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Digital Customer Service is the new standard for creating a 5-star customer experience As much as technology has improved our lives, for many people customer service experiences remain unnecessarily frustrating. But the advent of Digital Customer Service (DCS) promises to make these interactions seamless and effortless by creating experiences that occur entirely on a customer's own screen, even in situations where it is preferable to speak to an agent. Digital Customer Service: Transforming Customer Experience for an On-Screen World traces the evolution of customer service--as well as the evolution of customer expectations and the underlying psychology that drives customer behavior - from the days of the first call centers in the 1980s all the way to today's digital world. Written for Customer Service and Customer Experience leaders as well as C-suite executives (CEOs, CFOs, CIOs), Digital Customer Service helps business leaders balance three critical priorities: * Creating an excellent experience for customers that increases customer loyalty and profitability * Driving down the cost of Customer Service/Support interactions, while increasing revenue through Sales interactions * Moving quickly toward the goal of "digital transformation" We have discovered--in our research and our first-hand experience--that when companies commit to achieving true Digital Customer Service, they can make significant progress toward all three of these goals at once. Digital Customer Service provides the roadmap for how your company can get there. And when you do, who wins? EVERYONE.
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Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Authors
Foreword
Preface: Now It's Our Turn
WHAT'S HOLDING US BACK: THREE MYTHS
WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK
NOTE
SECTION One: The Problem with Customer Service and the Digital Opportunity
CHAPTER 1: The Win-Win-Win-Win
CUSTOMER SERVICE AT AN INFLECTION POINT
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “DIGITAL CUSTOMER SERVICE” AND DCS
TWO VERY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES
WIN #1: THE BENEFITS OF DCS FOR COMPANIES
WIN #2: THE BENEFITS OF DCS FOR CUSTOMERS
WIN #3: THE BENEFITS OF DCS FOR AGENTS
WIN #4: THE BENEFITS OF DCS FOR SERVICE EXECUTIVES AND LEADERS
CUSTOMERS HAVE TRANSFORMED; SO SHOULD YOUR COMPANY
KEY TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2: The Peaks and Valleys of Customer Service
IT WASN'T ALWAYS THIS WAY
HOW DID CUSTOMER SERVICE BECOME SUCH AN EASY “PUNCHING BAG?”
CUSTOMERS ARE WIRED FOR NEGATIVE REACTIONS
COMPANIES ARE WIRED FOR EFFICIENCY
COST EATS QUALITY FOR LUNCH
EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE: THE “QUALITY VALLEY”
KEY TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 2
NOTES
CHAPTER 3: Digital Self-Service Changed Things Forever
THE CITI NEVER SLEEPS
FROM MIGRATION TO EXPECTATION TO DEMAND
NEVER GOING BACK AGAIN
EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE: THE DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE EXPLOSION
WHY THE “BOLT-ON” APPROACH DOESN'T CUT IT ANYMORE
SOCIAL MEDIA: SALT IN THE WOUND
EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE: THE “EXPECTATION VALLEY”
KEY TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 3
NOTES
SECTION Two: DCS Terminology Overview
CHAPTER 4: The Three OnScreen Pillars of DCS
CLIMBING OUT OF THE VALLEY OF EXPECTATIONS
EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE: THE INFLECTION POINT
DCS DEFINED
ONSCREEN COLLABORATION: GETTING ON THE SAME PAGE
DIGITAL-ALSO VS. DIGITAL-ONLY VS. DIGITAL-FIRST
HOW TO BUILD A BUSINESS CASE FOR DCS
KEY TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 4
SECTION Three: DCS Transformation Overview
CHAPTER 5: The Process – A Step-by-Step Guide
PUT IT ON THE SCREEN
“COOKING UP” THE IDEAL DIGITAL SERVICE STRATEGY
STEP 1: GET THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS
STEP 2: LEARN WHICH DISHES PEOPLE LIKE BEST
STEP 3: SERVE YOUR BEST DISHES CONSISTENTLY
EARNING YOUR MICHELIN STARS
KEY TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 5
NOTE
CHAPTER 6: The People – Empowering Agents, Leaders, and (Even) Bots
FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER TO “COLLABORATION” CENTER
THE AGENTS: RISE OF THE SUPERAGENT
THE LEADERS: RETAINING AND ATTRACTING THE BEST PEOPLE
THE BOTS: HUMANS AND MACHINES WORKING AS A TEAM
“CONFIDENCE EQUITY” WORKS BOTH WAYS – FOR CUSTOMERS AND AGENTS
KEY TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7: The Positioning – How DCS Future-Proofs Your Company
TIME TO MOVE TO THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE
INTERNALLY: IT'S A 6 × 3 AND A-TO-Z WORLD
EXTERNALLY: CX IS THE LAST FRONTIER FOR DIFFERENTIATION
KEY TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 7
NOTES
Epilogue: To Infinity and Beyond
WHY DID YOU GET INTO THIS BUSINESS?
