Is Your Business Ready For The New Era Of CX?
Customer expectations have changed drastically over the past few years. To keep up, businesses must focus on these six improvements.
•••
This story focuses on how to solve the problems raised in an earlier blog,“Is Your Business Struggling Under The Weight of Legacy?”
By YOSSI ABRAHAM
Modern customers have more expectations than ever. The customer service bar rises a bit higher every day. Between our constantly connected technology and instant-gratification society, today’s customers have come to expect these three elements of great service:
- Speed —A fullthree-quartersof online customers expect help within five minutes
- Self-Service —88 percentof customers expect a self-service option to be available
- Mobility —65 percentof customers have a more favorable view of brands with a mobile-responsive customer service portal
Unfortunately for corporations, many don’t yet meet these new standards of fast, connected service. For businesses to catch up to customer expectations, they should focus on these six key areas of improvement.
“Today’s customers have come to focus on three main elements of great service: speed, self-service, and mobility.”
1) Cloud-Based, Open Platforms
One of the main challenges corporations face while modernizing in today’s tech sphere is a tangled mess of an IT ecosystem. Many businesses operate through layers of disparate systems, making innovation and improvements slow and tedious. For modern companies to have a chance at achieving the speed and flexibility customers demand, any new improvements must be cloud-based, open platforms, ready to connect to third-party applications and built to integrate with legacy systems. This open style of IT architecture will slowly but surely begin to untangle the web of solutions currently holding back many corporations.
2) The Pareto “80/20” Principle
The switch to fast, simple, and mobile customer service won’t come all at once, however. Business don’t have the time or capital to completely overhaul their IT ecosystems and customer service processes all at once. For corporations to be successful, they must apply the Pareto principle to their business plans. The principle states that around 80% of outcomes are sparked by a mere 20% of causes. For example, most calls to a contact center generally focus around the same two or three questions. The most successful companies in the digital revolution will be those that focus on their main business drivers instead of attempting grand forklift upgrades all at once.
3) Choosing The Right Automation
Automation technologies are at the heart of the digital revolution. Tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI) pose great possibilities for untangling IT and speeding up many business processes. This particular field is one where corporations must constantly remember the Pareto principle, however. With many different kinds of automation emerging, businesses must choose the technology that fits their needs best. Complex Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can make life immeasurably easier for consulting companies. The cost associated with acquiring, teaching, and maintaining the new technology can mean more direct, proven bots like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can prove much more useful for retail or utility companies looking to take tiresome, repetitive tasks off the plates of employees. Corporations must carefully analyze the spectrum between proven automation and comprehensive Artificial Intelligence solution.
4) The Self-Service Customer Journey
Today’s consumers value the ability to answer questions and solve problems on their own. Our always connected, instant gratification society empowers us to constantly look for the next answer and find the quickest solution. Business must beg to let customers solve as many issues as possible on their own.88 percentof customers today expect a self-service option to be available when they contact customer service. That number will only grow closer to 100% in the years ahead, and yet many corporations have no true self-service option implemented for some of their most common customer service queries.
5) Drive Visual Experiences
We are all visual creatures. Vision is one of the most important senses for many of us, and only more so in the younger generations. Millennials and Gen-Z have driven the explosion of Instagram, and an emphasis on images in the media we consume every day. The digital revolution will be about technology, but that technology will be delivering visual experiences to customers. The growth of visual media and our cultural addiction to screens means the most successful businesses in the future will communicate visually.
6) Compile Actionable Analytics
Over the last 2 years,90% of the world’s datawas created. This data boom can be extremely helpful for corporations trying to determine how to best apply their resources, but only if used correctly. Big data and analytics are only useful when presented in the right way to the right people. Individual customer experiences can be helpful for agents trying to understand common difficulties, but analysis of larger, general trends in customer data is more useful for contact center managers. The most valuable analytics for companies is what we call actionable analytics. These are active, live datasets that can alert executives to large changes in those trends managers see every day. When datasets see significant changes, it signals a critical time for businesses to take action. As our world becomes more digital and we all continue creating more data, corporations must keep refining and improving how they consume, condense, and summarize the data they have access to.
The digital revolution is here, if corporations focus on these six areas, they’ll fit right into the new normal.
