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What is Customer Service? A Look at It's History & Future - A Better Answer - ContactCenterWorld.com Blog

What is Customer Service? A Look at It's History & Future

The idea of better customer service dates back to the 1760s, where customer support teams emerged as a result of the industrial revolution. 

The reason customer service started is the same reason it exists today: knowing what your customers want (and how the customer experience changes over time) will help your business grow.

What Is Customer Service?

Customer service is the quality of support you offer any customers that connect with a representative of your brand. It’s about those interactions—you have to make them positive ones. It includes everything from rep personality, politeness, and helpfulness to modern issues, like maintaining minimal wait or hold times. 

Keeping your customer service in tip-top shape will increase satisfaction with your brand and create loyal customers—poor customer service can hurt your business by frustrating customers and tarnishing your reputation. 

It’s your best opportunity to show buyers you care. Use it to your advantage.

The History of Customer Service

The Invention of the Telephone and Rotary Dial

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the electric telephone. Before that point, people had to bring their product back to the store and simply hope the owner would accept the return. 

In 1894, the telephone switchboard was invented, which was a huge help for businesses that connected with customers over the phone. Then, in the 1920s, rotary dials were implemented, helping companies act as an operator by connecting dialed numbers to the proper phone line. 

These innovations were not only more efficient, they helped businesses offer higher quality service to their customers. 

The Call Center and the 1-800 Number Come on the Scene

Call centers were created in the 1960s. Now, companies could take more calls while offering better customer service. In call centers, employees answered and resolved customer issues so other staff could focus on different tasks.

In 1967, the all-important 1-800 number was announced by AT&T, which allowed customers to call a specific number for a company without the hassle of calling collect or dealing with an operator. Cutting out redundant steps reduced frustration for all parties.

The Invention of IVR

Another springboard for better customer service was IVR, or Interactive Voice Response. These systems allow you to call in and simply say “yes” or “no.”They guide callers to the correct person who can answer their question, rather than bouncing them around to irrelevant or dead ends.

The Internet Changes Customer Service

Let’s fast forward to the modern day (we’re getting closer!). In the 1990s, the internet became public, delighting callers and businesses alike by opening up a plethora of better customer service options. Customer service software made it easier to answer larger volumes of issues. Customers were happy, quicker than ever.

Social media took off in 2008 and opened up yet another support avenue to customers. 

Service opportunities have never been more abundant, and companies are taking advantage—so make sure you’re keeping up with your competition.

Who Invented Customer Service, Anyway?

The inventor of customer service isn’t documented, but the title is often unofficially given to Alexander Graham Bell. His telephone took customer service to another level. 

Without telephones, modern businesses couldn’t build quality relationships with their customers.. When people can’t get in touch, their questions or concerns can’t be answered—hurting sales as well as customer satisfaction.

The Future of Customer Service: How to Offer the Best at Your Company

Complete customer-focus is key to building successful relationships and creating a loyal following.  One way to offer better service is by staying (virtually) open 24/7. 

If you don’t want to give your current employees weekend or night shifts, you can bring in the help of a call center service provider.

Provide instant gratification whenever possible—in other words, no “we’ll get back to you in 48 hours.” If people think they can get a faster response elsewhere, they will leave—and you’ll lose a potential sale.

Soon enough, AI will enable products that “fix themselves.” At the same time, phone call volume will decrease, while instant messages increase. A good call center can handle this change—their competitive advantage lies in their ability to bring cutting-edge innovation to their clients’ customer service departments.

It’s always best to put the customer in control of where customer service experiences happen. Make the process as convenient as possible, whether they prefer phone calls, texts, emails, or instant messages..

As technology advances and service offerings develop, industries are becoming more heavily focused on customer satisfaction than ever before. If you’re not offering amazing customer service, you’re losing business.

Still have doubts? Download our customer service toolkit to learn how you can start offering more excellent service to your customers and boost  sales and customer retention.

Source: https://www.abetteranswer.com/blog/what-is-customer-service-a-look-at-its-history-future

Publish Date: November 22, 2020


2024 Buyers Guide Inbound Call Handling Services

 
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Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.


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Answer4u offers both SME and corporate sized businesses Telephone Answering Services delivered by our team of professional receptionists. They are all trained to answer your calls, in your company name, whenever you need them most.

All of our client calls are answered in our Nottingham offices, in the heart of England. We have agents working on a 24/7 basis, meaning all calls are answered through the day and night by UK based operatives. No calls are ever outsourced or go to an answering machine.

Each of our clients has their own personal Account Manager, who heads a team of trained receptionists. Our receptionists answer the phone in your company name, explain to your callers that yo...
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Connect Assist

Contact Centre Services
We’re a specialist Contact Centre business and market leaders helping socially focused organisations deliver quality support to their clients and service users. We do this by providing 24/7 helplines, software solutions and consultancy services.

Since launching in 2006, we’ve operated at the sharp end of customer service, supporting some of society’s most vulnerable people. We’ve pioneered in our space to become a specialist in helplines, whilst using the most advanced communication and database technologies available.

Our social mission has remained a constant throughout, providing many meaningful career prospects and growth opportunities to people within our local communities and fur...
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Digital Wholesale Solutions

International Inbound (ITFS & DID's) & Int'l Two Way Voice (SIP Trunks)
Digital Wholesale Solutions (formerly Daisy Worldwide) specialise in Global Inbound ITFS and DID Services from 160 countries (covering 7,000+ cities).

We also have International SIP Trunk (66 Countries) – where numbers are presented in a local format.

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Vads

VADS Inbound Contact Center
VADS Inbound Contact Center Services provide live operators who answer incoming calls as you would yourself. A team of professional script writers is available to help you script a greeting and experience programmers will set up a time and money saving program. Our unique approach to call center services is client-focused, and takes each project’s unique needs into account to our client’s satisfaction. We offer solution as part of our service to keep you in touch with your client and drive sales.

- Customer Service
- Walk In Center
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Technosys IT Management

Customer Support
Technosys IT Management Bpo, the business process Outsourcing, gives end-to-end transformative administrations for its customers over the globe. The organization's coordinated IT and BPO arrangements approach empowers it to open business esteem crosswise over ventures and administration lines, and address business challenges for its customers. Using inventive business perfection structures, progressing profitability changes, process reengineering, mechanization, and front line innovation stages, Technosys IT Management empowers its customers to accomplish their cost diminishment goals, enhance process efficiencies, upgrade viability, and convey unrivaled client encounter

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WorkGenda

WorkGenda
WorkGenda is a state of the art WFO cloud service, used by customers around the world. WorkGenda provides: a) an AI based forecasting engine, which automatically generates forecasts with a WAPE of 3 to 5%, b) a capacity management engine based on a traffic simulator, with perfect support for blending regardless the type of channels, which subsequently automatically converts the computed capacity into optimised shifts, where ‘optimised’ equals to a zero or the mathematically minimum possible overstaffing under the given contractual constrains, c) an automated scheduling engine, capable of scheduling 3000 multi-skilled agents for a whole week in 2 minutes and d) an Intraday bot which automatic...
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View more from A Better Answer

Recent Blog Posts:
5 Thoughts You Need To Stop Ignoring When It Comes to Customer ServiceAugust 19, 2021
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