Digital Customer Service FAQs
CAN A BUSINESS WITH LIMITED DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE TRANSFORM TO DCS?
HOW WILL DCS OPERATE IF OUR COMPANY HAS AN EXISTING CRM PLATFORM?
HOW DO CHATBOTS FIT IN WITH DCS?
HOW DOES AN EXISTING KNOWLEDGE BASE FIT IN WITH DCS?
HOW DOES AN SMS/MESSAGING FOCUSED STRATEGY FIT IN WITH DCS?
HOW IS DCS DIFFERENT FOR SPECIFIC INDUSTRIES?
HOW DOES DCS WORK IN A “MOBILE” ENVIRONMENT?
HOW DOES DCS COMPARE TO CCaaS?
HOW DOES DCS COMPARE TO AN “OMNI-CHANNEL” CONTACT CENTER?
HOW DOES WFM / WFO (WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT / OPTIMIZATION) FIT IN A DCS WORLD?
HOW WILL IVR TECHNOLOGY CHANGE WITH DCS?
HOW DOES DCS FIT IN WITH AN ON-PREMISES CALL CENTER?
WHAT ARE SECURITY, PRIVACY, AND COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS FOR DCS?
HOW WILL AR/VR OR FUTURE TECHNOLOGY CHANGE DCS?
Index
End User License Agreement
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyrigt
Dedication
About the Authors
Foreword
Preface: Now It's Our Turn
Begin Reading
Epilogue: To Infinity and Beyond
Digital Customer Service FAQs
Index
End User License Agreement
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RICK DELISI
DAN MICHAELI
Copyright © 2021 by Glia Technologies Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: DeLisi, Rick, author. | Michaeli, Dan, author.
Title: Digital customer service : transforming customer experience for an on-screen world / Rick DeLisi, Dan Michaeli.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2021] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021024441 (print) | LCCN 2021024442 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119841906 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119842071 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119842064 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Customer services.
Classification: LCC HF5415.5 .D445 2021 (print) | LCC HF5415.5 (ebook) | DDC 658.8/12—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024441
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024442
Cover Design and Image: © Glia Technologies Inc.
To “The Customer”:As you have transformed to a digital-first lifestyle, may all your Service experiences be transformed as well.
RICK DELISI has been researching customer service and customer experience for the past two decades. He is the co-author of the best-selling book The Effortless Experience, and has written several pieces that have been published in the Harvard Business Review. Prior to working in customer service research, he was a journalist, winning four Associated Press awards for outstanding feature reporting.
DAN MICHAELI is CEO and co-founder of Glia, the New York–based technology company that has become an industry leader in Digital Customer Service. The Glia platform helps businesses reinvent how they support customers in a digital world. He is an award-winning speaker who has been a contributor to numerous publications, including Forbes.
