Customer service is an innovation hotbed. However, the pace of customer service technology trends threatens even the most progressive service leaders, who struggle to develop a coherent technology strategy and drive customer success outcomes.
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Emerging Trends in Customer Service Technologies
Improve customer service management through technology
Keeping up with the latest customer service trends
In customer service, technology matters
Many newsworthy technologies today fall under customer service, enabling service leaders to optimise customer interactions and back-office functions. The result? Low-effort experiences that drive customer loyalty and advocacy.
Customer service trends & insights you can use
Want a look at how services leaders across functions are making technology decisions? Gartner surveyed over 450 leaders worldwide on the technologies they are adopting. The results provide a comprehensive snapshot of the state of technology across the service organisation.
Part 1: Channel technologies
These can be divided into two sections, live and self-service. While many have high current value, few will have greater importance in the future, indicating that newer technologies may surpass them.
Part 2: Voice of the customer tools
Service leaders are not impressed with today’s speech analytics technology as a voice of the customer tool. Although promising, it is not great at understanding the nuances, sentiment and intent of language.
Part 3: Infrastructure technology
Although less flashy than other technologies, they serve as vital tools to help customer service operations run smoothly in the background. Given the rise of data and information, it is no surprise that a majority of these technologies are seen as having strong future importance.
Part 4: Customer engagement tools
Most tested customer engagement tools are already embedded into the average service organisation. However, two technologies stand out — social media engagement and service dashboard analytics.
Part 5: Employee engagement tools
These are currently the most embedded tools within service organisations. Frontline reps are often the most frequently measured employees at a company and are regularly evaluated with these metrics.
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Customer Service Research
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Matthew Hurst, Senior Director, Client Services for DealerTrack DMS, shares how Gartner for Customer Service and Support leaders helped Cox Auto improve resolution rates within its contact centre while driving down additional interactions and inbound calls. Through his access to Gartner's client partners, Matthew successfully changed the culture within his contact centre, improved client experience and received the support to lead his function with confidence.
Gartner topic experts
The Gartner Customer Service and Support team includes experts worldwide.
Mark Dauigoy
Senior Director, Advisory
Jim Davies
VP Analyst
Sarah Dibble
Senior Principal, Advisory
Simon Harrison
Senior Director Analyst
Olive Huang
VP Analyst
Nadine LeBlanc
Senior Director Analyst
Devin Poole
Senior Director, Advisory
Peter Slease
VP, Team Manager
Ed Thompson
Distinguished VP Analyst
Lauren Villeneuve
Senior Principal, Advisory
See the research
Gartner works with service and support leaders from over 400 organisations worldwide
This network enables us to deliver an unparalleled perspective on the trends, opportunities and best-practice solutions that are shaping customer service functions across regions and industries