Why kindness still matters in customer service. I have spent almost four decades serving customers and more than twenty-five years leading customer service teams and during that time, I have seen technology transform how customers contact organisations. Yet, despite all of that change, one thing remains remarkably consistent; when something goes wrong, people still want to talk to another human being.

Over the years, I have noticed a strange moment that happens in customer service and business performance, where nothing looks dramatically wrong to the teams reading their KPI reports.

I have worked in the contact centre industry for over 30years and serving customers has always been front and centre of my work, so I always have one ear listening out for what’s needed to keep our customers happy. Something I have noticed more and more is customer dis-satisfaction with service design.

In most contact centres, success looks impressive on paper. We love to see our dashboards full of ‘green’ metrics with a long list of KPIs being monitored, whilst simultaneously, reports are circulated and targets are being hit.

If you’re leading a contact centre or customer service operation right now, chances are your days don’t look how you expected them to.

AI is everywhere right now, in every boardroom conversation, in every transformation plan and likely in every strategy deck.