You could say that customer service runs in my blood. My mother started her career working in the American Airlines reservation center, moving her way up through the organization before continuing on to lead customer service operations and consulting teams at companies like EDS and AT Kearney.
My first job in high school was as a telemarketer, calling people just as they sat down for dinner to ask if they wanted to subscribe to HBO (they loved me). My first job out of college was with a major US contact center outsourcer, and I've been in customer experience and contact center consulting for the last 20+ years.
Over this time, I've watched as contact center technology and operations evolved slowly and iteratively, focusing on incremental changes to minimize handle time and reduce the cost per minute of live interactions. But the rate of change has accelerated dramatically in the last six to seven years, and companies have struggled to keep up as:
New interaction channels were added, requiring new investments and increasing the complexity, cost, and fragmentation of customer service operations
New vendors entered the space, challenging legacy providers to “up their game” by investing in new features and functionalities to stay competitive
Customers increasingly compared their experiences across companies – including new digital disruptors like Amazon and Zappos – raising the collective bar for all companies and industries
Enter Digital Customer Service (DCS). But what does that mean, exactly? If you asked five customer experience leaders what DCS is, you'd get five different answers and five very different approaches to how they are achieving this (or hoping to achieve this) within their companies.
DCS isn't about channel proliferation and ensuring your company can interact with customers in any digital channel of their choice. It isn't about enabling customers to do everything via online or mobile self-service. And it isn't about using bots to automate every customer interaction under the sun.
While more and more customer issues are handled (or could be handled) using self-service or some form of automation, there will always be a need for customers to be able to interact with a human to get the more complex and more emotive issues resolved. We call these moments of truth – they are the customer episodes/journeys/intents (pick your term) that have the potential to create a promoter or a detractor based on how they are handled. These are the interactions that present a rare opportunity to deepen and expand the relationship with the customer.
DCS is about how to transform these “moments of truth” from our phone-first, analog past into a future where we leverage the digital devices that have become the omnipresent centerpiece of all of our lives, bringing a new layer of richness and depth to customer interactions.
DCS is about truly “meeting customers where they are” by leveraging the digital entry points that customers tend to use and enhancing the interaction from there in a way that feels seamless, easy, and even delightful to customers.
Companies have been talking about seamless omnichannel experiences for years, yet few have actually achieved this aspiration, even for one-off episodes. Why is that? At the core, it's tied to the operating model of the company – namely that the digital and contact center functions tend to report up through different parts of the organization and often have competing (and sometimes even conflicting) priorities.
Until companies view their own internal processes through the lens of the way customers live their lives today, this will continue to be a challenge and a barrier to providing a truly effortless and seamless customer experience.
Digital Customer Service is for any leader who aspires to integrate digital and contact center strategies in order to take customer experience to the next level.
This book is a helpful tool for:
Establishing a clear and common language for what Digital Customer Service is and its associated component parts
Sizing the benefits of DCS for the company, the customer, and the frontline employee
Developing a plan to make DCS a reality based on the pillars of an effective DCS transformation
I am personally very excited about the next phase in the evolution of customer service and how companies can transform their existing digital and customer service operations to make things better for everyone involved. This book is a meaningful step in that direction and will set the foundation for what great Digital Customer Service can and should look like.
Corrie Carrigan,Contact Center Practice Leader at Bain & Company
Digital transformation is the ongoing integration of digital technology into all areas of the business and culture of a company.
This is the #1 priority for many CEOs and CIOs today. Almost all organizations recognize the need to fundamentally change how they operate and deliver value to customers. You can see examples of digital transformation reaching near full maturity in almost every area of a business:
Just about all forms of
marketing
are now
digital marketing
. Even offline tactics like print ads, billboards and direct mail primarily drive customers to digital properties.
In retail, there's almost no such thing as “a commercial enterprise” that doesn't include some element of
e-commerce
as well.
Most
back-office
functionality and analytics have now transformed to become entirely digital.
