HubSpot Annual
State of Service in
2022
Introduction
Executive Summary
Chapter 1
Service Leaders Want More Time
Spent Helping Instead of Searching
Chapter 2
Choice and Flexibility Expected to
Drive Better Customer Outcomes
• Tools That Support Customer Service
Team Collaboration and Coordination
• Tools That Give Customers Power of
Choice and Agency
Chapter 3
Authenticity as a Driver of Customer
Experience
Chapter 4
Looking Ahead Beyond 2022
Conclusion
Table of
Contents
Introduction
Introduction
After a tumultuous 2020, 2021 continued to stretch and challenge businesses, customers,
and individuals alike in our expectation setting and experiences. On a personal level, I
experienced many highs and lows and at points found myself more grateful than ever for
the little things: joyful moments with my family and dogs; focused time for reading, writing,
and continuous learning; and growing a team that makes me immensely proud. I also spent
much of the past year reecting on the evolution of customer service, thinking back on my
own experiences, including working in the service industry as my rst corporate job.
Heading into 2022, customer expectations and experiences continue to be key
determinants of brand and company loyalty, with consistent preferences for self-service,
personalization, and real-time resolutions. What was once considered dierentiation in
customer service now resembles table stakes requirements to be competitive with both
customer service and customer experience at large. Despite the increased market pressures
facing companies, some still lag with delivering what customers need and prefer. This
misalignment between customers and customer service teams leaves customers feeling
ignored, unseen, and uncared for when they need help the most.
Interestingly, many solutions that have evolved in the past several years to drive eciency
are no longer sucient to solve for this frustration. In turn, based on market and customer
research, including this year’s State of Service survey, we believe that customer service
teams and organizations have a meaningful opportunity in 2022 to level up their service
delivery. Teams must move beyond eciency and double down on customer care across the
end-to-end customer journey. With interactive tools for connected teams and easy-to-use
channels for customers, organizations can deliver exceptionally authentic customer service
when, where, and how customers want it most.
4
As I look ahead to 2022 and beyond, I am excited to see how the customer service industry
continues to evolve to deliver on its key charge: solving for the customer. Since joining
HubSpot as the GM of Service Hub this past year, I have continued to be energized by how
our teams are going above and beyond in nding ways to deliver remarkable solutions for
customers in a way that brings agency and authenticity to the customer experience. My
colleagues and team at HubSpot, too, model that deep commitment to taking care of our
customers as well as each other as we all continue to navigate the relentless presence of
change in our new normal world. Now more than ever, we need to leverage empathy in how
we connect with and support our customers, partners and colleagues. Because at the end
of the day, customer service is about helping others. Let’s get back to the core of why we
do what we do and show up for one another in earnest this year.
Thank you for reading,
Poorvi Shrivastav
GM, HubSpot Service Hub
5
The 2021 State of Service survey had over 1,400 respondents, representing companies
ranging in size from 1 to 10 employees up to over 10,000 employees. The company size
with the greatest representation was 1,001-5,000 employees (21% of respondents), and
there was notable representation from 251-500, 501-1,000, and 10,000+ employee segments
(all representing 12%+ of total respondents). We surveyed service leaders in the United
States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, with the majority of respondents coming
from the U.S. (63%). We also asked our respondents to self-report their company’s growth
over the last ve years: exponential, high, low, or no growth.
Two-thirds of survey respondents reported that their customer service organization reports
into customer service/support teams. Respondents were nearly evenly distributed across
seniority, with 28% of respondents reporting to VP or C-level executives, 30% reporting to
a director, and 36% reporting to a manager (6% reporting to “other”).
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A note on survey respondent demographic data
Executive Summary
2021 was a hard year, with almost 90%
of leaders reporting that customer
expectations have increased to an all-
time high
It has never been more dicult to be a
customer service leader.
