Why is voice still the preferred channel for customer relations?
June 21, 2019
And yes... In the midst of the digital revolution, we might have expected digital channels to dethrone voice. But e-mails, apps, text messages and chatbots have to take a back seat: voice remains the preferred interaction of customer service users, and even if companies are striving to minimize its use, it still has a bright future ahead of it. And for very simple reasons: let's find out why...
The voice, a vector of quality...
If voice is now being replaced by many other channels in customer relations, what about the "customer experience"? Notions ofexcellence and quality are certainly not the predominant ones, even when the problem raised by the customer has been resolved. According to a study conducted by theObservatoire des Services Clients in 2019, the telephone is the most widely used communication channel, ahead of e-mail and instant messaging tools. A historic and still popular communication channel, the telephone exchange remains the most widely used in customer relations (61% in 2017!), even if it continues to decline for cost reasons. And if it's so popular, it's because it's considered to be more qualitative: the immediacy of the spoken word means that customers can avoid the delay of an e-mail or the approximation of a chatbot. The voice channel provides a rapid response and channels a customer who is expressing himself "on the spot", thus reinforcing and improving customer knowledge.
The voice, a vector of emotions...
Beyond the immediacy, responsiveness and quality of our exchanges, the voice is also a vector ofemotions: modulations, intonations, inflections and tonality mean that we deliver words... But not only words!
The voice also delivers a prosody, a melody, even a harmony (!) that can be decisive at certain stages of the customer relationship: when, for example, the customer needs to be put at ease, when a case needs to be "closed", or when a crisis situation needs to be defused... In short, at all the "key" moments in the customer journey.
The emotions conveyed by the voice are implicit elements of information that can either confirm, contradict or qualify the words spoken or heard. For example, a sales consultant worthy of the name will know when listening to his customer how tense or angry he is. He'll then adapt his speech using his emotional intelligence to manage the exchange in the best possible way... The voice is indeed the channel that best enables this reactivity and adaptability!
And to better understand the usefulness of voice in customer relations, read our detailed white paper on conversational assistants. Welcome to the era of the royal voice!
Last update: November 03, 2021
