Rick DeLisi - Digital Customer Service

The company, by spending less, and getting greater returns

The customers who are experiencing the kind of low-effort digital service interactions that make them feel smarter about themselves

The frontline teams who interact with customers – as their jobs have become more engaging and personally fulfilling

The executives and leaders who manage customer-facing functions – as their jobs have become more visibly connected to the overall success of their companies

There are only a few win-win propositions in life, and fewer win-win-win-wins. But as you will see, transforming to a DCS-based service model appears to be one of them. There doesn't seem to be any trade-off, or economic sacrifice, or give-to-get required. The companies that are further along in this transformation are universally reporting that everyone is coming out ahead.

The problem with the term digital customer serviceis that it could mean a lot of different things:

Adding a chat function to a website. That could be described as digital customer service.

Switching your telephony platform to VoIP (voice-over internet protocol). That's digital.

Getting customers to adopt new web self-service features. That's customer service, and it's digital.

Enabling more frontline customer service agents to work from home. That's absolutely a form of digital customer service.

In fact, you could say that anything that uses the internet to enable any service functionality could broadly fall into the category of digital customer service . And any of these could be a smart goal unto itself. Necessary, but insufficient.

The opportunity to pursue this win-win-win-win starts with understanding the clear distinction between two things that appear – at first – to be almost exactly the same: “digital customer service” and “Digital Customer Service.”

The most obvious difference is: In the Digital Customer Service (DCS) model, every part of a service interaction happens on the customer's own screen. Both the “virtual” or automated elements, as well as the live “assisted” elements all take place right where they started – on a customer's desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device. If there's a need to verbally communicate with an agent, it becomes an entirely different customer experiencewhen it occurs “right there on my screen” instead of during a totally separate phone call.

But the most important difference is: DCS enables companies to both “meet their customers where they are” and also to transition them between virtual assistance and live assistance in a way that is completely seamless because it doesn't require a separate phone call .

No additional steps are required, the customer doesn't have to do anything extra – it is a truly effortless experience.

Even as the psychology of customer behavior within digital self-service interactions continues to evolve, what is now an irreversible trend is that customers expect and demand service interactions to take place on their screen.

This is the essence of DCS. What was once a disconnected experience with various disjointed elements within the span of one “journey” can now become completely integrated, and presented on a customer's own device through a variety of OnScreen Enhancements:

OnScreen Communication. Now that most of us are comfortable using chat, video chat, messaging, and social media platforms in our personal lives, customers increasingly expect to have these same options available with the companies they choose to do business with. Whether they access the business's website or mobile app (or even when they're forced to call a phone number), using “my screen” to communicate is becoming an expectation in the digital world.

OnScreen Collaboration. This set of enhancements gives an agent full transparency into what's happening on the customer's screen – in real time. It is the digital equivalent of “standing side by side” with a customer while they are on the company's website or mobile app. This includes features like CoBrowsing, screen sharing, and file sharing.

OnScreen Automation. Chatbots and pop-up messages provide personalized responses and suggested actions on the customer's (or even the agent's) screen. These are triggered by data about them, from their past interactions or from their browsing behavior in that moment. Another example of automation is visual authentication, which removes that burden from agents in a way that is both more efficient and more secure.

To fully appreciate the difference between “a customer service interaction that includes some digital touchpoints” and a true DCS experience, it helps to envision a side-by-side comparison.

In each of these two scenarios, a customer has experienced a problem or issue that requires them to contact a company. Both interactions start the same way – with the customer visiting the company's website or mobile app. But what happens from there couldn't be more different – for the customer, as well as the agent.

Can you see how different these two scenarios are? In both cases, the customer got their issue resolved, but the experience is night-and-day different.