7
Most customer service leaders don’t have
the resources to adequately deliver on
these expanded expectations. Three of
the top challenges for customer service
leaders in 2022 are:
• A lack of prioritization: translating to
inconsistency of customer care
• Too many tools: often adding more
complexity than value
• Not enough time in the day: especially
to address new opportunities and
create organizational alignment
Their service agents are also being asked
to do more with insucient resourcing.
• Nearly half of all service agents
already struggle to manage dicult
conversations, and yet they’re increas-
ingly expected to support new cross-
sell and upsell goals in order to combat
a growing misconception of service
teams
• Almost 40% of customer service lead-
ers say that their company views cus-
tomer service as an expense instead
of a driver for growth, an increase of
almost 25% in one year alone
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) remains
the most important KPI for almost 75%
of customer service leaders. However,
almost 50% are now also responsible
for customer experience and ensuring
customer success, which is an increase of
more than 10% from last year
In order for customer service leaders
to deliver on these increasing demands,
they’ll need to nd ways to:
• Introduce and automate prioritization
within their operation models
• Streamline tools for agents while also
helping customers to self-serve
• Create time and opportunity to drive
strategic alignment across their
organizations’ teams and channels
– enabling delightful, consistent, and
comprehensive customer experiences
that scale
8
The majority (95%) of customer service
leaders agree that a CRM platform is an
eective way to increase productivity
And while technology adoption by
customer service teams is trending
signicantly up vs. last year, with a 30%
increase in CRM adoption, it is still
shockingly low overall
Only 50% have enabled their service
teams with the most basic service
features a CRM can provide: a help
desk, knowledge base, and shared email
capabilities
In order to meet this rising tide of customer and organizational expectations, customer
service leaders need to shift their focus and investment to improving the overall customer
experience and driving additional monetary value to their business. While customer service
teams already have a big impact on the customer experience, they can heighten this
impact by partnering with their peers in marketing and sales. Working together, they can
enable service teams to achieve sustainable customer satisfaction and empower their
agents to drive revenue – ultimately delivering magical, authentic interactions throughout
the customer journey.
Service Leaders Want
More Time Spent
Helping Instead of
Searching
Chapter 1
Service Leaders Want More Time
Spent Helping Instead of Searching
With digital acceleration impacting every facet of life, from entertainment streaming to
mobile banking, it is no surprise that customer expectations similarly reect a “need for
speed” with issue resolutions. In fact, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response
as important or very important when they have a customer service question and 60%
of customers dene “immediate” as 10 minutes or less (HubSpot Research Consumer
Customer Support Survey, 2018). Needless to say, the expectation for immediate resolution
puts immense pressure on customer service teams to be ecient in how they handle
customer inquiries.
In our survey, we asked respondents what they considered the biggest challenges facing
service agents. Across all respondents, the most reported challenge was “dealing with
upset customers” (52%). When we considered the dierent growth segments, we found
that “prioritization of customer questions” was the second most reported challenge for
exponential growth respondents (51%). It stands to reason that fast growing companies
experience a higher inux of issues or more complex issues compared to slower growing
companies. Ecient, quality resolutions require prioritization in these high growth cases.
Chapter 1
101010
Comparatively, for high and low growth respondents, “not having enough time in the day”
came in second (43% and 51% respectively) and “organization and follow-up” came in
third (29% and 30% respectively). Unfortunately, these two challenges likely exacerbate
any frustration experienced and expressed by customers, the primary challenge facing
agents. If service representatives are time constrained, it’s reasonable to expect that it
could be challenging to stay on top of data entry and maintenance, tracking down relevant
information and answers, and timely follow-ups with customers. That 10-minute expectation
for resolution suddenly seems like a stretch target.
11
We next asked what our respondents’ biggest challenges were as service leaders. Half
of respondents noted “not enough time in the day” and this challenge had the highest
percentage across all growth segments. Notably, it was highest for no growth (60%) and
low growth (52%). The next highest most selected challenges across growth cohorts were
organization and follow-up (31%) and lack of budget (30%).