But one thing we've been seeing in our research – as a collective function, customer service has lagged behind many others on the priority list for digital transformation.
Sure, there have been across-the-board investments in self-service functionality for company websites and mobile apps. And yes, what's been happening across the industry – adding chat, video chat, email, text/SMS communication, social media interactions – has made service somewhat more “digital.”
But the differences still feel more iterative than transformative.
Here's the problem when it comes to service interactions: Not all problems can be solved entirely online, so it's impossible to imagine a world in which every issue and inquiry can be automated. But when customers get stuck in the middle of a digital journey, what do they do? They dial a phone number and are forced to start all over again from the beginning.
What just happened there? The customer was already authenticated in the website or app, and now they have to go through the process again. They've already indicated what their issue is while they were online, but that's all now been vaporized. They have to stop what they were already doing, find, then dial a number, push 1 for department, state their name and account number, push 3 for the category that addresses their problem – and only then do they finally reach a company rep, who asks them to start again at square one.
Live and digital service experiences are completely disconnected.
The fundamental issue here? We now live in an on-screen world. Current estimates are that during our lifetime, each of us will have spent a composite 40+ years staring at some screen or other.1 It's so obvious when you look at how people live their lives today.
But as “digital” as we humans have become – as natural as it is now for us to be on the internet all day, every day – how is it possible that according to estimates, companies in the US alone are still receiving over 1 billion inbound customer service phone calls every year?
There is now a way to transform the customer experience for an on-screen world. DCS (Digital Customer Service) changes interactions that used to occur on the phone into experiences that take place entirely on the customer's own screen.
With true digital transformation, companies are able to start interactions using whatever communication mode the customer chooses, then seamlessly transition from one mode to another with no additional effort. But because live conversations occur on screen instead of through a separate phone call, the experience is completely different.
Live and digital service experiences can no longer be disconnected.
Transforming to a DCS strategy creates three powerful enhancements:
Rich automated experiences that anticipate a customer's needs
Rich communication options easily accessible to customers from within the self-service journey they've already started online
Rich collaboration tools that immediately contextualize a customer's issue, guide them through the process – and in many cases, teach them how to do it themselves next time
right on their own screen
Companies that are well along in this transformation are reporting that they are achieving three powerful outcomes:
Reduced cost to serve customers
A superior customer experience
Increased conversion rates
Digital Customer Service: Transforming Customer Experience for an On-Screen World is the roadmap for how you and your company can achieve these same goals – simultaneously.
In this book, we'll challenge three commonly held myths about the digital transformation of customer service. These are the three primary obstacles that stand in the way of many leaders who are trying to push their organizations to rethink the way they serve customers in a digital world.
Based on the experiences of those companies that are now in the midst of this transformation, it is clear that these barriers are not as daunting – or even as true – as we in customer service had once believed.
This means removing the “human touch” and getting out of the business of interacting and talking (verbally, using spoken words!) with customers.
In fact, quite the opposite is true. Digital transformation of Customer Service is about using automation to empower your people to create an even more effective “human touch.”
REALITY: Digital transformation is not the end of voice communications with customers. It's about using automation to employ bots to do what bots do best, so that people can do what people do best – be human.
This means that companies must excel in chat, video chat, social, text/SMS, email, self-service, third-party apps, etc., on top of being great at phone communication.
What we've been learning is that the transformation isn't about adding more
channels
, it's about curating
digital journeys
. In today's world, many of the more complex customer service journeys require a combination of virtual and human interactions in order to reach full resolution. In a fully transformed customer service operation, the options needed for each customer's specific journey are deployed automatically once that customer has begun an online session.
REALITY: Digital transformation enables companies to learn from a customer's “digital body language” exactly what kind of digital experience this customer needs at this moment. Then the DCS platform offers each person a curated journey that seamlessly transitions them from one mode to another. (This wasn't possible, until now.)
The companies that are going all-in on digital transformation are reporting it is easier and more efficient than they'd thought.
