Customer success will be powered by GigCX in 2021

The year 2020 has been turbulent and unpredictable. An array of social, political, and environmental factors delivered the world a major challenge – and how businesses reacted to this challenge has shifted the market landscape in its entirety. Like many industries, the speed and scale of this impact has prompted customer service executives to take a step back and reimagine the customer experience. As a result, the concept of ‘customer success’ is gradually being reassessed in an entirely new context.

What is customer success?

Customer Success is traditionally a term associated for enterprise software in B2B, where once a licence is acquired the customer success team step in to ensure adoption, rollout and help to identify new areas for development – ultimately leading to better retention.

Customer Success however, is now evolving across the board and where typically customer success can be used to put fires out the age-old adage of prevention is better than cure rings true across the board, so why not in customer service?  

This is particularly important for B2C operations. B2C customer success has a relatively higher pace of moving from one stage to another in a customer journey. The sales process, along with onboarding and product adoption, should all be automated to keep up with scale. Unlike traditional operations where a few account managers oversee a limited number of accounts, here, experts can manage thousands of ‘accounts’ - i.e all customers. Hence, for higher retention, you need to make all your automated processes agile and simple to follow.

Consequently, the term ‘customer success’ has quickly evolved in terms of technology and also methodologies that organisations can adopt to improve business performance. In short, customer success creates a CX journey that focuses on providing value from the product or service at every point in time, as opposed to simply providing a customer support function which waits for something to go wrong. Therefore, it’s about engaging with the customer prior to any potential glitch – and making this engagement continual.

In practice, this concept is neither radical, new or unknown. However, harnessing this concept is naturally beneficial for a business since a company’s success is inherently intertwined with the success of a customer. Repeat business, loyalty and overall customer retention are key for sustained revenue since it can cost five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one. Research conducted by Bain & Company demonstrates that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.

With these statistics in mind, it’s more logical to focus efforts on existing customers. If customers succeed using a product throughout the entire CX journey, they’ll continue to use that particular product, and thus, your company will also succeed

Why is it relevant today?

Due to the challenges introduced by COVID-19, as well as the unprecedented economic downfall that is being felt on a global scale, the way we’re looking at customer service has changed forever. If there’s anything we’ve learnt from the pandemic, it’s that disasters are best avoided. That’s why businesses must adopt a strategy that engages with the customer before they need help, rather than simply amending a problem once you’ve received a customer query.

At eBay, GigCX is helping new sellers reach their full potential on the platform, utilising the knowledge and experience of leading sellers to advise and coach them as they get started on the marketplace.

GigCX (or Gig Customer Service) is the term used for deploying a gig-based crowd of people to provide customer service. Organisations can route their customer service enquiries securely from their own systems, through a GigCX platform which distributes them to a crowd of knowledgeable gig experts who can answer questions for the brands they love.

Offering support within the platform itself is logically the easiest and most effective way to achieve success since the customer does not need to come out of the service or product they’re using to get help.

GigCX and the leading eBay sellers ensure new sellers have the best chance of longevity and success when they first register their account. In turn, this will improve buyer satisfaction and the seller experience – both pivotal metrics for eBay. In this case, having an engagement opportunity that is contextual at this early entry point is really powerful.

For eBay, by adopting GigCX agents that aim to amplify the customer success of a product or platform, it enables them to scale people-centric customer service operations and gather actionable insights which the business can act on. Self-service and automation are good, but for an efficient end-to-end CX journey, people-based solutions, that offer personal care and empathy, are key to driving customer success.

That’s why having a group of GigCX experts at the ready, who are themselves customers is crucial. Similar to a matchmaking service, GigCX agents can be matched to specific customers, with specific needs - and it is this type of contextual peer-to-peer customer service that will ultimately improve customer satisfaction and enhance customer loyalty.

Looking ahead

Customer service is at the heart of a business, constantly adapting to provide an exceptional service that leaves the customer feeling valued and respected. Of course, queries and mishaps are inevitable, and having a customer service team that is at the ready to deal with them is essential and shouldn’t be neglected. Nevertheless, as we head into a new year it’s a chance for renewal – and those who cement the concept of customer success within their overall strategies with reap the benefits back twofold.