Impact of COVID-19 on Customer Service

1. Impact of COVID-19 on Customer Service Coronavirus or Covid-19’s influence is being felt by organizations worldwide. Leaders are coping with a wide range of interconnected issues spanning employee and customer safety, reorienting functions, driving complex government support programs, and shoring-up cash and liquidity. How the pandemic is impacting different parts of the business contrasts intensely from one department to the other. On one hand, finance is coping with critical cash management problems, on the other, HR is dealing with blunt choices about layoffs and furloughs. While the sales department is struggling to persuade customers to continue purchasing even as funds are drying, IT is trying to urge employees to be more productive as they work remotely. One department which has been hit the hardest is customer service. Several people have been calling to deal with issues concerning the pandemic — from clashes over insurance coverage to unforeseen travel

2. cancellations and pleas for bill payment postponements. There has been a dramatic increase in the level of concern in service calls, making the job of representatives even more challenging. Alert Customer Service in Periods of Change With the emergence of Covid-19, brands must reassess how to leverage contact centers, how employees can offer superior customer experiences, where they work, and how digital media can be used to sustain growing contact center volumes. Leaders must make quick and informed decisions to back their employees while earning and upholding customer trust. Augment and Automate Service Through Virtual Assistants Currently, customer contacts are at a peak. There are industries experiencing customer intents precisely with respect to Covid-19. The sustained disruption of the daily routine is leading to spikes in other inquiries such as travel cancellations, unemployment benefits payment extensions, late fees, and stock inquiries, with fluctuating urgency levels. Artificial Intelligence in customer service has, therefore, become very important. With growing volumes and the disruption of the contact center workforce, now is the time to consolidate on AI and develop a combination of multi-speed machine and human workforce. ​Virtual assistant solutions​, built using AI & Machine Learning technology, provide customers prompt, on-demand service. They deliver a conversational experience, offer automated support, and can manage properly as any human agent. They can comprehend and fulfil individual customer needs. Irrespective of their maturity, businesses can still harness ​enterprise virtual assistant​​solutions to release the burden on contact volumes. Key Actions to Best Fulfil Customer Demand During the Entire Period of Covid-19 Here are a few steps that will ensure the demands of customers are fulfilled: 1. Make use of collaboration tools that deliver virtual field service with the help of pictures and video chat and create more proactive communications as guidelines evolve. 2. Trigger and supplement alternate support networks. Recognize the needs of customers that can be shifted and grow awareness of other possibilities. Queue messaging can be used to move customers straight into other channels, such as virtual agents, digital, and asynchronous messaging. 3. Use your personnel differently by making small changes to the operating model to fund the right mix of reactive and proactive customer needs, move agents to support outbound and inbound contacts and find out customer preferences for communications as COVID-19 advances. 4. Resolve the issues of critical contacts before handling the less urgent but important contacts with tools like callback assist. Make use of analytics to notify workforce planning, adjust distribution and prioritization logic on current platforms, and modify IVR messaging and menus. Once businesses have all the capabilities in place, they must focus on the following activities: Reinvent the future​. The environment currently is hastening future trends. Post this pandemic, businesses will have to build on their competencies. They will have to prioritize things aligning with long-term corporate strategies and modernize solutions that can withstand in the long run. Scale swiftly​. No capabilities can be built flawlessly in an instant. When you implement virtual assistant capabilities or contact center analytics, certain solutions must be put in place.

3. How we respond to this pandemic will determine the future of customer service in terms of agent agility and workforce management. As experts are still clueless about the time it will take to stop the virus from spreading, leaders must do something for the short-term while coming up with new capabilities that could enable long-term operational changes.