12
Time-to-resolution not only inuences customer sentiment, but also impacts service agents’
reported performance. Our survey asked respondents what metrics are used to assess their
teams. Similar to the last survey elded, customer satisfaction continues to be the leading
metric that respondents’ teams are measured against (74% in 2021). Across metric types,
every metric saw an increase in reported use compared to 2020, with the largest increase
seen with “Speed of resolution / SLA (service level agreement)”, increasing 12 points to
38%. Speed of resolution moved into the second most reported metric in 2021, bumping
“new sales and repeat purchase/upgrades” down a spot. In fact, speed of resolution has
downstream eects on repeat purchase or upgrade decisions as speed of resolution is a
key customer input when assessing successful customer service experiences.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are a helpful tool that allows teams to prioritize incoming
tickets. SLAs can be customized to prioritize tickets based on importance and time
constraints to ensure that customer service agents are meeting customer expectations
on solution delivery and follow-through. SLAs complement other workow automation in
customer service software, with streamlined notications when SLAs are set to expire,
reducing the risk of missed follow-ups or resolutions.
One metric that saw a notable increase in responses was “number of tickets closed”, which
had a 10 point increase compared to last year. Number of tickets closed is another measure
to assess service eciency, with higher numbers of tickets closed in a certain time window
indicating faster resolutions. The exponential growth cohort had the highest percentage of
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Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Prioritize incoming requests based on
importance and ensure your team is
meeting your customers’ expectations.
With SLAs, you can set working hours, build
in automation, and report on attainment.
Learn more about Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)
respondents using tickets as a metric (37%) compared to the high growth (23%) and low
growth (19%) respondents. Not only is “tickets closed” a helpful metric for customer service
leaders to consider when coaching their teams, but tickets are also an eective tool for
agent time management.
Tickets
Instead of pouring time into manual trackers in spreadsheets, you can use tickets
and automation to create, route, and enter customer data into your customer data
management system or customer relationship management software. Ticket-based
workows route tickets to the right teams and agents based on criteria such as priority,
category, and complexity. With a ticketing system, customer service teams can refocus
their time - which is a critical limited resource - on the most valuable activities for their
customers, solving their issues!
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Ticketing System
Keep track of customer service
requests in one shared inbox.
Organize your team, prioritize
incoming requests, and optimize for
more eective service.
Learn more about Service Hub Ticketing System
Implementing tools like SLAs and ticket systems enables speed for an improved customer
experience, while also creating an easier agent experience, lightening the load of repetitive
manual work, and facilitating automated organization for next steps. These tools are just
the beginning when it comes to delivering delightful customer service.
Choice and
Flexibility Expected
to Drive Better
Customer Outcomes
Chapter 2
Choice and Flexibility Expected to
Drive Better Customer Outcomes
Today more than ever, customers have access to a myriad of channels to connect with
customer service. With this, several tools and technologies have been made available to
customer service teams to enable smoother customer experiences, as well as empower a
more collaborative and coordinated approach to customer inquiries.
We asked respondents to identify which tools or technologies they use to enable customer
service teams. Comparing our results from 2020, all tools experienced increases in the
number of respondents citing usage and the same tools and technologies were ranked the
highest for their reportage usage. The top three tools included 1) a help desk system (up
11 points from 2020 to 53%) 2) a knowledge base on the company website (similarly up 11
points from 2020 to 52%), and 3) a shared email alias for customer service support (up 10
points to 47%). Of note, the tool with the most signicant increase compared to 2020 was
live website chat, which jumped nearly 15 points to 44% in 2021.