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Is Your Business Ready For The New Era Of CX?
Customer expectations have changed drastically over the past few years. To keep up, businesses must focus on these six improvements.
•••
This story focuses on how to solve the problems raised in an earlier blog,“Is Your Business Struggling Under The Weight of Legacy?”
By YOSSI ABRAHAM
Modern customers have more expectations than ever. The customer service bar rises a bit higher every day. Between our constantly connected technology and instant-gratification society, today’s customers have come to expect these three elements of great service:
- Speed —A fullthree-quartersof online customers expect help within five minutes
- Self-Service —88 percentof customers expect a self-service option to be available
- Mobility —65 percentof customers have a more favorable view of brands with a mobile-responsive customer service portal
Unfortunately for corporations, many don’t yet meet these new standards of fast, connected service. For businesses to catch up to customer expectations, they should focus on these six key areas of improvement.
“Today’s customers have come to focus on three main elements of great service: speed, self-service, and mobility.”
1) Cloud-Based, Open Platforms
One of the main challenges corporations face while modernizing in today’s tech sphere is a tangled mess of an IT ecosystem. Many businesses operate through layers of disparate systems, making innovation and improvements slow and tedious. For modern companies to have a chance at achieving the speed and flexibility customers demand, any new improvements must be cloud-based, open platforms, ready to connect to third-party applications and built to integrate with legacy systems. This open style of IT architecture will slowly but surely begin to untangle the web of solutions currently holding back many corporations.
2) The Pareto “80/20” Principle
The switch to fast, simple, and mobile customer service won’t come all at once, however. Business don’t have the time or capital to completely overhaul their IT ecosystems and customer service processes all at once. For corporations to be successful, they must apply the Pareto principle to their business plans. The principle states that around 80% of outcomes are sparked by a mere 20% of causes. For example, most calls to a contact center generally focus around the same two or three questions. The most successful companies in the digital revolution will be those that focus on their main business drivers instead of attempting grand forklift upgrades all at once.
3) Choosing The Right Automation
Automation technologies are at the heart of the digital revolution. Tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI) pose great possibilities for untangling IT and speeding up many business processes. This particular field is one where corporations must constantly remember the Pareto principle, however. With many different kinds of automation emerging, businesses must choose the technology that fits their needs best. Complex Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can make life immeasurably easier for consulting companies. The cost associated with acquiring, teaching, and maintaining the new technology can mean more direct, proven bots like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can prove much more useful for retail or utility companies looking to take tiresome, repetitive tasks off the plates of employees. Corporations must carefully analyze the spectrum between proven automation and comprehensive Artificial Intelligence solution.
4) The Self-Service Customer Journey
Today’s consumers value the ability to answer questions and solve problems on their own. Our always connected, instant gratification society empowers us to constantly look for the next answer and find the quickest solution. Business must beg to let customers solve as many issues as possible on their own.88 percentof customers today expect a self-service option to be available when they contact customer service. That number will only grow closer to 100% in the years ahead, and yet many corporations have no true self-service option implemented for some of their most common customer service queries.
5) Drive Visual Experiences
We are all visual creatures. Vision is one of the most important senses for many of us, and only more so in the younger generations. Millennials and Gen-Z have driven the explosion of Instagram, and an emphasis on images in the media we consume every day. The digital revolution will be about technology, but that technology will be delivering visual experiences to customers. The growth of visual media and our cultural addiction to screens means the most successful businesses in the future will communicate visually.
6) Compile Actionable Analytics
Over the last 2 years,90% of the world’s datawas created. This data boom can be extremely helpful for corporations trying to determine how to best apply their resources, but only if used correctly. Big data and analytics are only useful when presented in the right way to the right people. Individual customer experiences can be helpful for agents trying to understand common difficulties, but analysis of larger, general trends in customer data is more useful for contact center managers. The most valuable analytics for companies is what we call actionable analytics. These are active, live datasets that can alert executives to large changes in those trends managers see every day. When datasets see significant changes, it signals a critical time for businesses to take action. As our world becomes more digital and we all continue creating more data, corporations must keep refining and improving how they consume, condense, and summarize the data they have access to.
