Nice work: You led the charge in getting your organization to harness the power of big data and analytics for insight into customer behavior. But even if you’re aware of your customers' issues, is your organization working in a way that best leverages this data to improve customer experience? 

How to get customer service right

As customers, we’ve all asked a business a question, reported a bug, requested support, provided feedback, and then… silence. Delayed (or nonexistent) follow-up is not only poor customer service, it’s often reason enough for customers to take their business elsewhere.

For your business to rapidly respond to customer concerns and feedback you need to constantly update the products you use to deliver on the tall order of reliable customer service. To do this, it’s critical to adopt a DevOps approach as a part of your customer service strategy.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a software development approach in which development and operations work as one over the course of the entire product lifecycle—from design to development to production support. DevOps supports rapid product delivery by promoting close collaboration between customers, product managers, and developers. 

DevOps blurs the traditional boundaries between development and operations teams to instead focus on the constant interaction between them. A critical component of this is customer feedback. By constantly collecting data on how customers use the product, the development and operations teams can quickly implement insights and roll out new features in a fraction of the time it would take using a traditional waterfall method of development where progress flows in one direction.

How the DevOps approach can improve customer service

Embracing a DevOps approach can vastly improve your customer service in multiple ways:

• Rapid response to customer complaints, questions, or feedback: Today’s customers expect a fast (if not instant) response and resolution to their questions and issues. If they find your business lacking in that area, they’ll happily jump ship to your competitor while leaving negative reviews about your product all over the Internet. By adopting a DevOps approach, your company can fix errors and deploy updates after they are discovered.
  
  
• Increased product development and release speed: A streamlined DevOps approach allows for the development of new or improved products that are informed by customer feedback in a fraction of the time compared to a traditional approach. Thanks to DevOps, the time needed to produce a cutting-edge product has been reduced from months and years to weeks or even days.  
  
  
• Cost efficiencies: Since it requires less time, a DevOps approach helps better manage the overall cost of product creation. This allows you to meet budgetary demands while being able to price products more competitively in the marketplace. 
  

By using a systematic DevOps approach, you can promote close coordination between your development, operations, and customer service teams for faster development, quicker updates, and low costs. Add it all up and you can see both improved customer service and a stronger bottom line. 

To learn more about how to enhance the customer experience, listen to our on-demand webinar Transforming the Digital Customer Experience.

Danny Johnson, a 20+ year veteran in the technology industry, is a seasoned executive possessing experience in software development, engineering, sales, consulting, product development, and marketing. Danny has started and launched innovative products and solutions within multi-billion dollar markets and is currently the head of product marketing for Verizon where he shares responsibility for the profitable growth of Verizon’s Strategic Network Portfolio.