Last summer, I wrote an article for InBlurbs called “5 Jobs for Tomorrow’s Marketing Team” that explored how trends in marketing will affect recruiting and staffing in the future. The post received so much feedback, we decided to revisit the idea this year through the customer service lens.
I rallied some of the biggest names in staffing to help me come up with roles they see in emerging in the future support organization. Experts from Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, SimplyHired and other staffing sites chimed into the conversation. The biggest change affecting these roles they see involves the shift in how customers contact a company. Forrester released a report earlier this showing customers increasing usage of communities by as much as 25 percent, live chat by 24 percent and self-service by 12 percent. Additionally, customers are increasing their use of social customer service and mobile, which will require new talent and technologies.
So without further adieu, here’s five roles we see becoming part of the customer service team of the future:
Self-Service Content Strategist
The individual in this role would continually mine for popular topics in call center notes, as well as review Web analytics data to assess which articles in the self-service community garner the most traffic. At the same time, they would also moderate content created by the customer community and facilitate the sharing of this user-generated material. Their goals would be two-fold:
- Deflect tickets from the call center by encouraging more customers to resolve problems on their own with self-service options; and,
- Drive customer retention and return purchases by creating a loyal community of brand advocates.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) Developer
The person in this role would help ensure the right answer is found no matter how or where the question is asked–whether it’s typed in a search box on a webpage, in a chat session, or spoken to an interactive voice response (IVR) system. This requires sophisticated algorithms that can process natural language to find the answer.
While most companies will deploy off-the-shelf or open-source NLP technology, the NLP Developer will need to make substantial configurations to apply it to their company’s specific use cases and content. I see this role as important for making the most of your content. All the effort creating it is meaningless if the customer can’t find it–fast.
Social Service Success Coordinator
The Social Service Coordinator would ensure social customer service efficiency, while keeping an eye out for opportunities to market support interactions. In order to respond effectively, companies have to use social listening technology. This person would work to refine keyword identifiers that tell these systems what signals a customer service message.
If the contact center suddenly gets an influx of calls about a particular product, for example, the coordinator would want to start listening for combinations of that word and “help,” “broken,” “angry” and so on. If a Twitter user responded with a glowing “thank you, I will tell my friends!” that person might handoff the interaction to marketing for promotional uses.
Mobile Customer Service App Manager
The Mobile Customer Service App Manager would act much like a product manager exclusively for the customer service mobile application. They would work with internal or external developers to optimize the user experience for all of the company’s customers.
If analytics showed one feature is used more than another, for example, they might try featuring it more prominently on the app home screen. Or maybe they’d work with the NLP Developer to refine speech recognition for that function. Optimizing content in this way can increase customer satisfaction as much as 60 percent, one report showed.
Virtual Call Center Director
The individual in this role would oversee the virtual call center — a network of customer service agents that work off-site (typically from home). This person would decide when and how to interact with these individuals, monitor their performance, and adjust the size of the team as needed. During peak communication cycles, for example, the Virtual CSR Manager might increase the number of agents on duty.
The Virtual Call Center Director would also consistently comb through key performance metrics to identify weak spots. If they noticed one remote agent lagging behind their cohorts, they could start monitoring calls and provide additional training.
These are just a few of the potential job titles our experts see emerging in the future. What changes do you see? What’s missing from this list? Join the conversation by commenting here.
About the author:
Ashley Verrill is a Market Analyst for research firm Software Advice. Her professional experience spans journalism, sales, advertising and SEO marketing. She’s a seasoned writer having produced copy for business journals, a sports magazine, daily deals advertising and industry blogs. She can be contacted at ashleyverrill[@]softwareadvice.com, or by calling 512-582-2314. LinkedIn –
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Constellation Research CEO and Principal Analyst R “Ray” Wang visited the Software Advice offices during the 2013 South by Southwest Interactive Festival to talk about some research he released called “Building Your Interaction Strategy with the 9 C’s of Engagement.”
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