How Apple Is Transforming Customer Service From Complaint Line To Sales Generator

Building a new level of CX (from anywhere)

What if customer service extended beyond managing millions of consumers’ complaints? What if customer service became a two-way street for communication - where brands could engage with customers across different channels before problems became problems? Consumers could self-serve when they wanted to, saving businesses’ time and resources. Brands could use self-service tools to aggregate more customer data. And customer service departments would become a better marketing or sales resource. 

Apple Business Chat, which became widely available last month after a period in beta testing, now lets customers message participating companies on an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Mac computer with a button that can appear across the Apple ecosystem, such as in Maps, and on the companies’ websites and other apps (i.e. Siri, Spotlight, Chat Suggest), according to the WSJ. However, the tool’s new features shed light on a much more important topic that the customer experience world should be aware of. 

Apple Business Chat is a strategic engagement platform used to help businesses not merely reduce customer service friction through reactive complaint management, but to improve their relationships with customers, proactively supporting consumers in apple services that weren’t previously available, while simultaneously aggregating more consumer data for personalized support, and even target sales. 

For example, brands and consumers have the ability to engage anywhere at any time across the Apple ecosystem - making purchases directly in conversation by logging in with Apple Authentication, and checking out with Apple Pay, after an individualized conversation.

“That has become more possible, and important, as consumers increasingly use digital tools to interact with companies, a trend that has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic,” said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

We have been preaching this concept since March, as the digital shift in self-service and consumer engagement has and will continue to increase over time and use cases for such tools grow. 

Where AI comes into the conversation

According to CCW Digital research, 90% of CX, customer service, and marketing leaders are more committed to improving AI-generated self-service after the COVID outbreak. Only 2% of respondents said that they are less committed to artificial intelligence and digital engagement, suggesting that the exponential growth in the capabilities of digital customer service channels such as chat (i.e. Apple Business Chat) have been expedited, in turn helping us serve consumers better in the long run. And the concept extends across industries. 

Read More: How-to Guide: How To Create An Omnichannel Contact Center

Freshly Inc., a prepared meal subscription company, uses Apple Business Chat partly for the tool’s Picker feature, which presents a list of options for consumers to choose from. With the Picker, Freshly can route customers to the correct customer service agent without asking customers to type a lot of details (and drive conversion rates), Colin Crowley, VP of customer experience at Freshly told the WSJ. 

When I interviewed Colin a few weeks prior, he told me: 

“We were already looking at a world where we wanted to invest a good deal in AI solutions and chatbot technology which we’ve done really over the past two years in varying degrees of proactivity.”

Turning customer service channels from reactive problem solvers or complaint managers to proactive, AI-driven, marketing or sales platforms is a new key for quality customer experiences.

According to our latest CCW Digital market study, top AI objectives in businesses include understanding customer intent, better gathering and analyzing customer data, and automating repetitive processes - all opportunities for conversational AI.  

“The year of the chatbot”

“We knew coming into 2020, this was going to be the year of the chatbot, where we really wanted to embrace chatbot technology to allow customers to get answers to their questions as soon as possible in very very basic use cases, and be able to repurpose our agents to more complicated and involved tasks...” 

I asked Colin what customer service channel would be more important in the near future, whether it be voice, social media, chat, etc. (You can probably guess which one he highlighted first).  

Read More: The Missed Opportunity Of Self-Service

“Definitely chatbots… How chatbots can be used intelligently because they’re definitely not a cure-all or panacea, which is I think how some companies look at them. So you have to be strategic in how you’re using a chatbot… but in terms of channels, I would also highlight, broadly speaking – messaging which can be defined in many different ways because you have messaging as in SMS, you have messaging in regard to more nuance channels like Apple Business Chat or Google Business Messaging, and of course you have Facebook Messenger as well.”

“Messaging is very personal. It provides branding opportunities for businesses.”

The company averages six to seven messages per conversation on Apple Business Chat, compared with roughly four messages in standard text interactions with customers, according to the WSJ, which allows for more personalized and detail-oriented customer experiences. 

Too often brands solely prioritize efficient interactions at all costs (i.e. average messages per chat conversation or average handle time in a voice conversation) over quality interactions (i.e. CSAT or NPS). Many times, prioritizing efficiency at all costs is actually counterintuitive when a customer does not receive the service they need, only to resort back to the beginning of the customer service journey as a result of impersonalized or unsatisfactory service the first time. 

Blending digital and brick-and-mortar

Freshly’s not the only brand that has identified the increasing advantages of Apple Business Chat. Many are using it in a plethora of different use cases. Wedding gown retailer David’s Bridal Inc. uses Apple Business Chat and a custom-built geo-routing capability from CCW Digital client, LivePerson Inc., a conversational AI and commerce company, to connect customers to an employee who works at the store closest to them. Even more interestingly, the tool lets the store employee know who the customers are when they come in, as well as what product or service they’re looking for.

Read More: The Era Of The Conscientious Consumer: What Younger Generations Want From Your Brand

Linking the digital and brick-and-mortar experience can lead to a potential increase in brand loyalty, said Holly Carroll, VP for customer service and contact center operations at David’s Bridal.

As I mentioned last week in a recent article:

Brick-and-mortar retail is undoubtedly declining but it’s not necessarily the beginning of the end for in-person customer experiences, especially for industries such as luxury shopping (i.e. jewelry), entertainment (i.e. live events), or anything else that is dependent upon live experiential marketing, social factors, or the practicality that many brick-and-mortar retailers can provide - if they know how to go about it that is. 

…By taking advantage of these new automation tools, retailers can make their stores more efficient, interactive and engaging — with the ultimate goal of providing the most memorable customer experience possible.

David’s Bridal began using Apple Business Chat about a year ago and it currently makes up 25% to 30% of the company’s overall messaging volume. The retailer aims to increase that figure to 40% by the end of the summer.

As David’s Bridal said on LivePerson’s website:

“This rich conversational experience for brides to schedule, ask questions, and pay helped deliver $30,000 in sales in the first few weeks.” 

This is a time when the world is vulnerable, where every person and organization is adapting to life with a live virus in their midst, where no one is operating from a best-in-class pandemic playbook to survive modern financial Darwinism. Brands, including marketers and customer service departments must become the very people they’re trying to reach. This means that among innovation, compliance, time and technology, humanity must become the greatest application. 

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For media coverage, lead gen, and digital marketing inquiries, (or to say hi), contact me at matt.wujciak@customermanagementpractice.com, or connect with me on Linkedin at Matt Wujciak. And remember, identifying consumer behaviors before they become trends is how brands deliver compelling marketing and customer experiences.