How service insights fuel growth and innovation
May 11, 2022
May 11, 2022
Every day your service team interacts with your customers across channels. This team fulfills requests, completes transactions, answers questions and addresses issues around products and services customers have purchased from you.
For many years, companies have looked to the service function to complete these kinds of activities with an emphasis on speed and efficiency. As a result, many have relegated service to the end of the customer experience.
The commonly held view is that service is just a cost of doing business — not a source of revenue growth or product innovation.
New Accenture research suggests that if you’re still limiting service to that old role, you’re leaving revenue on the table. Our End-to-Endless Customer Service research found that when companies fully view service as a value creator, they generate 3.5 times more revenue growth than organizations that manage service as a cost center.
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Companies that report always involving their service organization in new product development achieve up to 10 times more revenue growth than companies that keep these functions separate.
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How can service create value? When service is predictive and proactive, it works in the background to make customers’ lives easier. Customers feel the benefits of a better product experience, and their trust in the business grows. Similarly, the service function can offer strategic, relevant advice to customers. Through a “trusted advisor” role, service helps customers maximize the value of their purchases (while increasing the likelihood of retention and renewal).
Revenue growth is even higher among companies that consistently feed service-generated insights into other business processes. In fact, companies that report always involving their service organization in new product development achieve up to 10 times more revenue growth than companies that keep these functions separate.
When you think about it, this relationship between customer service and product development isn’t surprising.
Any time customers complete tasks and transactions, organizations collect a wealth of data about how customers are using their products and services. The kinds of questions they’re asking. The issues they’re having. Even the way they respond to service-centric communications.
All this data can provide rich insights for developing better products, delivering better customer experiences and achieving higher growth within your business.
What are some ways you can use AI-powered service insights to improve existing or create new products and services — and increase revenue? The possibilities are endless, but here are four examples.
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What are the best ways to onboard customers? If you’re a business with both an online and in store presence, how do you understand what resources are needed to address both types of storefronts? AI-powered insights can surface a variety of opportunities. That may include clarifying product instructions or mobilizing in-store personnel for troubleshooting and cross-selling. This analysis might even surface ways to enhance the product itself for a better experience from the start.
Think about one of the most pervasive service channels in an airport: the check-in kiosks. When an airline presents upgrade offers at the kiosk, it collects valuable data about customer preferences and decision making. Advanced analytics can help identify how numerous variables — customer demographics, pricing, time of day, length of flight — affect customer behavior. That, in turn, can help in crafting more personalized offers as passengers check themselves in for their flights.
For retailers, service-generated insights also can help in spotting trends. Suppose a significant number of customers start combining apparel, home goods, food products, and/or arts and crafts materials in surprising ways. What’s driving these combinations — and how can a retailer turn them into revenue growth? By analyzing sales and service data, a retailer can quickly develop and promote on-trend product bundles.
It’s common practice for retailers to recommend related products based on what customers buy. But what about adjusting offerings based on what customers return? For retailers, returns are among the most costly and onerous service transactions. By tracking detailed information about returns, retailers can be more informed about how they select and present products to customers.
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To start using insights from your service function to help improve and create new products and services, we recommend these three simple steps:
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Accenture Solutions.AI for Customer Engagement explained
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Tuning in to service insights can revolutionize how you improve products, craft point-of-sale communications and onboard new customers. Your service data and service talent are talking. It pays to listen well.
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