These companies are not giant brand names with giant budgets, nor are they digitally native organizations that built themselves with today's digital customers in mind. They are “traditional” companies that began their service operations decades ago using a primarily phone-based platform.
REALITY: Digital transformation is surprisingly not hard, and there's a rock-solid ROI business case to be made for why now is the time to take action.
When is it going to be our turn to transform? The answer is: Right now, if you choose.
We've been studying the science of customer service for the past two decades, and what we've been learning and observing is VERY exciting:
Rick DeLisi
has been researching the psychology of customer behavior and expectations in service for the past two decades, and is the co-author of the best-selling book
The Effortless Experience
.
Dan Michaeli
has devoted his career to developing solutions that create world-class digital customer experiences for “traditional” non-digital-native organizations. He is the CEO of New York–based
Glia
, a leader in helping companies reinvent how they serve their customers.
We collaborated together to explore how technology and psychology can work in concert to help companies achieve true digital transformation of their customer experience.
If any part of your job includes responsibility over the interactions customers are having with your company every day – whether you are a C-suite executive, a leader in customer service, customer experience, marketing, sales, or digital operations – this book will be immediately helpful. We will arm you with new strategic ideas as well as practical “things you can do” to increase your confidence that you can achieve this transformation and reap the rewards it will bring to your organization.
Our greatest hope is that the ideas we'll explore together in the pages to follow will benefit you in a personal way – both in your increasingly digital career and in your increasingly digital life. We're proud to show you what we've been learning, and are grateful you're here to share it with.
—RD and DM
All illustrations and diagrams are original works by the Glia Creative team.
1
. Craig Lee, “Screen Zombies: Average Person Will Spend 44 Hours Looking at Devices – and That's before Covid!”
Study Finds
(December 26, 2020),
https://www.studyfinds.org/screen-zombies-average-person-spends-44-years-looking-at-devices/#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%20%E2%80%94%20As%20millions%20of,some%20kind%20of%20digital%20screen
.
This book is divided into seven chapters that fit into three major sections.
In this first section, we will begin with a frank examination of why customer service as practiced at most companies isn't as successful as it ought to be (and why that isn't anyone's fault!), but more importantly, what you can do about it. These first three chapters are the leadoff leg of the book and have been designed to get things off to a fast start.
In Chapter 1, we will describe the “right now” opportunity for every company that is willing to rethink the way they serve their customers. The overall reputation of customer service is at an acute inflection point that will likely make or break the future success of many companies. But what we've discovered is a strategy – one that can be employed by any company – that appears to be creating an extraordinary confluence of positive results.
In Chapter 2, we will uncover how customer service as a collective discipline has gotten to where it is today, by tracing the evolution of our profession, starting from the days of the first call centers in the 1980s. If you've been around for a few decades, this chapter will take you back to some places you probably haven't thought about for a while. If you're a little newer to the field, it will feel like a trip to the customer service wing of the Smithsonian.
In Chapter 3, we will describe why digital self-service has become both the biggest opportunity and the biggest obstacle for the service profession. This is not a chapter about technology, but rather, about psychology. When you understand more about why customers behave the way they do when they're engaging in digital self-service (and how they feel about their interactions afterward), the necessity for digitally transforming service will become crystal clear.
What we'll share in this chapter:
Customer service is experiencing a unique moment of opportunity. While the partial “digitization” of customer service may have sufficed in the past, now is the optimal time to take the final steps toward true digital transformation.
Companies that are transforming customer service into an experience that takes place entirely on a customer's screen are reporting their service operations have become much more economically efficient, while they are
also
achieving greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Those executives and leaders who are spearheading this transformation at their companies are recognizing an array of benefits – including making
their
jobs easier and more rewarding.
Over the past few decades, the perception of customer service has experienced a repeating pattern of ups and downs. Throughout the next few chapters, we'll trace the evolution of the prevailing perception of the service industry (almost like looking in the mirror) as it has changed several times over the past few decades – starting from the days of the first-ever call centers in the 1980s, all the way to today's digital world.
