Customer service is such an important facet of any business, and even more so in the digital age of the empowered consumer. While this may be easy to say, how often do businesses do really accept the value of getting this right?

Web desk help company, Help Scout, states that 78% of consumers have given up on a transaction or purchase because of a poor service experience. Those numbers are far too high, as all businesses should strive to have high customer retention rates.

The challenge of customer service in the modern era

Big businesses that span areas with different languages, currencies and time zones, let alone taste and spending habits, need to be able to manage thousands, if not millions, of customers and keep them all happy and coming back for more. It’s a daunting prospect.

According to the Huffington Post, the cyber-savvy customer now has even more power in their favour. They have the means to switch to an alternative provider for a product or service from a competitor based halfway around the globe with a couple of easy clicks.

The cloud can free you up to focus on the important things

When a business is faced with the tough task of keeping an empowered and varied base of customers coming back for more, what are they to do? The customer is armed with technology and so the onus is on businesses to follow suit. Use it smartly and this can be an asset to you as well as the customer.

One company has developed a cloud contact center that can allow a business to siphon off all of the difficult ‘heavy lifting’ of technology deployment, software integration and systems maintenance into the cloud. Using this technology, employees are left free to focus on actually looking after the customers themselves.

Cloud based technology can not only make the management of a customer database much simpler, but it can also deliver an in depth understanding of those customers – something that is essential if you want to even get close to delivering a personal service on a large scale. Businesses can flag up common concerns from customer service calls and even use voice biometric software to help to establish the identity of a caller so that they can get on with the business of handling their query.

Make tasks more manageable 

According to Forbes, cloud based technology, allows a business to adapt more quickly to an ever-changing environment and use data to make the relationship between a business and its customers a more two-way experience, with marketing messages that use the right tone and are relevant to the recipient.

Using cloud based services to gain a thorough understanding of your customers helps a business to deliver the sort of customer service that translates people from arms length consumers to loyal followers. The cloud is the key to making such a complex task manageable.