Chapter 2
161616
We then considered how companies at dierent growth stages might dier in their use
of tools and technologies on their service teams. The high growth cohort had consistently
higher percentages of respondents using tools across categories compared to the low and
no growth cohorts, including a more than 10-point lead in the top three most cited tools
(help desk, knowledge base, and shared email alias). Interestingly, the largest dierences
in reported use was found between low growth and no growth groups, specically for the
tools “CRM to manage customer data” and “live website for chat”. Whereas only 24% of no
growth respondents use a CRM to manage their customer data, over 44% of low growth
and 48% of high growth companies use a CRM.
17
A CRM is a highly eective tool that creates a single, shared view of the customer, allowing
for more collaborative and coordinated eorts by service representatives and more
seamless, consistent experiences for the customer. Similarly, the reported use of a help
desk was highest with the high growth respondents (60%) compared to the low and no
growth cohorts. The help desk, like the CRM, facilitates easier collaboration among reps by
minimizing the risk of redundancy, mistimed outreach, or missed follow-ups with it serving
as a central headquarters for all customer inquiries. Leveraging CRM and help desk systems
is clearly correlated with higher growth in 2021 and should be considered as potential
investments for companies aiming to accelerate their own growth.
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Tools That Support Customer Service Team Collaboration
and Coordination
Help Desk
A help desk is a tool that allows you to track customer requests and inquiries in a unied
workspace so your team can stay organized, manage tickets, and prioritize and assign work
– helping your customer service teams identify and deliver solutions for customers faster.
Tickets are recorded, organized, and tracked in a central dashboard that is accessible to the
entire team so all agents can be aligned on status, context, and next steps for each issue.
Free Help Desk
Keep track of customer service
requests in one shared inbox.
Organize your team, prioritize
incoming requests, and optimize for
more eective service.
Get Free Help Desk & Ticketing Software
19
Shared Inbox and Team Email
Using a shared inbox and team email alias allows teams to coordinate customer service
communications. By having a central inbox, customer service teams no longer have to
worry about losing track of a customer’s inquiry and risk either a missed follow-up or a
redundant outreach. Instead, a shared view of customer communications and responses
creates transparency that ensures all customers are receiving the support and attention
they need. Shared inboxes even have routing that can easily assign emails to certain team
members and customizable templates so you can more quickly craft emails.
Shared Inbox
Connect your team email addresses
to a universal inbox that makes
collaboration easy, eortless, and
more ecient.
Learn more about Shared Inbox
20
Tools That Give Customers Power of Choice and Agency
Live Chat
Live chat is a particularly eective tool that can help you meet your customers in a way
that is exible to their needs and on their terms. Live chat on your website gives visitors,
prospects, and customers the opportunity to have real-time conversations with members
of your customer service team and get the important information they need now, rather
than later. You can also scale personalized conversations using chatbots that can answer
frequently asked questions, book meetings, and more – allowing your team to focus on the
conversations that matter most.
Free Live Chat Software
Connect with your website visitors
in real time to convert new leads,
close more deals, and provide better
support to your customers.
Get Free Live Chat Software
21
Knowledge Base
A knowledge base is an valuable self-service tool that helps customers nd the answers to
their most common questions. Your team can transform frequently asked questions and
common tickets into resources and articles that enable self-service support. Knowledge
bases can even include search functions to quickly get customers the information they
need. A self-service channel like a knowledge base can help your team’s eciency, serving
as a resource for their own reference and as a time-saving solution that allows them to
focus on their customers’ more complex questions.
Knowledge Base Software
Make it easy for customers to nd
the information they need so your
team can spend less time answering
common questions, and more time
helping customers succeed.
Learn more about Knowledge Base Software
We asked our survey respondents not only to consider which tools they used, but also to
assess each tool’s eectiveness. A remarkable 91% of respondents agreed with the statement
“our help desk system increases productivity”, the largest increase across the tools. Not only
is the help desk tool used by more customer service organizations compared to last year, but
it is continuing to deliver value to teams as well.
Though the help desk is clearly a leading tool, the tool with the highest number of
respondents agreeing to its eectiveness was the CRM, at 95%. The CRM is the engine that
powers your entire understanding of your customers and the experience you deliver to them
by accurately capturing and centralizing customer data and their interactions with your team.
