Organizations across industries have more access to data than they’ve ever had before, but they’re still evolving when it comes to transforming that data into actionable insights.
This transformation is especially crucial for customer experience (CX) strategies. Today’s consumers (and employees) expect more personalization and a more seamless experience when they have to interact with an organization’s contact center. A majority of consumers expect organizations to be knowledgeable about their personal information during a service interaction, according to 2022 Gartner research.
Customer service employees are also valuable end users looking for that coherent, connected journey so they can better assist the people who reach out for their help. An improved CX strategy can also mitigate burnout and find efficiencies so that employees don’t have to worry about repetitive tasks and can focus on high-level problem-solving.
As data analytics and artificial intelligence-powered solutions improve, organizations are better equipped to act on user feedback to provide a more personalized, smoother experience so that consumers and staff members have better CX interactions.
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Make the Customer Experience Personal
Previously, a personalized CX journey may look like receiving an email in your inbox with offers tailored to your interests. That may still be the case today, but it has also evolved to include more real-time data and analytics. Organizations are striving to connect consumers across platforms, whether their entry point is on social media or on your website.
Since CX can be tailored to specific consumers, a CX strategy should be tailored to an organization’s needs, depending on the industry and the different departments that need to be interlinked, such as marketing, finance and IT. An organization’s ability to leverage its data with analytics and AI can transform from just surviving to thriving.
“Even outside the contact center, AI tools can deliver insights that allow companies to provide personalized messaging and interactions that simply were not possible just a few years ago. Sophisticated AI tools trawl information gleaned from thousands of customer interactions — including browsing and purchase history, social media interactions, demographic trends, previous customer service interactions and customer survey data — to target customers with timely, hyper-personalized offers,” according to a recent CDW white paper.
Advancements in AI for the Contact Center
As AI continues to interest leaders in all industries, major vendors have been fine-tuning their solutions to better incorporate AI-powered features.
Cisco, for instance, has been testing its AI Assistant for Webex in hybrid work and CX. Customer feedback has found positive expectations for reducing agent response times and providing agents with more context to an interaction. Google Cloud is also using generative AI to help with live transcriptions and structured summaries in the contact center.
“A team that is fully engaged and really proud of what they do is likely to engage with customers at a very high level, and customers feel it,” Ron Thurston, co-founder of retail recruitment agency Ossy, said in a 2024 Microsoft blog post.
GO DEEPER: Why is customer service the focus of most digital transformation projects?
Qualtrics research found that 63% of consumers believe companies need to get better at listening to their feedback, and a majority of them would buy more if businesses treated them better: “In today’s business environment — where omnichannel interactions are the norm — that can only really be achieved by augmenting human customer service agents with AI.”
CX should not be thought of as a burdensome budget item but as a real, value-add business opportunity. When organizations can revitalize their CX strategy to the satisfaction of employees and consumers, they’ll find that they’re not only creating customer loyalty but also improving retention in a department that experiences high turnover.
Leaning toward CX platforms that are deploying AI in relevant ways to make the journey easier will only set organizations up for success. Structured summaries are one way to create a smoother CX journey so that live agents can properly assist consumers from a self-service option. Emerging features that are able to detect emotional well-being will improve agent support by suggesting, for instance, a break or rerouting the call to another agent.
