Talkdesk has unveiled its latest study: “The future of customer loyalty,” which shares some surprising statistics into the current state of customer relationships.
For starters, 57% of consumers state that their loyalty has deepened towards companies that offered support to customers during the pandemic.
Such a statistic reflects a departure from today’s most common approach to loyalty, which is developing low effort experiences. Of course, removing customer journey pain points is still mission-critical. However, assessing the company in a broader social context appears to be having an increasing influence on the strength of customer relationships.
To further support this trend, the report also reveals that 46% of Gen Z consumers have stopped buying from a company in the past year due to its stance on social issues. As this trend is especially significant to young customers, this statistic suggests that it will likely grow further in the future.
Such disruption to the traditional stability to loyalty economics creates new opportunities for companies to make or break customer relationships. Therefore, service appears to play a more critical role than ever before.
Of the Gen-Z respondents, 53% also stated that they have started buying from a company because of the company’s diversity in customer service.
Again, such a statistic sheds light on the increasing importance of the contact centre in securing loyalty, as the service function takes on a new role of generating engagement.
The trend is widespread, with two thirds (67%) of companies reporting that their contact centre is transforming – or has already been transformed – into a profit centre.
Addressing these figures, David Gardner, vice president of research and insights at Talkdesk, adds:
The role of the contact centre has transcended beyond basic customer support to addressing broader questions of central importance to many.
Interestingly, Gardner stresses the bearing this will have on contact centre reps. He says: “The role of agents will have to evolve to become a central part of customer loyalty and shift to performing more proactive and thoughtful engagement.”
“Proactivity” is perhaps the critical word here. As the agent role grows more complex – thanks to customer self-service consuming simple contacts – the team will require extensive training to understand and proactively respond to new consumer needs.
Naturally, moving away from reactive customer service to a proactive proposition is a complex task. Nevertheless, it is a necessary step to keep up with the competition. After all, 98% of organizations expect to implement proactive customer engagement plans in the contact centre by 2025.
Expert retention strategies, which are mindful of changing loyalty economics, and investments are essential to ensure the success of these efforts.