Get Ahead of the Curve: Top Customer Support Trends You Need to Know in 2024

Grace

Apr 8, 2024 • 4 min read

Customer service in 2024 faces a fascinating tightrope walk: resolving issues quickly while still providing personal touch. It's a balancing act, but one can lead to incredibly happy customers. In this article, we'll explore some exciting trends that are helping businesses achieve this sweet spot.

In the Wake of ChatGPT: "Conversational Ticketing"

Customers are getting used to chatting with bots to get answers to questions. Oftentimes, those chats require tickets to be created and assigned to team members. Conversational ticketing systems brings the best of chat by leveraging Slack or other chat platforms, but also supports ticketing to assign messages to the right team members when action needs to be taken. Here are a few functionalities that can be included in a conversational ticketing system:

Automatic tracking of conversations: Conversations are automatically analyzed and tickets are created, labeled and tracked for future updates in the same way a formally created ticket would be.
Auto assignment and escalation: Tickets are intelligently routed to the most qualified agents, ensuring a quicker response and resolution.
Real-time reporting and analytics: Real-time reports and analytics provide valuable data to identify common issues and optimize your support processes.

Unthread puts these core features at the forefront, along with a range of distinct functionalities:

Email to Slack Integration: It allows the relaying of support emails directly to your Slack channel, enabling responses to customers without needing to open an email client. This feature centralizes email tickets for existing Slack customers in one place for unified communication visibility.
Zapier Integration: Connects Unthread with hundreds of other tools through Zapier, facilitating the automation of workflows and triggering actions in Unthread in response to events from other tools.
Customizable Ticket Types: You can categorize conversations with custom ticket types, which can have unique properties detected or entered manually, helping in organizing and prioritizing support requests efficiently.
Customer Portal (Beta): Offers a way for customers to view the status of all their open tickets in one place, promoting transparency and improving the customer service experience.
Webhooks Support: Provides the ability to receive HTTP POST requests when data is created or updated, enabling real-time notifications and actions based on events within Unthread.
Customer-facing Support Request Tracker: Allows customers to track their open support requests directly from a Slack channel, enhancing the visibility and management of their inquiries.

Meeting You Where You Are: The Power of Omnichannel Support

The scope of support channels is wider than it has ever been before. What started with email, eventually included in-app chat, now includes Slack, Teams, Telegram, Discord, and more. Omnichannel support gives your team a single view of what tickets need to be solved across all of these platforms. This results in faster responses and a more unified data source of tickets to analyze for feedback.

Self-Service with a Smile: AI Chatbots on Your Side

Gone are the days of frustrating chatbots with limited question sets. Generative AI and integrated knowledge bases empower customers to ask virtually anything about the product, 24/7, leading to faster self-service and quicker resolutions.

Keeping Your Ear to the Ground: AI-Automated Customer Feedback

Traiditional feedback tools like NPS and CSAT have been around for decades. With AI, there are new forms of feedback that can automatically be detected. Here are some ways to leverage AI to generate feedback from tickets:

Sentiment Analysis: AI can analyze customer text to detect frustration. This can then gently prompt agents to de-escalate the situation and offer extra help. Plus, it can trigger targeted surveys after interactions to understand areas for improvement.
Multi-Modal Feedback after Interactions: A brief thumbs-up/down automated survey follows the email exchange to gauge satisfaction. A text box is available for detailed feedback.
Smart Routing Based on Content: Feedback can be provided about the product, the sales process, the onboarding process, and many other factors. With AI-analyzed tagging, you can understand exactly what part of the product or service is being reviewed when a customer reaches out with feedback.

The Human Touch: Why Personalization Matters

Even in the automation age, there's no substitute for human connection and genuine interaction.

Since a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn't work, platforms are constantly evolving to personalize experiences, even while leveraging AI tools. Generative AI plays a key role here in which it creates personalized responses based on existing data. Imagine responses that feel more human-like, fostering deeper connections with customers.

The Future of Customer Service: A Perfect Blend

The customer service landscape is constantly changing, especially with the rise of AI. While customers are becoming more comfortable finding solutions themselves, the desire for human connection remains strong. The good news is, this doesn't mean human interaction is a thing of the past. It's an opportunity to create a powerful synergy – combining the efficiency and speed of AI with the empathy and understanding that only humans can provide.

At the end of the day, no matter what technological advancements come our way, our focus will always be the same: delivering exceptional customer satisfaction and building lasting relationships with the people who matter most – our customers.