Earlier this month, there was a lot of buzz around Global CX Day, a day that celebrates customers, employees and organizations – elements at the core of better customer experiences. Unfortunately, there were not too many celebratory messages. Instead, the day witnessed ironic commentary that pointed at Customer Experience (CX) offerings still not meeting – let alone exceeding – customer expectations. Frankly, this is not surprising. Long wait times, fragmented hand-offs and ill-equipped agents continue to characterize the CX landscape.
There is no denying that rapid advancement in digital capabilities has allowed companies to automate and improve self-service. There are already numerous solutions available in this space. However, companies must be mindful that while automation and Machine Learning (ML) tools increasingly handle transactional and more straightforward customer requests, queries meriting human intervention are becoming more complex. Organizations will need to better prepare for situations where a customer, having exhausted all the automated options, seeks to engage with an advisor. Therefore, it is critical to empower contact center advisors with access to digital capabilities, such as customer data, real-time customer sentiment analysis and next-best-action recommendations.
Such empowered agents can offer goodwill gestures, including refunds and discounts, leveraging agile digital tools such as real-time speech analytics. The result is a win-win situation. Thoughtfully designing and deploying digital capabilities will allow advisors to feel confident, motivated and engaged in providing customer support without struggling for information or constantly handing off customers to other departments. From a customer’s perspective, they benefit from a significantly better experience. As proven repeatedly, First-time Resolution (FTR) is likely to result in higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for companies.
The Need to Assist Agents with Intelligent CX Solutions
Today, businesses can leverage the expertise of third-party service providers who have developed intelligent CX solutions that combine digital and the all-important human touch. These digital CX solutions can support contact center advisors across their lifecycle – from initial induction training to coaching and dealing with the most complex customer queries. Such tools harness Artificial Intelligence (AI), data insights and speech analytics to offer agents real-time guidance around customer queries and continued training and self-learning. Moreover, with AI as the underlying engine, these digitally integrated CX tools can reduce background noise, neutralize accents and enhance voice quality to improve customer engagement. Further, gamification, personalized dashboards and digitally simulated training environments can support and drive advisors to improve their service quality.
Labor shortage is a reality facing CX functions across industries. While that is true, one cannot just wish the human aspect of customer experience away, and it is here to stay. Given these circumstances, not leveraging assisted digital capabilities to improve the human touch in the customer journey lifecycle is a clear gap. Until companies take decisive action to plug it, Global CX Day may remain an ironic reminder of this missed opportunity.
Read how WNS EXPIRIUS is helping brands deliver the perfect humanized digital CX.