Why is contacting customer service still so frustrating for so many?

30 percent of Americans would prefer to do their taxes than contact customer service, according to Twilio research. Why is contacting customer service still so frustrating for so many? Most organisations know what they need to do; make it easy for agents to help, bring everything together into one place, and let people use the channel(s) they prefer.

Survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Twilio Flex

Twilio is making it easier than ever to get customer service right. Providing agents with everything they need on one screen has long been a staple of the platform, but with the launch of Twilio Flex UI 2.0 and Twilio Conversations, organisations can now also easily add digital channels enabling agents and end-users to have threaded conversations with historical context at hand. From a developer perspective, configuring channels is much easier. From an end-user perspective, conversations can continue seamlessly cross-channel (SMS, WhatsApp, WebChat, etc) without the need to re-enter information.

No more complicated build efforts to enable seamless customer experiences. Flex UI 2.0 makes all of this possible out of the box and native by design. It’s making nailing the fundamentals of good customer experiences easy, but why stop at ‘good’?

The introduction of Flex Unify promises to enable organisations to collect first party data that is orchestrated in real-time to provide AI with information to differentiate every virtual and human engagement.

This is really exciting.

Imagine virtual personal assistants advising contact centre agents on delivering the best possible personalised support, based on their complete contextualised overview and inferred traits. Twilio believes this is where customer support is heading, and we agree.

Elena Donio, President, Twilio Data & Applications introduces Flex Unify at SIGNAL 23

Of course, the technology is only useful when people know how to use it. It was interesting listening to Lucia Montans Lorenzo of Camelot speak on the importance of ‘soft skills’ in embracing innovation at the recent CCA Global Leaders Summit. Camelot’s approach to training goes beyond specific systems and expands to the skills needed to adapt to technology advancements and innovations as they happen.

That’s a vital point.

The arrival of AI in contact centre applications has been sudden, and innovation is likely to continue thick and fast. It’s not just about training for each and every advancement, but creating a mindset that is comfortable with continued innovation and improvement.

Twilio’s CustomerAI, showcased at SIGNAL, will integrate with Flex and open up a world of possibilities to change the game.

The first step of course is getting set-up on Flex UI 2.0. If you’re attending Customer Contact Week Europe in Amsterdam this month, ask me about buildNow, our Flex quickstarter (we’ll be on the Twilio stand). buildNow is a plug-and-play service that makes building Flex contact centres simple.

Zing will be on the Twilio stand at Customer Contact Week Europe

If you’re not attending, but would like a demo, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Twilio research showed that 62 percent of respondents have stopped using a company or service specifically because of a bad customer support experience. On the flip side, 80 percent of respondents said they are more likely to be loyal to a company in the future if they have a positive experience with their support team and globally, companies reported their investment in digital customer engagement increased revenue by 70 percent. We’d love to help you be the latter.