Customer Support Trends
2024Get experts’ predictions about the support industry and the rise of AI in the evolving customer support landscape. Stay ahead in delivering exceptional customer service by understanding the latest trends.
Industry Leaders on Customer Support
Gain insights from support leaders sharing predictions, expertise, and recommendations for the future of support.
I have seen a lot of business owners think of the support team as a financial burden. But I think the opposite. I think they ensure customer retention. That means your customer will come back to you. It’s very important, no matter whether you are in the product or service business.
A well trained support team is able to provide tailored support with care and empathy. We need to create a balance. Do not think of AI as the replacement of a support agent. But it’s a fantastic assistant to the agent. We need to create a smart work setup. Where agents will solely focus on customer expectations and customer satisfaction. If you make a customer happy, that means you are opening up cross-selling opportunities.
Besides the new addition of AI, workflow automation is also taking on a new dimension. Of course, we need to adopt new technology.
But we have also spent some money to train the team to be more efficient using new tools and technology. That’s how we can grow our business.
As a contact center leader, when I think about tech support in 2024, the one word that comes to mind is “curious.” Based on my experiences, customers still want to talk on all of the support channels. Even the telephone is still going strong. But I know that we will continue to hear about artificial intelligence and some of the ways it can improve the agent and customer experience.
So I’m curious as to what advances will be made in the next year and I plan to speak with more technology providers to understand what they are offering and how it will help us better serve our customers.
In 2024, I predict that companies will experiment a lot with AI for their customer service, but they won’t master it this year.
An increasing proportion of companies will introduce AI-powered bots in an attempt to reduce the need for customers to contact them. These will replace the traditional non-AI automated chat ‘bots’ which simply routed customers to the correct department and displayed documentation articles. However, I think that a lot of companies will introduce these before they are truly ready. This will lead to customers getting frustrated when a bot fails to help them and provides incorrect information.
Personally, I think that AI has more potential to transform the back end operations of customer service centers in 2024. This will include AI-powered tools such as summarizing long support tickets and drafting responses, each of which will make customer service agents more efficient. We will see better results in this area because real human agents will be checking and editing the AI’s work before sending it to the customer. This will bring lots of benefits such as allowing each support engineer to provide better quality responses more quickly, and reduced waiting times for customers.
Beyond 2024, I’m excited to see where AI can take customer support. However, I believe that we need to be realistic about its potential for 2024. AI can only truly transform customer support when the industry has discovered effective ways of training the bots in its documentation and previous support responses without compromising customer privacy; and solved the ‘hallucination’ problem inherent in language prediction models where AI’s often make up information which is not correct. It will take more than the current year to solve these challenges and will be fascinating to watch over the coming years.
When we look into the crystal ball of the future and glance into what is instore for tech support centres, teams, and their customers it is evident that there are several key priorities with all of them bearing a tremendous impact on the overall customer experience. The ‘switched on’ tech support leaders are going to be applying effort into the areas of working smart, firstly to understand their customer’s expectations.
What tools, data, processes, and feedback loops can be applied to learn about what customers expect and how it’s received when delivered helping to improve the tech support’s customer satisfaction score. Secondly, those tech support teams wanting to deliver a more consistent and solutions-based experience will apply their energy into working cross-functionally.
Mitigating silos and working with other business functions to ensure solutions to customer challenges or services are being delivered with all stakeholders actively participating in customer experience design, implementation, review, and end-product offering.
A real human centred design culture minimising customer and employee attrition. Thirdly, the future of tech support will have leaders in the industry really analysing their customer experience journey between channels. With this activity they will allow themselves the space to act strategically to improve customer loyalty and mitigate red tape and roadblocks for their team in their mission to deliver solutions and a value driven customer experience.
With the current financial shifts in tech I expect to see more downsizing in positions such as support. I believe this because support is often times seen as a luxury and non-revenue generating. When investors are demanding revenue inexperienced founders are likely to cut support while investing in marketing and sales.
As a second prediction I believe this shortsightedness will lead to an increased churn rate and abandonment by customers. It’s the equivalent of purchasing a luxury car and never changing the oil or giving it a wash, while also trying to rent that car out. Once the negative effects of this are felt a big re-investment in tech support, research, and UX will take place.
In 2024 and beyond, customer support will look different from how it does today. Companies have already started to use interactive AI(Chatbot) to serve customer queries. They’re fast and good at handling common questions based on the data and analytics.
