Service Leaders Top 3 Priorities for 2020

Discover what’s top of mind for service & support leaders

Service leaders strive for a low-effort, high-quality customer experience in 2020

According to Gartner’s 2020 agenda poll, 26% of leading service executives feel the investment in digital channels and infrastructure is their top priority for 2020, followed by customer rep training and development, and improving data, VoC & customer service metrics. Benchmarking against peers’ priorities can help service leaders shape their own strategies for 2020.

Service leaders top priorities for 2020: 1. Digital channels and infrastructure, 2. Customer service representatives, 3. Data, VoC and customer service metrics.
Customer service and support leaders face increased pressure from leadership on the role of the service function in improving operational excellence and growing the business. Given this environment, it’s unsurprising that customer service and support leaders’ top 2020 priorities are rooted in customer experience (CX), service reps and data.

Lauren Villeneuve

Senior Principal, Advisory, Gartner

Insights you can use

Are you looking for what service leaders are planning to focus in 2020? Gartner surveyed over 470 service executives worldwide on their top business priorities. The results provide a comprehensive snapshot of which customer service areas service & support leaders should ace to deliver a low-effort and high-quality customer experience.

Priority 1: Service leaders feel the most urgency around digital initiatives

Customer service leaders feel distinct pressure to meet customers’ expectations for digital service channels and keep pace with competitors’ service offerings. As a result, service leaders spend a disproportionate amount of time adding or integrating channels. However, our research finds that this creates a costlier, more complex network of channels to manage without improving the customer experience and insufficient reduction in live volume. Download this free guide to better position your service and support strategy for success.

Bar graph displaying a breakdown of customer resolution journeys and journey costs.
When service leaders prioritize both cusomers' and reps' experience equally, reps become 19% more productive and customer satisfaction increases by 11%.

Priority 2: Change customer behavior calls for more efficient customer service representatives

When service leaders prioritize both customers’ and reps’ experience equally, reps turn out to be 19% more productive and customer satisfaction increases by 11%. Customers try to resolve more issues themselves with self-service options and turn to customer service reps only for complex questions. This calls for service leaders to invest more time in the training and development of reps to boost their productivity.

When service leaders prioritize both cusomers' and reps' experience equally, reps become 19% more productive and customer satisfaction increases by 11%.

Priority 3: Derive actionable insights from customer data to provide an exceptional user experience

Service leaders struggle to capture, share and generate value from VoC data. As a first step to improving, service leaders should evaluate their VoC process maturity. Watch Gartner experts Lauren Villeneuve and Sarah Dibble share their insights on why organizations need to place more emphasis on customer engagement tools to drive customer loyalty.

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Gartner topic experts

The Gartner customer service and support research team includes experts worldwide.

Deborah Alvord
Sr Director Analyst

Jason Barberio
Sr Principal, Advisory

Amie Binning
Principal, Advisory

Kim Dans
Sr Director Analyst

Mark R. Dauigoy
Sr Director, Advisory

Philip Jenkins
Sr Director Analyst

Matthew P. Kiel
VP, Team Manager

Brian Manusama
Sr Director, Analyst

Devin F. Poole
Sr Director, Advisory

John Quaglietta
Sr Director Analyst

Andrew Schumacher
Sr Principal, Advisory

Peter Slease
VP, Team Manager

Allegra Ubbes
Sr Specialist, Advisory

Lauren Villeneuve
Sr Principal, Advisory

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Our research helps service and support leaders optimize service structure and skills with the latest trends, opportunities and best-practice solutions that are shaping customer service functions across regions and industries