In an industry that has experienced two major peaks and two corresponding valleys – each about a decade apart – you'll see evidence that the next few years will result in either an unprecedented upward spike or yet another downward plunge. We are at an acute inflection point.
The choices you and your organization make right now about the digital transformation of customer service will define your future success (or failure) in the years to come.
When call centers were first introduced in the 1980s, the idea of enabling customers to call companies directly on the phone was considered new and exciting. The experience was generally excellent. But over time, as companies put more pressure on Service to cut costs, the experience of phone service began to suffer, causing the first dip.
Then, once customers got used to self-service, the experience improved and the curve rose again. But over time, as customers began to expect everything to be digital – and effortless – what they realized is that too many service experiences were still disconnected from their digital experiences, forcing them to restart their journey on the phone. And the phone reps they were speaking to weren't connected in any way to the digital experience customers were having on their own screens.
This mismatch resulted in disjointed “seamful” experiences that caused the second major dip.
Therefore, we are at an inflection point right now. If customer service embraces a full and complete digital transformation it is well within our power to rise to new heights, well beyond what we have ever accomplished before. Or, if not, to plummet once again, as we have twice before. The choice is yours, and the time to decide is now.
Based on the experiences of those companies that are now going all in, the key beneficiaries are … everyone:
The
company,
by spending less, and getting greater returns
The
customers
who are experiencing the kind of low-effort digital service interactions that make them feel smarter about themselves
The
frontline teams
who interact with customers – as their jobs have become more engaging and personally fulfilling
The
executives and leaders
who manage customer-facing functions – as their jobs have become more visibly connected to the overall success of their companies
There are only a few win-win propositions in life, and fewer win-win-win-wins. But as you will see, transforming to a DCS-based service model appears to be one of them. There doesn't seem to be any trade-off, or economic sacrifice, or give-to-get required. The companies that are further along in this transformation are universally reporting that everyone is coming out ahead.
The problem with the term digital customer service is that it could mean a lot of different things:
Adding a chat function to a website
. That could be described as digital customer service.
Switching your telephony platform to VoIP
(voice-over internet protocol). That's digital.
Getting customers to adopt new web self-service features
. That's customer service, and it's digital.
Enabling more frontline customer service agents to work from home
. That's absolutely a form of digital customer service.
In fact, you could say that anything that uses the internet to enable any service functionality could broadly fall into the category of digital customer service. And any of these could be a smart goal unto itself. Necessary, but insufficient.
The opportunity to pursue this win-win-win-win starts with understanding the clear distinction between two things that appear – at first – to be almost exactly the same: “digital customer service” and “Digital Customer Service.”
The most obvious difference is: In the Digital Customer Service (DCS) model, every part of a service interaction happens on the customer's own screen. Both the “virtual” or automated elements, as well as the live “assisted” elements all take place right where they started – on a customer's desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device. If there's a need to verbally communicate with an agent, it becomes an entirely different customer experience when it occurs “right there on my screen” instead of during a totally separate phone call.
But the most important difference is: DCS enables companies to both “meet their customers where they are” and also to transition them between virtual assistance and live assistance in a way that is completely seamless because it doesn't require a separate phone call.
No additional steps are required, the customer doesn't have to do anything extra – it is a truly effortless experience.
Even as the psychology of customer behavior within digital self-service interactions continues to evolve, what is now an irreversible trend is that customers expect and demand service interactions to take place on their screen.
This is the essence of DCS. What was once a disconnected experience with various disjointed elements within the span of one “journey” can now become completely integrated, and presented on a customer's own device through a variety of OnScreen Enhancements:
OnScreen Communication.
Now that most of us are comfortable using chat, video chat, messaging, and social media platforms in our personal lives, customers increasingly expect to have these same options available with the companies they
