Trust can make or break your brand.
Customer support is evolving. No longer is it sufficient to have a top-tier product or service – trust is now central to a business’s success. According to Forbes, 70% of people say trust is more important now than ever, and a further 53% consider trust to be the second most important factor in a purchase after price.
Sometimes, however, to earn trust, you have to take the decision out of your hands. Smart contracts are a new innovation of the Web3 paradigm. Built using the blockchain, they execute an agreement once the predetermined conditions are met. No intermediaries. No time loss. Just a guaranteed result.
Discover how smart contracts are changing customer success (CS) operations and why they’re the next step in decentralized support.
Smart Contracts: Beyond the Basics
Let’s recap the basics:
Smart contracts are a program stored on a blockchain. Upon agreement by two or more parties, the contract becomes active. A network of computers then monitors when the predetermined conditions have been met and verified, enacting the agreed action.
This could be releasing funds, issuing a ticket, or sending a notification. There’s no hard and fast rule about what smart contracts can be used for – they’re as flexible as needs be.
Because the contract is stored on the blockchain, a complete transaction record is kept. No one can change this, and only the relevant parties can see the result.
The two key benefits are verifiability and security. You never have to rely on the other party to hold up their end of the deal. It’s a level of blockchain-optimized support you don’t find in other consumer agreements and contracts.
Impacts on CS Operations
Customer success (CS) operations were the antidote to customer churn in the SaaS (software-as-a-service) industry. Because customers could swap and change platforms, companies took a proactive approach to keep customers on board – ensuring they were getting the most from the platform.
With customer expectations higher than ever, smart contracts present a new form of decentralized support. Providing 100% trust and real-time resolutions using the blockchain, smart contracts empower CS teams to embrace a new trust-based strategy.
By automating key aspects of the customer journey, like subscription renewals or feature unlocks, based on predetermined conditions, smart contracts minimize customer hassle.
Furthermore, this blockchain-optimized support is completely transparent. Customers can see that commitments are not just a marketing ploy but are coded into immutable contracts. It’s an ironclad guarantee on service levels, refunds, and feature rollouts that solidifies customer trust and reduces the risk of churn.
Use Cases Tailored for Web3 CS
In Web 3.0, or the decentralized internet, CS operations integrate smart contracts in compelling applications – most notably in on-chain dispute resolutions and decentralized Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
On-chain dispute resolutions eliminate lengthy, manual arbitration processes. Service quality, uptime, or billing disputes can be programmatically resolved. Simply predefine the conditions and resolution for potential disputes into the smart contract, and the process runs transparently and instantaneously. Not only does this save time, but it also ensures outcomes aren’t subject to human bias.
Decentralized SLAs, on the other hand, take the concept of service commitments to the next level. In a Web3 ecosystem, SLAs are coded right into the smart contract. No matter whether the SLA concerns response times, system availability, or data privacy, automatic triggers within the smart contract bind the parties to the agreed criteria. It’s not a promise; it’s a guarantee. Penalties for breaches or non-compliance can be automatically enforced, and everyone has a record of what transpired.
Customers commonly complain about businesses backtracking on their obligations or grow frustrated with labyrinthine, Kafkaesque customer service systems. Decentralized support removes this source of friction and holds companies to their agreements.
Overcoming the Web3-Specific Challenges
Web3 technologies, although game-changing, come with a new set of challenges – primarily scalability, gas fees, and interoperability with existing systems.
Scalability and high gas fees create a high bar for fully adopting Web3-based CS solutions. Layer 2 solutions and alternative consensus mechanisms could help mitigate these issues, allowing the system to scale and improving cost efficiency for businesses and consumers.
Interoperability, meanwhile, poses a significant challenge to businesses reliant on legacy systems. To bridge this gap, middleware solutions can act like connective tissue between certain applications, data, and users. In the CS context, they can communicate between traditional databases and blockchain-optimized smart contracts. That way, businesses have some time to integrate smart contracts into their existing CS operations without overhauling their entire system architecture.
Ahead of the Curve
As if this wasn’t enough – artificial intelligence (AI) could be poised to automate the creation and optimization of smart contracts based on real-time customer behavior and feedback. This new fusion of smart contracts with novel technologies could also allow AIs to detect the conditions to trigger smart contracts, creating an even greater level of trust and responsiveness.
Also on the horizon are collaborations and integrations between blockchain platforms and CS solutions providers. Companies like Salesforce and Zendesk could integrate blockchain-based smart contracts into their platforms to secure and solidify customer trust. Indeed, just as the SaaS industry took a leading role in customer success, we can expect it to lead on blockchain-optimized support, too.
Closing Thoughts
The coming together of CS operations and smart contracts is not just a trend – it’s inevitable for forward-thinking businesses.
As consumers push for more transparent, efficient, and customer-centric solutions, smart contracts offer a robust framework to meet these needs. Decentralized support is sure to become a mainstay of the new Web3 paradigm and ensure commitments aren’t just made but programmatically guaranteed.
Savvy customers are likely to look for blockchain-optimized support, and as knowledge about the technology grows, it’ll become the hallmark of a customer-centric company.
Don’t wait for the market to demand change – stay ahead of the curve and integrate smart contracts into your CS operations.
Written by Irene Patrikios Clark,
Web3 Customer Success Specialist.
Sources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/service/smart-contracts-customer-service
https://www.trakti.com/increase-customer-success-via-smart-contract/
https://www.ibm.com/topics/smart-contracts