Shopping in 2021 will be particularly different considering the pandemic-enduced shift from a traditional brick-and-mortar shopping experience to an even more robust online environment. While companies ponder their physical store operations, retailers understand that planning also needs to account for changes in shoppers’ behavior and expectations due to the pandemic. 

While customers are embracing online retail, they will still want a comprehensive and stress-free experience.

The last 12 months have presented retailers with several operational challenges and opportunities. While many struggled with the abrupt shift, others quickly pivoted to expanding their existing online and delivery strategies. This break from tradition makes it more difficult for retailers to plan as they normally would. While customers are embracing online retail, they will still want a comprehensive and stress-free experience. Because of this, many retailers have shifted their focus to improving the e-commerce experience to mimic an in-store experience using customer service. 

Today’s customers expect brands to go above and beyond to meet their needs and provide them with excellent customer service. When a question needs to be answered, customers want troubleshooting assistance at their fingertips. To meet this need, retailers are leveraging highly sophisticated customer service technologies such as AI, self-service, and new, advanced chatbots to provide a resolution-centric, stress-free solution.

During this time, tools that offer self-service customer response techniques are more important than ever. Expanding online shopping options can help attract consumer dollars at a time when many shoppers are as unsure of what to expect as retailers are. Retail organizations need solutions that can handle a steep spike in customer inquiries without letting first-contact resolution metrics slip. A positive digital experience between customers and retailers will attract repeat shoppers for many years to come. 

Retailers today need more digitally immersive experiences to inspire customer confidence and trust in the absence of in-store seasonal atmosphere and mood. Evolving pandemic-influenced shopping behaviors are leading more retailers to follow the leads of those engaging consumers through new channels like mobile or app, user-friendly interfacing websites, and customer service chat and self-support. 

Self-service is a rapidly growing customer care trend among consumers that can make a significant impact on workforce load for retailers this year. Self-discovery tools such as interactive tutorials, adaptive FAQs, interactive guides, and videos that contain the simple, DIY answers that customers are looking for can engage shoppers while alleviating contact center volumes, reserving agents for more pressing customer service needs. These tools allow the customer to solve most of their needs themselves, putting the power back into the customer’s hands. Instead of depending on an agent for help, a customer can tap into multimedia-support materials for productive learning that mimics the experience of chatting with a live agent. Self-service tools such as interactive tutorials and videos can also aid customers in their customer care journey by visually showing them how to resolve a problem. 

The easiest way to lighten the load for contact center agents, while also achieving strong customer satisfaction that leads to further sales, is through intelligent and interactive chatbots. These tools provide shoppers human-like customer service, as well as answers to questions that other customers have previously asked, by simply showing users how they can reach a common goal. This can significantly cut down on call volumes, freeing contact center resources to focus on customers who need highly technical assistance. This strategy will further improve the customer experience while preventing retailers from becoming overwhelmed.

In this scenario, not only are customers relying on self-service and FAQ tutorials themselves, retail contact center agents can also retrieve AI-curated content from the same source materials, creating a fast and personal experience for the customer versus agents relying on scripts. In some instances, customers are seamlessly redirected from a chat bot to a live agent on more technical questions where a higher skillset level of expertise is required to field questions.

In a time where the pandemic has pushed retailers into limited hours of operation and far fewer customer servicing centers to be opened, AI-driven chatbot technology and self-discoverable information can fill in the gaps and augment the work of contact center agents to improve retail operations for 2021. 

Wayne White is the chief information officer at ResultsCX. Wayne leads the IT functions for ResultsCX SupportPredict product offering suite, and brings a spectrum of experience from more than 25 years in technology. Wayne’s core areas of expertise include the development of new IP and network designs, processes, products, and tools to enhance business solutions and client offerings.