But yes, the necessity of humans will never be replaced by bots, there’s just no replacement for a real person’s understanding and care.
The best will be to use both AI and real people. Chatbots can handle quick inquiries, while real people step in when things get personal and need emotional touch.
So, in 2024, customer support should mix interactive AI with human kindness to make sure the best help possible.
In 2024, customer support is expected to become even more tech-savvy and personalized. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, we’ll see more sophisticated chatbots that can handle a wide range of queries, providing instant, 24/7 assistance. These AI systems will be better at understanding human emotions, making interactions feel more natural and less robotic.
Also, customer support will likely use more data analytics to anticipate and solve problems before customers even notice them. This proactive approach means less time spent on resolving issues and more on enjoying services or products.
Another big change will be in customization; support will be tailored to individual needs and preferences, providing a more relevant and efficient experience. The integration of virtual and augmented reality could also emerge, offering immersive ways to solve complex issues or showcase products.
Overall, the focus will be on making customer support faster, more intuitive, and highly personalized.
The surge of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard is poised to reshape the customer support sector in 2024 more significantly than in 2023. So, instead of fearing these changes, consider them as career opportunities. Embrace those AI tools to boost your efficiency in customer service, enabling you to solve complex problems easily.
Even if you’re not tech-savvy, tap into AI-based tools to resolve complex issues without spending hours searching online on Google or YouTube. Learning how to use appropriate prompts effectively to get the most out of AI is a game-changing skill that every support engineer should thrive on learning.
To sum it up, in 2024, the customer service industry is undergoing a major AI revolution. If you don’t adapt and equip yourself with these tools, you risk falling behind in this transformative era.
In 2024, the tech support landscape will be significantly transformed by the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI will revolutionize customer service with efficient, personalized responses for routine inquiries, enhancing the overall support experience. This technological leap will not replace, but rather complement human expertise, which remains crucial for addressing complex customer issues.
The fusion of AI with human insights will offer a more dynamic, responsive support system, meeting the high expectations of a digitally-driven customer base. This approach will not only improve efficiency but also play a key role in maintaining customer loyalty and strengthening brand reputation.
Embracing AI in tech support, while valuing human interaction, will be essential for companies to thrive in the competitive and fast-evolving tech industry of 2024.
2024 Key Insights on Customer Support
Dive into real-world scenarios with snippets from the customer service industry.
The rise of AI, as seen in models like ChatGPT
and Google Bard is reshapingCustomer Support.
A survey showed that67%of support leaders find their automation efforts beneficial.
Intercom85% of American customers who rate service as “very good” give positive recommendations.
Qualtrics XM Institute
AI works with people as an Assistantinstead of replacing them, especially on critical customer tickets.
A study reveals that77% of customers seek immediate contact with support agents.
Salesforce ResearchAI handles the basic and repetitive inquiries, andHumansshould handle complex issues.
Great customer support relies on personalized, proactive, and efficient experiences.
Stepping into 2024, the way customer support works is changing fast. Just like how cool technologies like ChatGPT, and Bard changed things beginning at the end of 2022, there’s a similar revolution happening in customer support, all thanks to Generative AI.
Customers always wanted their problems solved faster and better. Now, with new technologies and smart strategies, things are getting much better. Our editorial board at Fluent Support realized how these changes are transforming the tech industry, and we wanted to explore it more.
We know it’s important to stay ahead in this ever-changing field. And, that’s why we talked to experts to get their predictions for Customer Support in 2024. We’ve put together these expert predictions to give businesses a peek into what’s coming up in Customer Support in the upcoming years.
Our focus here is clear: Learn about the changes, get prepared, and stay ahead in the world of Customer Support for the future. So, go through what experts have shared here or download the PDF version if you’re in a hurry.
Data References
- State of the Connected Customer Report – Salesforce
- Global Study: ROI of Customer Experience, 2023 – Qualtrics XM Institute
- 2023 REPORT The State of AI in Customer Service – Intercom
Customer Support Trends 2024
Learn how 2024’s customer support landscape is evolving with expert predictions. From advanced AI integration to changing service expectations, stay ahead by downloading this PDF.
Editorial Board
Meet our Editorial Board – the team at Fluent Support that gathered all the necessary information and talked to experts for updated Customer Support Trends 2024.
Food for Thought
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