Becoming customer-centric will be the goal of most businesses this year. What will make a business more customer-centric than the next one? We predict it’s the technology they choose that will reflect how close they want to get to their customers. This is how we see the breakdown happening: 1. Customer-centric through a customer experience strategy 2. Will AI and bots create friction or free up resources for teams? 3. Consumers want a messaging experience over live chat 4. Self-service will become a form marketing Businesses that put the customer at the center of their plans will see the most growth. It may not be instant, but customer-centricity is the long game to loyalty. It’s been a clear indicator that customers want support to be made personal and simple. The tools and technology you choose will set apart each business from the next as they journey towards becoming a customer-centric businesses.

1. 4 Revealing Trends in
Customer Service for
2018
Creating Effortless
Customer-Centric Experiences

2. The challenge to become customer-centric
Becoming customer-centric will be the goal of most businesses this year.
According to Google trends, search intent for “customer-centric” has been on the
rise for the past two years.

3. The challenge to become customer-centric
What stands in the way of becoming customer-centric?
● The whole business leaning into a customer-centric approach
● Technology allowing for consistent contextual customer experiences from
first touch to after sales support
● Difficulty bringing customer service channels together to provide truly
personalized and tailored experiences

4. The challenge to become customer-centric
What do the experts say?
“Customers still complain about inconsistent and unsatisfactory experiences. Have
we moved forward? Are things better? Arguably not. Organizations often cite lack of
collaboration and communication, and silo-ed thinking. Being brilliant at the basics
and delivering better and more consistent outcomes for customers and employees
seems like a great option and one that, I hope, we see more of.”
Adrian Swinscoe, best-selling author of How To Wow. @adrianswinscoe

5. Kayako’s top 4 customer-centric predictions for 2018
1. Becoming customer-centric through a customer experience strategy
2. Getting AI and bots to work effectively
3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
4. Making self-service friction free
Prefer to read the full report in full?
Show me the full report

6. 75% of companies said their top objective was to improve
customer experience
Source: Spigit
1. Becoming customer-centric through a customer
experience strategy
Smart companies know they’ll be competing on customer experience: Gartner
predicts customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand
differentiator.

7. 1. Becoming customer-centric through a customer
experience strategy
Collaboration will power personal customer support.
Personalization will help drive a customer’s respect and loyalty. They want the
company to know them well enough to make relevant suggestions, send the right
marketing messages, and provide proactive personal support before they need it.

8. 1. Becoming customer-centric through a customer
experience strategy
What do the experts think?
“One terrific trend I’m starting to see is companies are creating a customer service
vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets
everyone on the same page. This is the most important step towards becoming a
customer-centric company since it’s pretty hard to be customer-centric if you can’t
get everyone to agree on what that means!”
Jeff Toister, bestselling author of The Service Culture Handbook.

9. 2. Getting AI and bots to work effectively
Bots and AI can’t be ignored when it comes to customer service trends of 2018.
Source: Google Trends

10. 2. Getting AI and bots to work effectively
Chatbots are somewhat successful…
● When a chatbot pilot program was
initiated in a telco company, it could
handle 82% of common queries in
customer service. After 5 weeks of
tweaking, analyzing, and optimizing by
human agents, its success increased
to 88%.
Source: Accenture

11. 2. Getting AI and bots to work effectively
Chatbots are somewhat successful…
● 86% of consumers expect bots to connect the right human when needed
Source: Aspect

12. 2. Getting AI and bots to work effectively
Chatbots are somewhat successful……But there is still a long way to go
Providing the right information at the right time without human intervention
remains a vital flaw in chatbots and AI.
Disappointingly for AI and bots they fail 70% of the time and
require a human to intervene.
Source: The Information

13. 2. Getting AI and bots to work effectively
What do the experts think?
“AI will serve both customers and employees. For customers, AI will continue to handle basic
questions and requests, such as a change of address or answering frequently asked questions –
and will continue to get better at it. And, while most companies seem focused using AI to interact
directly with customers, it is also being used to support the agent, helping them with real-time
answers to customers’ questions. No longer does the customer have to wait as an agent looks
through screens of information to get accurate answers. And, AI can quickly identify a customer,
give the agent relevant history and predict (with uncanny accuracy) what the next problem the
customer will have or product the customer will want to purchase.”
Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert and New York Times
bestselling business author. @Hyken