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM software helps companies and their teams manage their relationships with customers.
A CRM is a central database to maintain and track customer data, notes, and team
interactions. Not only does a CRM house all your important customer knowledge, but it
also serves as a transparent resource available across teams – marketing, sales, customer
service, accounting, and management can all benet from working out of a CRM. Having a
single shared view of your customer allows teams to collaborate and coordinate to create a
remarkable end-to-end customer experience across every touch point with your team.
Free HubSpot CRM
Think CRM software is just about
contact management? Think again.
HubSpot CRM has free tools for
everyone on your team, and it’s
100% free.
Get Free HubSpot CRM
Authenticity as a
Driver of Customer
Experience
Chapter 3
Authenticity as a Driver of
Customer Experience
Though customers now have several options for how they can reach out to customer service
teams, it is important to note that regardless of channel, customers expectations remain
high. In our survey, we asked respondents if they agreed with statements around customer
expectations and behaviors. Out of the pool of respondents, 79% agreed that customers are
smarter and more informed now than in the past. A signicant majority, 88%, of respondents
agreed that customers have higher expectations than in the past. Similarly, a majority of
respondents – 85% – responded that customers are more likely to share positive or negative
experiences now than in the past. This all indicates that even with technologies and tools
evolving to create easier, faster, and more exible service options, customers continue to
expect exceptional experiences when looking for customer service. So how can customer
service organizations and leaders create remarkable customer experiences at scale?
Chapter 3
24
25
It is worth emphasizing that service organizations must rst truly understand their
customers. We asked respondents to consider the ways they are listening and learning
from their customers. Compared to previous years, 2021 saw the highest self-reported
engagement in seeking feedback across each method included in our survey, with the top
methods staying consistent since 2019. Out of all respondents, 70% reported that their
organizations are tracking customer satisfaction/happiness and 65% of respondents
also indicated that they survey customers. Surveying is an eective way to assess how
successful your team is in delivering on the expectations and needs of your customers.
Customer Feedback Surveys
Customer feedback surveys are a great way to make your customers feel heard and valued
across their customer journeys, from sales to service and every moment in between. Survey
insights can help you better understand your customers and identify opportunities for
improvement in service delivery – ultimately contributing to a better customer experience
and more customer delight. Surveys can target service KPIs such as net promoter score
(NPS), customer eort score (CES), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) to assess customer
loyalty and retention. Some feedback software even allows you to build custom surveys,
where you can tailor your questions to reect your unique business needs and gain targeted
insights.
Customer Feedback Surveys
Truly understand your customers
and spot opportunities to make
them happier — so they stay with
you longer.
Learn more about Customer Feedback Surveys
z
26
Beyond tracking customer satisfaction and sending feedback surveys, 60% of respondents
also reported leveraging review sites and social media as a way to gather feedback and
listen to their customers. We want to note that there was a signicant increase with the
number of respondents reporting using customer advocacy programs and customer NPS
scores. Less than 20% of respondents had a formal customer advocacy program in 2019
compared to more than a third of respondents reporting using such a program in 2021.
Similarly, tracking NPS scores as a way to listen to customers more than doubled from 17%
of respondents in 2019 to 36% of respondents in 2021.
Next we asked those who indicated that they survey customers how often they send
out surveys. The frequency varied across growth cohorts, with more frequent surveying
practices aligning with higher self-reported growth. Of the exponential growth respondents,
55% reported surveying customers after every interaction, compared to 38% of high growth
and 34% of low growth respondents. Weekly surveying had the highest percentage of
respondents from the high growth cohort (32%) while monthly surveying had the highest
percentage of respondents from the low growth category (35%). The no growth respondents
reported surveying only once a year, the most of any growth cohort. These results indicate
that growth is correlated with higher survey usage.
