Customer support is the set of activities that a firm offers to its customers so that they may work on their grievances, inquiries, and difficulties when interacting with the company or while using the offered products or services. It is a strategic tool of management where organizations aim at achieving optimum satisfaction of the customers. It has significantly improved itself from old call center to a modern era of customer support.

The roots of customer support are dated back to the early twentieth century and are related to the face to face communication as well as the telephonic service. This paper will aim at outlining the advancement in the approaches and tools that can be utilized in customer support provision. Starting from the evolution of customer support from simple call centers to the modern era of live chat and the AI customer support services, all the transformations experienced in this field contain a true picture of the development of both technology and consumers’ expectations.

In this article the focus will be made to the The Evolution of Customer Support: From call centers to modern era with reference to how the business organizations have responded to the dynamic needs of customers.

History of Call Centers

History of call centers can be traced back to the period between 1962 and 1972. With the evolution of businesses and the demand for the correlation between the customer and the companies, call centers came into operation as a centralized concept of answering the issues that customers were having with large volumes of telephone conversations.

Before, these centers were relatively small with agents dialing customers’ lines and writing interactions on paper.

Initially, call centers were organized with a focus on a center and a number of branches, the center centralized the incoming and outgoing calls and branches were local offices. Consumers were communicated to on how to deal with the place’s executives/management, to how to deal with general queries and hurdles.

Some of the general call handling procedures included; Greeting the customer, Identifying the problem, Offering the solution and documenting the call.

Nevertheless, call centers have been exposed to the following main challenges. Long wait times were apparent and that triggered ETA calls from the unhappy customers. This often confined their availability to the business days and working hours, which placed customers with issues in evenings and weekends at a loss.

Further, some calls were taken rather formally and, consequently, customers did not feel welcomed especially when it was a personalized business.

In the following chapters, focus is placed on shedding light on how the company successfully introduced the concept of email support to the reminding departments of the organization that constituted the manufacturing division of the company:

The support channel reached the Internet in the 1990s where email was a popular and frequently used mode of communication. There was a less invasive and more efficient method of reaching out for assistance from the company’s customers.

Multinational organizations incorporated the use of the new tool to mirror the call center business solution.

Expressed on the other side, several advantages were realized out of the email support. It allowed one party to call while the other responded since the customer’s timetable was not tied to the timetable of the company.

Especially, it was helpful for to use the platform in the case if buyers and sellers are in different time zones. It was also convenient because email allowed for documentation of the messages exchanged between the two entities.

Nevertheless, the unsatisfactory experience those clients who requested email support had their cons. , response times were slower than that of a phone call, meaning that issues could take more time to be solved. The written format also brought in more problems to the scenario as it was almost impossible to infer tone and intent whereby intent was distorted.

Adoption of Live Chat

Live chat came into the light as one of the support channels on the websites in the beginning of the 2000s. Thus, live chat rapidly appeared to be popular compared to other options to offer help to customers during their website’s navigation.

Features of live chat were numerous. This cut down waiting time by enabling instant response to the clients’ inquiries. Agents could deal with different chat sessions at once which would enhance productivity.

The particular customers found that getting help was possible without leaving the site or making a phone call.

Introducing live chat demanded the integration of the actual chat with clients into CRM equipment. Successful live chat tools, such as Zendesk Chat and LivePerson, provided businesses with the ability to track customer interactions, gather valuable data, and offer personalized support.

Social Media as Support Channel

The Twenties marked themselves with the popularity of using websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The importance of customer service was the other area which businesses discovered that such social media platforms were very useful as more and more customers complained on their Twitter, Facebook wall among other social media platforms.

Percentage of respondents who answered positively to the Social Media support questionnaire items is presented. The finding revealed that SM support had several benefits. It enabled one to interact with a public, which could help build or mar a brand if well managed.

Timely responses to the public concerns provided a clear evidence of a firm’s dedication towards addressing public sorrows. Social media also acted as a place where businesses could be actively engaging and offering information on issues that people encounter and possible solutions.

Keeping up with support on the social networks posed its own difficulties. The negative response would spread faster and might harm a brand if addressed improperly and on time. Also, the roles also highlighted the importance of effective and timely response and this necessitated the establishment of staffs solely dedicated to the business’s social media handling

AI in Customer Support

Over the last couple of years, artificial intelligence and more specifically, machine learning has penetrated the customer support division immensely. Today, the web-site interfaces, and messaging applications are accompanied with chatbots and virtual assistants that are based on AI.

The use of AI tools has the following advantages. They offer availability, which means customers can always seek assistance from the companies at any time of the day. Firstly, for daily questions and typical questions, they can be solved by chatbots to give human agents more time to solve more complicated problems.

AI also helps to respond to customers individually as it is adapted to analyze information about the client.

This means that although AI tools have their uses, they are not perfect and come with their problems. The inability to discern issues that are slight or complicated can be disadvantageous since the customer may get frustrated.

Also, the implementation of AI and its capabilities takes time to set and also requires considerable amounts of money.

Omnichannel Strategies

Currently, the concept that is widely used in customer support is called omnichannel. This approach used phone, email, chat, social media, and artificial intelligence to support the customers in a way that is satisfying to them.

Multichannel support is effective in the following aspects. It help in maintaining uniformity in responding to customer complaint via different platforms, thus enhance the level of satisfaction.

Consequently, data generated from numerous point contacts can be used to individualize the support and enhance the understanding of the customer’s requirements.

The article also presented that the ‘omnichannel strategy’ lies on the extent to which a company integrates its channels and departments. Customer service managing a quality support over a broad range of communication channels could be problematic

It is therefore important that organizations spend their resources on training and tools, so that a similar excellent quality is provided.

The evolution of customer support from simple call centers to live chat shows that the element of customer expectation and technology has always been in a state of change. Every step of this evolution has presented new possibilities and obstacles that have forced companies to adapt and search for better solutions for supporting all types of initiatives.

That’s why the focus in the future should be on flexibility and the possibility to incorporate new trends in customer service for the business. Cast your mind back to your own support activities and look at how you might be able to apply a slatest technology to help your customers.

Please, feel free to leave a comment to this article, “The Evolution of Customer Support: From call centers to modern era,” alongside with your own experience as customer and thoughts about how such kind of customer support can be helpful or unhelpful in different situations.