14. 3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
Live chat needs to adopt the same kind of user experience as messenger apps:
38% of customers are not happy with the current live
chat experience
43% of businesses know their user experience is not
good enough.
Source: Kayako

15. 3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
Consumer messaging offers much less friction and makes it easy to chat with
friends. Look at the explosive growth Messaging apps have seen worldwide over
past few years:

16. 3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
Consumer messaging offers much less friction and makes it easy to chat with
friends. Look at the explosive growth Messaging apps have seen worldwide over
past few years:
● Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp users send over 60 billion messages a
day.
Source: TechCrunch

17. 3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
Consumer messaging offers much less friction and makes it easy to chat with
friends. Look at the explosive growth Messaging apps have seen worldwide over
past few years:
● Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp users send over 60 billion messages a
day.
● Line Users exchange 20 billion messages every day.
Source: TechCrunch, Statista

18. 3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
Consumer messaging offers much less friction and makes it easy to chat with
friends. Look at the explosive growth Messaging apps have seen worldwide over
past few years:
● Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp users send over 60 billion messages a
day.
● Line Users exchange 20 billion messages every day.
● Over 70% of WeChat users spend over 1 hour per day on the messaging app.
Source: TechCrunch, Statista, China channel

19. 3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
How will a messaging experience look in B2B?
● Offering features such as sending payments, ordering, and booking all
through one app.
● Displaying an update on the status of your order so you don’t have to ask
support the location of package.
● Messenger conversations will switch easily from live chat to email and
back-losing no context of the conversation as you switch between channels.

20. 3. Giving consumers a messaging experience over live chat
What do the experts think?
“The first thing customer-focused companies think, “what can I do to make my
customers’ lives easier and better?” To become more customer-centric, simply to
talk to your customers and find out what their experience is actually like. Then you
can begin to chip away at processes and product aspects that no longer serve
customers. You can start with the biggest offenders and work your way down. By
listening to your customers, and starting small, you will begin to make great strides
in customer experience.”
Blake Morgan, customer experience author, speaker, HBR and Forbes columnist.
@BlakeMichelleM

21. 4. Making self-service friction free
When customers want to solve a problem or have a question 7 out of 10 people
will search online.
But surprisingly, 55% of customers find web self-service portals difficult to use.
Source: Software Advice, NRG

22. 4. Making self-service friction free
What’s wrong with the current state of self-service?

23. 4. Making self-service friction free
What’s wrong with the current state of self-service?
Customers don’t want to become an expert at using a tool (like becoming a
master at using a DSLR camera), they want to become an expert at landscape
photography with rich depth.

24. 4. Making self-service friction free
Traditionally, marketing materials
focus on the bigger picture that the
user wants to achieve, whereas user
documentation focuses on getting
the most out of the tool.

25. 4. Making self-service friction free
How self-service will change:
● Marketing departments will be working with self-service teams more than
ever. There will be an increase in the production of how-to videos and
problem-focused product guides.
● Great self-service starts with a searchable support portal that’s easy to
navigate and equipped to escalate customers to a better suited channel
when they need it.
● Smart search will exist in self-service. It will understand real language
and anticipate what you are looking for-instantly making suggestions as
you type

26. What do the experts think?
“Helping users find value in your software or products in a matter of minutes is
vital for customer retention. Marketing are just as in control of the customer
experience as support teams. It’s great to see that marketing is extending its role
to both sides of the purchase - becoming not only accountable for acquisition but
success as well.”
Jamie Edwards, co-founder at Kayako. @JMEdwards
4. Making self-service friction free

27. That’s a wrap on customer service
trends for 2018!

28. Kayako is modern customer service software that lets
you have simple conversations with your customers
over email, chat, and social - all in one place.
Learn more about Kayako