WhatsApp voice notes: the Gen Z customer service channel of choice?
It’s (still) good to talk. As the always thought-provoking Adrian Swinscoe writes in Forbes this week, the voice channel is an enduring preference for customers seeking help. That’s because it remains the lowest-effort way to communicate complex requests, and ensure that request has been correctly understood. Even amongst Gen-Z consumers who wouldn’t ever dream of talking on the phone in any other context.
Actually, it’s not quite accurate to say that Gen-Z consumers don’t like talking on the phone in any other context. The one area where Gen-Z beats any other age group is in the use of WhatsApp voice notes. According to a 2022 YouGov survey, 60% of UK residents aged 18-24 send voice notes, with 32% sending them more than once a week. By comparison, only 20% of 25-34 year-olds send voicenotes more than once a week, and the numbers drop off steeply beyond that age. This survey is three years old, so we can safely assume that usage numbers amongst all age groups.
Could, then, voice notes become a useful customer service channel, especially when targeted at Gen-Z consumers?
One way to think about voice notes is that they are asynchronous voice interactions. So, in the same way that asynchronous chat channels have some advantages over live webchat, we might be able to apply the same analogy to voice. There are some big benefits of asynchronicity - or in plane language, sending and receiving messages at different times:
To the customer: it can be lower effort, as they don’t need to actively wait for the answer and can get on with something more useful to them
To the company: it is easier to staff a contact centre if you don’t have to respond to requests instantly. You can ride out the peaks and troughs in customer demand with a steady headcount throughout the day
In addition, voice has one great advantage over chat: it is lower effort for a customer to explain complex or ambiguous requests by talking than by writing.
Putting all that together, an asynchronous voice channel could be useful for customer requests that are complex but not too urgent, and where the customer can provide all of the required information in a single block of speech. Relevant situations could include:
Situations where a Customer Service Representative (CSR) might need to gather a lot of information before providing an answer to the customer. One telecoms company asks customers who were reporting a connectivity issue to leave a voicemail, describing the issue in as much detail as possible. A CSR listens to the voicemail then investigates the issue, conducting a series of line tests. Once these are complete, they call the customer back with a proposed resolution. This saves the customer waiting on hold whilst the problem is being resolved.
Requests to change future bookings or orders with long lead times. For example, “I am booked to fly out on the 27th but I now prefer to leave on the 28th, but only if you have a flight which has space in premium economy and will land before 3pm.”
Reporting non-urgent maintenance issues. For example, “A light needs changing in the fifth floor corridor.”
Providing feedback where no specific action is required. For example, “I tried to pay online through PayPal but it kept timing out. I paid with a credit card instead, but I wanted to let you know.”
All of these requests could be triaged and potentially fully handled by a bot, and because the response does not need to be in real time, lower cost AI models can be used to generate an answer. It’s an example of how AI can help to increase how often customers engage with companies, without creating onerous additional effort for either party.
Of course, adding an extra customer service channel requires careful consideration of how customer should, and might, use it, with clear guidance. It will be interesting to see what innovative ideas companies have with voice notes in the future.
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