The most wonderful time of the year will look a bit different in 2020. The holidays are usually a time for parties with family and friends, wearing ugly sweaters, going to see The Nutcracker or taking beach vacations over the winter break. But with the pandemic still gripping the world, even Santa may have to practice social distancing. Traffic in brick-and-mortar stores is sure to be down, and economic uncertainty may mean reduced consumer spending.

The customer has changed and so have their expectations on what customer experience means to them. As these expectations change, so must the company and their approach to customer experience. There was a time when hyper-personalization and chatbots were the leading methods to engage with customers. Today, customers are looking for a very different approach that addresses two key attributes: Access to information and speed to resolution.

The new rules for customer service outsourcing in a changing world Customer service teams have seen an unprecedented level of disruption this year. Some have had surges in ticket volume, while others have seen business plummet. Agents have to do more with less, all while they’re adjusting to working from home. Regardless of your specific situation, you may be considering customer service outsourcing as a potential solution.

Stories of great customer experiences often go viral because they’re exceptional outliers. An airline saves the day by flying out a bridesmaid dress, or a support rep saves a life by realizing the caller was having a stroke. “We tend to think of customer experience as these big old moonshots, and going above and beyond, and just knocking socks off,” says Samantha Chandler, one of Zendesk’s customer success team managers.

Don’t bother choosing between speed and quality when it comes to customer experience, because businesses need both to be among the best. Speed plus effectiveness is the formula for CX success, according to findings by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Research. Leading CX orgs are customer-centric to the hilt; they resolve customer issues more quickly, all while handling more customer requests overall and engaging with those customers on more channels.

A good customer service interaction can lift your entire day. It’s no surprise that an excellent front-line team has the power to elevate your entire customer experience operation—especially when that operation is on the small side.

A company’s customer experience (CX) operation can mature just like people, careers, and bottles of wine, but only if it gets the high level of investment and prioritization necessary to reach that goal. The road to CX maturity means taking a few wrong turns, acknowledging mistakes, and putting lessons into practice until they become process. Leaders might have rough ideas about where they stand on this front, and many might say they know with certainty.

For IT leaders, customer experience was already a hot topic, but the pandemic has amplified the importance of delivering a thoughtful and modern customer experience. Today's challenges bring into focus those attributes and hurdles that most directly tie to customer experience. In a nutshell, positive customer experience ties directly to revenue.

A lot of companies react to growth pressures by trimming their customer support budget. That may provide some quick breathing room, but it’s not a prudent long-term solution. After all, it’s cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. And when we polled consumers on what factors inspire the most brand loyalty, 57% cited good customer service, making it second only to price. Luckily, there are ways to invest in better customer service without ballooning the budget.

At Zendesk, my team and I are going beyond adjusting for the new normal. We are taking this difficult time as an opportunity to completely reimagine how we work. Covid-19 forced us on a journey to reenvision and realign our practices, tools, and services.