Companies of all types are experiencing surging volumes of enquiries as the virus impacts business operations around the world. Customer service requests are currently at the highest levels we’ve seen since the crisis began, with a significant increase in the average weekly requests handled by our EMEA support teams this week compared to last year.
With phone lines and wait times on the rise, customers are looking to use alternative channels for support. We have seen significant rises in the use of live chat and messaging apps. Many customers are looking to self-serve and navigate their way to an organisation’s own web-site to help through FAQ’s or online applications.
So, by the time a customer calls your contact centre, chances are you have already failed to deliver an effortless experience. What does it take to remove wasted effort? A digital-first, customer-centric approach. Digitally transforming your business is a key enabler of moving from effort to effortless. And it’s not just about making it easier for your customers. A truly effortless experience ripples throughout an entire organisation – across strategy, people, processes, and technology.
Design Customer-Centric Journeys
You can’t create effortless experiences without first knowing the level of effort customers must exert today. Understanding how and why different customers interact with your brand allows you to orchestrate better journeys to deliver proactive and personalised experiences to drive valuable business outcomes.
Start by identifying which are the most critical customer touchpoints and journeys that need improving. Rather than trying to make blanket improvements, a narrow focus can illuminate which areas will drive the most CX improvement and ROI. Prioritise the most common call types or frustration points for customers. Use data analytics, voice-of-the-customer and voice-of-the-employee insight to focus your attention where red flags emerge.
Automate to Alleviate
According to Gartner, by 2023, 40% of all customer interactions will be automated through AI and machine learning. From mundane repetitive tasks for employees, to inefficient customer self-service directories, intelligent use of automation can alleviate the effort both your employees and customers go through to get the information they need and resolve their issues.
Look at the processes and activities eating up time for your customers and associates. Often-overlooked aspects like multiple login screens, redundant forms, and call disposition processes can be untapped opportunities for productivity and efficiency improvements. Automate simple, repeatable tasks with RPA and RDA (robotic process automation and robotic desktop automation). Introduce intelligent virtual assistants to help your customers find the information they need easily and instantly.
Optimise Channels & Technology
Every single interaction a customer has with your brand should be seamless. Every ounce of effort exerted by a customer is one less ounce of satisfaction generated. Businesses must be able to proactively manage customers’ preferred channels, including messaging, social media, mobile apps, and voice calls.
Where to start – Connect all systems into one integrated platform that sits above the business units and legacy platforms. Shift channel focus to customer focus for a more well-rounded understanding of the customer and their value to the business. This way, relevant triggers and actions can be automated or semi-automated to enable a more cohesive, valuable experience that doesn’t take years to build.
Operate Across the Business
All the hard work done to design the customer journey, apply automation, and optimise channels and technology won’t achieve results if it doesn’t get delivered. Effortless is not a destination. It is an ongoing journey that requires constant tuning and improvements over time. Successfully managing and scaling operations across your entire ecosystem drives governance, superior customer experiences and growth.
Get buy in from the top and ripple that throughout the entire organisation. With a customer focus, traditional silos can be overcome with a collaborative, cohesive organisation that embraces customer centricity and shares goals around delivering effortless interactions.
A Digital-First Strategy
If you needed any more reason to look at adopting a digital-first strategy, latest research from Aberdeen Group reveals 89% of firms with digital customer engagement strategies retain on average 89% of their customers.
To download our full eBook on mastering effortless CX, please click here; https://www.ttec.com/sites/default/files/emea-eb-master-effortless-experiences-with-4-digital-transformation-strategies.pdf