27
In summary, the increased frequency of feedback indicates that customer service
teams and leaders understand that listening and understanding customers – their needs,
preferences, and sentiments – is critical to customer service organizations’ responsibilities
and success. Making your customers feel heard and valued is one way your customer
service teams can communicate appreciation toward your customers, even at times when
they are feeling frustrated or in need of help.
In fact, these triage moments might be the most critical times to really create genuine
and authentic interactions with your customers. At such moments in a customer’s journey,
customer service teams should be enabled to deliver exceptional service through time-
saving tools, collaborative solutions, and exible channels for customers. Customers
increasingly prefer opportunities to own their service experience. Gartner reports that 70%
of customers use self-service channels at some point in their resolution journey (Gartner).
Customer portals compliment knowledge bases as channels for self-service and visibility
into one’s inquiries.
28
Customer Portal
Customer Portal
Empower customers to get the help
and information they need, when
they need it — so you can minimize
repetitive tasks for support reps and
increase customer trust.
Learn more about Customer Portal
Customer portals give customers agency and ownership of their service experience by
serving as a central resource where customers can review the status of their tickets, follow
up with additional questions, and access the knowledge base for further resources. Using a
customer portal not only creates transparency and trust for your customers, but also helps
your service teams coordinate responses – ultimately saving your agents time so they can
focus on solving for their customers.
Perhaps most importantly, customer service leaders need to ensure that their teams have
access to robust customer data so that customers are not burdened with getting several
agents up to speed on their issues. Being equipped with accurate and relevant information
in the moment when your customer is engaging with you is another way you can deliver on
customer expectations. Coupling the CRM with customer feedback and self-service tools
can enhance customer insights and empower meaningful engagement. Fully equipped,
customer service leaders and teams can evolve service from reactive management to
proactive customer experience delight.
Looking Ahead
Beyond 2022
Chapter 4
Looking Ahead Beyond 2022
We asked respondents to identify their top three priorities for their departments going
into 2022. The three priorities that had the highest number of responses mirrored
2020’s projections looking forward into 2021: creating a great customer experience
(45%), customer success (37%) and retaining customers (35%). Customer engagement
came in a close fourth at 33%. We would like to note that these priorities go beyond
the myopic perception that customer service is a largely reactive, triage function in
companies. Customer experience is only made possible by proactive service strategy and
implementation.
In fact, when our survey respondents were asked what their teams’ were responsible for,
“proactive customer service” was the responsibility with the highest response rate at
51%. The next two most popular responses were customer retention (47%) and account
management (45%). These results indicate that customer service leaders see their teams
and their own positions as proactive players in customer relationship management. This
view counters the narrow view that customer service is a siloed, point-in-time customer
touch point that has limited implications elsewhere in a customer’s experience. Customer
service leaders recognize that their work is fundamentally connected to a customers’
ongoing engagement and satisfaction with their company. This connectivity opens
opportunities for service to provide unique insights into customer needs, wants, and
preferences across the customer journey.
Returning to the 2022 priorities, it is interesting to note that retaining customers was in
the top three cited priorities, while “saving costs/cost reduction” was sixth based on the
percentage of respondents selecting those priorities (24.5%, a 10-point drop from 2020).
Chapter 4
3030
31
Retaining customers is one way to reduce costs and drive stronger revenue: acquiring new
customers can be 5 times more expensive than retaining existing customers (Harvard
Business Review). Department prioritization seems to favor a revenue-driving activity as
opposed to an expense-centric objective.
This is an encouraging counterpoint to our survey nding an increasing number of
respondents considering service as an expense: up to 40% in 2021 from 32% in 2020. This
trend is worrying when considered alongside the nding that 30% of respondents cited
lack of budget as a challenge for their team. Further education and recognition around
customer service’s impact on revenue driving activities could alleviate budget pressures
and inspire further investment in tools and systems supporting customer service teams.
