Top 3 CX Conversations: Covid-19 Impact

It’s been a very strange year since the pandemic unexpectedly hit. It almost feels surreal to think of a time when people could gather in shops, pubs and restaurants, sports stadiums and even at weddings (currently heading towards my third rearranged wedding date!). I often find myself wondering if things will ever go back to ‘normal’.

Being in the industry I am, I’ve been given a unique ‘behind the scenes’ viewpoint into the impact Covid-19 has had on businesses of all types. I am fortunate that over the past 12 months I’ve been able to work with businesses across a variety of industries and sizes, most of which have had to adopt a new approach when considering customer experience. Specifically, ensuring they provide the best service possible during these tough times; for example, retail brands who used to rely on in-store experiences as a USP now must try and replicate that experience digitally.  

With the above in mind, I wanted to summarise some of the key conversations, projects, and emerging trends I’ve been exposed to, specifically in relation to businesses being forced to change and adapt their CX strategy. Below are the most prominent, top three conversational topics for the changing CX landscape, based on my personal experiences over the past year.

1.      Workforce Engagement is a big priority!

With the dramatic shift to remote working for many organisations that previously would have never done so, more and more businesses are now recognising the need for adequate workforce engagement management tools. A study by Gallup in 2017 identified that highly engaged teams are on average 21% more profitable. This is largely due to significant reductions in absenteeism (41%!), employee turnover and furthermore, by providing clear direction and aligning goals, employees are more enthused and productive.

In addition to the above, the lives of many employees working from home is dramatically different from that of 12 months ago. Commitments with children being home schooled means businesses are having to show increased empathy and flexibility in working schedules. Whilst there may have been a concern initially that this would reduce productivity, what we are actually seeing as a consequence of the flexibility and support shown, are employees with much higher morale and increased employee loyalty.

2.      Here comes AI!

AI, chatbots and voice bots have been buzzwords for several years now, with a relatively low uptake largely focussed within smaller business functions and departments, but certainly not widespread. However, with the sudden and dramatic shift to a virtualised marketplace for many businesses, the volume of customers that was once comfortable being managed via contact centres is now surging beyond capacity. Not only that, but consumers of goods or services still expect the same level of personalisation, guidance, and information they receive from an agent, as they would in store. This has become a problem for many businesses as they do not have the budget to triple their contact centre agents, nor have they had the time to up-skill agents to have knowledge of all products and services… Enter AI!

Most conversations I’ve had over the past year regarding AI revolve around two key questions.

1. How can I improve the productivity and experience of my agents?

2. How can I deliver additional personalisation to my customers?

Using technology such as chatbots certainly addresses both points. By leveraging AI, particularly at the beginning of a customer interaction, it allows the customer to receive support quickly and often obtain the answer they are searching for without ever having to speak to an agent. The AI solution can also utilise information from data management platforms and CRM’s to provide personalised experiences to customers by recognising information personal to them, such as their phone number or email address. This improves employee experience and productivity. It enables agents to support the customers with more complex queries rather than repetitive questions that can now be handled by AI. In addition, it also relieves agents of not having to go through a laborious identification and verification process for each individual interaction – which is a huge time saver!

For businesses that sell many products, or those who provide complex services, AI can be utilised in the form of knowledge management and agent assist. Some businesses have thousands of items which can be sold, so expecting an agent to be knowledgeable about all of them is unrealistic. Knowledge management is a repository that can be utilised by both customers and employees. It allows customers to find answers for themselves, and agents to provide the right information when the inherent knowledge may not be there. By integrating this with AI, businesses are now beginning to leverage agent assist, which uses AI to proactively provide agents with relevant information based on the dialog of a customer interaction. Not only does this immensely improve the employee experience and save a significant amount of time by removing the need to search for answers, it greatly improves the customer experience as they are provided with answers to their queries much faster. It also personifies an extra layer of credibility for the customer service team by demonstrating that higher level of knowledge, therefore improving things such as customer retention, brand loyalty and conversion rates.

3.      Integration of technology is key!

The ability to integrate different platforms and solutions has always been important for businesses, so you’re probably thinking, ‘this isn’t new’, and you’d be right. However, as we are all aware, due to the pandemic, many businesses have now had to adopt an indefinite work from home policy. Hence, there has been a visible shift in the way people work and interact with one another. All businesses are now more reliant on technology than ever before and digital adoption is years ahead of where it was forecasted to be. Technology adoption for internal and external communications over the past 12 months has soared, just looking at the growth of key industry players makes it evidently apparent; Zoom has seen a growth in sales of 169% year-on-year, MS Teams have increased their total daily active users from 44 million in March 2020 to 115 million in October 2020!

The pandemic certainly has acted as a catalyst for the technology industry, but one topic of conversation that is continually arising from this is how can businesses utilise all this technology in a synonymous way? In order to truly benefit from it, these systems not only need to speak to one another in terms of the transfer of data and avoidance of duplication, but also need to communicate to legacy systems within the customer’s business that may act as a central repository for customer data and internal processes. Having the technology readily available is one thing, but if it cannot be leveraged in a way that improves productivity, is it surplus to requirements?

Many of the conversations I’ve had with businesses over the past year are becoming centred around leveraging new technology in a way that is harmonious within their existing technological ecosystem. There are several overlapping qualities between communication platforms, so it is important that businesses identify these, and utilise them in a way that compliments one another – rather than competing. If this is not identified and agreed upon early in the adoption process, it can often cause fractures within a business whereby certain departments are using one solution and others are using another.

We are however seeing a solution to this from platforms that are built using open API’s. Open API’s provide programmers with programmatic access to a software application. It essentially governs how one application, or piece of software, interacts and communicates with another. The reason this is so important is as described above, businesses need the multitude of software solutions being used to be able to communicate with and complement one another.

I referenced an example within point 2 of this article – providing a personalised customer experience by leveraging the data from a CRM and using it within a contact centre platform during a customer interaction. This is a very simple example of how API’s can be used. But more regularly I am having conversations with business regarding complex infrastructures. For example, they might want to use the contact centre platform as the central customer engagement point but will want to pull information from a CRM, or connect to a newly adopted unified communications platform to enable contact centre agents to engage with back office staff, or utilise a single sign on for all systems. Businesses may even have in-house data management platforms that are bespoke to their organisation that requires integration for process compliance or case creation. I’m finding myself having more and more conversations of this nature, with interesting and creative suggestions being put forward. Over time, as more data becomes available and newer technologies are adopted, I only see this rising in importance.

So, to conclude, those are my top three! I’m sure none were a huge surprise to anyone reading this who is based in the same industry, but hopefully it provides some reassurance to businesses knowing you are not the only one’s having these conversations. Or, provides some food for thought for those who may not have considered them before now. If you’d like to discuss any of the above further or learn how Genesys can support in enabling these trends, I’m always open to having a conversation.