Apple Joins Companies' Quest to Make Customer Service More Than a Complaint Line
August 06 2020 - 1:49PM
Dow Jones News
By Ann-Marie Alcántara
Apple Inc. is moving deeper into customer service for
businesses.
Its Apple Business Chat, which became widely available last
month after a period in beta testing, 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 apps.
Apple Business Chat is part of a growing effort to help
businesses not just reduce the friction in customer service but use
it to improve their relationships with customers, collect feedback
and even make new sales.
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, according to
Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University's Stern
School of Business.
"The opportunities that businesses have for in-person customer
relationship-building are going to be vastly diminished over the
next couple of years," Prof. Sundararajan said.
Improving technology will eventually make digital messaging
channels such as Apple Business Chat or Facebook Inc.'s Messenger
more important to customer service than phone calls, Prof.
Sundararajan added.
The costs of customer service can add up. Companies with an
average revenue of $3 billion can expect to have an estimated $75
million budget for customer service and support, said Brad Fager,
director of customer service and support at Gartner Inc., a
research firm.
Major players that provide customer service and support-related
technologies include Zendesk Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and HubSpot
Inc.
Apple announced its entry into the field in 2017 at the
Worldwide Developers Conference, the company's annual developer
event.
"Please keep in mind that your customers today understand the
call button," an Apple presenter told developers at the time. "They
know the type of support that they will receive from you when they
use the telephone. Now, when they see your new message button, they
should know that they'll receive the equivalent or better support
with Business Chat."
Apple does not charge businesses to use Apple Business Chat. It
aims to benefit from the way the tool encourages people and
businesses to use Apple programs like Maps and Apple Pay.
Technology companies' drive to create ecosystems that consumers
never have to leave is one of the strategies now under scrutiny
from regulators and politicians, including at a congressional
hearing into their business practices last week. Testifying
remotely alongside the leaders of Facebook, Amazon.com Inc. and
Google, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the company treats
every app developer the same and that its App Store had created
opportunities for others. "If Apple is a gatekeeper, what we have
done is open the gate wider," Mr. Cook said.
Longer conversations
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, said Colin
Crowley, vice president of customer experience at Freshly.
The company averages six to seven messages per conversation on
Apple Business Chat, compared with roughly four messages in
standard text interactions with customers.
People are open to longer conversations on Apple Business Chat
because they don't have to respond right away, the way they do in
an online chat or live phone call, Mr. Crowley said. From Freshly's
perspective, service agents can also handle more consumers at
once.
"Because you have that built-in efficiency, I would say having
longer conversations isn't necessarily a bad thing in the messaging
channel," Mr. Crowley said.
Wedding gown retailer David's Bridal Inc. uses Apple Business
Chat and a custom-built geo-routing capability from LivePerson
Inc., a messaging software company, to connect customers to an
employee who works at the store closest to them. It also lets the
store employee know who the customers are when they come in and
what they are looking for.
Linking the digital and bricks-and-mortar experience can lead to
a potential increase in brand loyalty, said Holly Carroll, vice
president for customer service and contact center operations at
David's Bridal.
The retailer is working to expand the tool's use by adding more
stores to the Chat Suggest tool, among other things.
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.
Write to Ann-Marie Alcántara at ann-marie.alcantara@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 06, 2020 13:34 ET (17:34 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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