Customer service has the potential to drive improved customer loyalty and retention,
formidable revenue levers. We hope to see a reversal of this expense-viewpoint trend in the
coming year in light of the reported 2022 priorities.
Training also ranked higher for 2022 priorities compared to the previous year. When asked
to report on upskilling, our survey respondents were nearly evenly distributed across
frequency of how often they are actively learning new skills for their roles: “a few times
a month or more often” (32%), “about once a month” (30%), “a few times a year” (28%).
32
Of note, the exponential growth segment showed the highest percentage of respondents
reporting that they engaged in learning at least a few times a month at 50%, 26 points
higher than the high growth and 29 points higher than the low growth groups.
The leading method for learning and training was peer relationships, with 54% of
respondents reporting this as a way they learn, followed by 50% of respondents selecting
attending conferences (including virtual). Along a similar theme of learning from others,
learning from formal mentors was selected by 39% of respondents. These ndings indicate
the importance of team structures and processes that allow for collaboration, information
sharing, and shared learning. It isn’t unreasonable to consider how important it is to
continue to foster these learning methods in our hybrid working world, with remote-friendly
environments still necessitated by COVID-19.
The priority “creating a customer feedback program” was up four points to 21% compared
to last year, trailing behind saving costs/cost reduction by only three points, while “building
self-service solutions” increased ve points to 15%. Though “leveraging predictive analytics”
was the least frequently cited priority for 2022 (10%), we predict this will continue to grow in
importance as market trends with customer insights and machine learning evolve.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The year 2021 was exceptionally challenging for all of humanity, including customer service
leaders charged with the thoughtful care of the customers whose expectations were only
outmatched by their emotions. We hope you found valuable insights in this year’s HubSpot
State of Service Report and that our ndings can empower you, your teams, and your
organizations in providing authentic customer experiences and enabling collaboration
among customer service professionals. Customer expectations continue to set a high bar
for service delivery that is ecient without sacricing quality and personality. With that,
it is as important as ever for customer service leaders to invest in tools, systems, and
processes that support teams as they help customers when, where, and how they need it
most.
Service leaders and agents alike face challenges, including time constraints, with increasing
demands for ecient resolutions against the backdrop of real-time expectations.
Fortunately, technology continues to iterate tools such as tickets and SLAs to help teams
save time on manual tasks and dedicate their energy to solving for their customers with
agility.
Beyond time-saving tools, exible channels and collaborative systems are critical for service
teams. Customers now have the exibility of choice in where they reach out to support,
with live chat and self-service resources on knowledge bases. Connected tools like help
desks and shared email aliases, powered by the CRM, create a single-source of truth for all
customer engagements and reduce redundant or missed follow-ups. Better yet, with a CRM,
customer notes and learnings can be leveraged in other teams, such as sales, marketing,
and more.
3434
35
Now more than ever, companies and their customer service teams are listening to
customers to understand what customers need, want, and could go without. Customer
feedback channels such as surveys allow customer insights to be transformed into
actionable improvements in the end-to-end customer experience. Customer service teams
can go a step further with infusing agency into customer service by leveraging a self-
service online customer portal. With each opportunity for choice and feedback, customers
feel heard and valued as not only a customer but as an individual too.
As we look forward to 2022 and beyond, we hope customer service leaders and teams
continue to lean into their roles and impact on the end-to-end customer experience. As
proactive players in customer experience, customer service professionals are uniquely
positioned to share and leverage their heightened understanding of the customer to both
provide better service and empower colleagues across front-oce teams. At HubSpot, we
believe we are moving from an “or” world to an “and” world. With easy to use tools, service
teams deliver eciency and empathy with each customer interaction. With connected
channels, customers experience exibility and authenticity regardless of where they go for
support. Customer service teams will continue to be leaders exemplifying the importance of
taking care of one another – be it prospects, customers, or colleagues – which is a future we
can all get behind.
