We have entered the “Era of the Customer.” Customers are more empowered than ever and nothing proves this more than New Voice Media’s 2018 Serial Switchers report, which indicates over $75 billion in losses for businesses this year due to unsatisfactory customer service.

The causes for customers’ dissatisfaction of course remain varied, but what I find most alarming is the increase in the number of cases reported. According to the report, “the number of U.S. consumers who reported leaving a business due to inadequate customer service increased from 49 percent to 67 percent.” Clearly a rather large disconnect exists between the service that we on the business side think we’re providing, and what our customers are actually experiencing. It turns out, the report indicates that ‘emotional connection’ may be the one major ingredient lacking in our customer experience. Fortunately for us, the consumers surveyed shared a few ways in which we can help them better emotionally-connect with our brands.

  1. Provide consistent two-way communication opportunities, on a variety of channels
  2. When contacting the organization, they expect access to a highly knowledgeable service representative, every-time
  3. A overall ‘fulfilling’ and helpful experience from start to finish

Thankfully, we are already familiar with the consumer needs outlined above. And perhaps, even more encouraging are the plethora of tools and technology available to businesses today that help facilitate the delivery of an ideal customer experience.

In the world of connected devices, one such technology is Location-of-Things (LoT). Research and Markets defines the term as “an emerging sub-category of the IoT concept that enables connected devices to monitor and communicate their geographic location.” The market research firm also eloquently identifies the true value of the technology. “Location being the most vital dimension of the data collected from the connected devices, allows service providers to provide contextual content for each customer/user.”

When service leaders are equipped with LoT, day-to-day service operations become more accurate, efficient and productive. Solutions are delivered faster and the end result is ’emotionally-connected’ and appreciative customers. I broke down the specific advantages for each major area of service below:

Field Service Managers can:

  • Alert customers of arrival times or delays based on the current location of their assigned technician
  • Automate Check-in/Check-out notifications for each of their team members
  • Quickly address emergency situations by dispatching the nearest qualified technician, based on proximity to the incident
  • Communicate the location of a service call to avoid any missed appointments

Customer Service Managers can:

  • Locate the nearest help center to accommodate the caller’s specific needs
  • Assign cases and route calls to the appropriate region and service team
  • Update records directly on the caller’s Salesforce entry

IT Service Managers can:

  • Pinpoint the location of the technology or equipment needing maintenance and navigate to it within the building, down to the desk level
  • Rapidly find the source of an outage, using a digital map of the area being affected
  • Track and log any notes for future mitigation while on the go
  • Communicate frequent, real-time updates to customers, via email or SMS, straight from Salesforce

Ultimately, the end goal of all our business operations is to provide a memorable, positive, dependable and valuable service to our customers. In 2018, this entails accounting for the emotional-connection consumers want to feel with the brands they choose to do business with. Incorporating LoT technology into your customer service approach will not only boost your service team’s performance, it will enable them to deliver a better service to your customers.

ABOUT Tom DiVittorio

Avatar photoTom is Chief Customer Officer at MapAnything and a software industry veteran with over 20 years of technical architecture and product development experience including nine years spent in a variety of leadership positions at Salesforce. At MapAnything, he leads product strategy, drives innovation, and is responsible for expanding its family of geo-analytics solutions. Previously, he was Chief Product Officer at nCino, a provider of banking software that is built on the Salesforce platform. Before that, DiVittorio was Vice President, Global Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Partner Technical Enablement at salesforce.com. In this role, he was responsible for ISV partners and channels enablement. His other positions at salesforce.com included Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture and Technical Engagement Manager.