is simplicity, value for time, and as little friction as possible.
And this is where customer service applications come in. They empower customers to find solutions on their own, discourage long phone calls and are responsible for introducing the element of self-service in the entire process. In fact, this inclusion often leads to better engagement, conversion, and retention. Let’s have a look at how frictionless customer service affects the following major phases in the conversion life cycle –
Customer acquisition
Getting your visitors to sign-up is usually the first win towards building a long-standing customer relationship. But what if your potential customer gets annoyed at this very step and retracts back from taking any further action? How do you ensure that their acquisition is simple, timely, and engaging?
Well, your answer lies in frictionless customer service applications that support digital onboarding; especially if you operate in the finance and banking sector. From ensuring top-notch security to reducing time and money spent on customer acquisition, digital onboarding reduces friction at every step of this journey leading to a lesser drop-out rate and better customer retention.
Customer engagement
This is the most crucial factor that determines whether your customers are happy with your offering or not. Are they satisfied with your site design or do they leave the journey in the middle? Do you notice them repeating their purchase or do they face difficulty in completing even one order?
The aforementioned queries give a deeper insight into your site’s customer experience and it turns out that frictionless self-service functionality could enhance the majority of these factors. With a customer service application, you could enable faster checkout, allow quick redressal to queries, and promote personalized interactions. With seamless and fast services, customers have a better browsing experience, spend more time on exploring your offerings, engage happily, and thus, convert more.
Both customer acquisition and engagement are pivotal metrics in determining the effectiveness and profitability of your business. These two experiences alone can make or break your customer satisfaction ratio, word-of-mouth index, and growth rates. If you can manage to delight your customers when they first interact with your app and then keep them hooked, you’ve already won the digital transformation game.
However, what stands between you and your improved profitability is nothing but slow response to changing preferences, complex customer journeys, and a fragmented customer experience. Thankfully, there’s good news- you can still work around these issues by incorporating a low code application development platform like OutSystems.
But before we get into the “hows”, let us show you why your current development methodologies may be harming frictionless customer service.