Customer Service

Perspectives on transforming customer experience

Customer experience (CX) is a hot topic. This is because, though companies create operational efficiencies with digital transformation, their poor design leaves customers struggling and unhappy.

Thus, the way forward is to start the digital transformation with the CX transformation. For this, we begin by understanding what CX is. CX refers to the overall experience of a customer with a brand. In other words, it refers to the quality of customers’ interactions at three touchpoints: product/service, people and technology.

How can CX be improved? By streamlining and optimising operations and processes. This is what CX transformation is all about. How can this transformation be facilitated?

CX transformation framework

Each business employs a different approach, depending on its maturity level and opportunities for improving CX. Successful companies, however, agree on three building blocks that make up the skeletal framework for CX.

Vision:

All employees, including top management, must share a unified customer-centric purpose.

Strategies:

Developing effective strategies involves improving product/service offerings, streamlining operations, and creating a collaborative environment.

Enablers:

These are the technical components required for the transformation.

Despite its simplicity, the framework does not simplify the transformation process.

A holistic approach to CX transformation

It takes a driven, agile* team and a solid plan to make any transformation work. Luckily, with a framework already available, putting the structure up becomes easier. So, here goes:

Envision your ideal CX:

What does your aspirational CX look like? To deliver on this, focus on your company’s vision and what your brand stands for. Then, identify what you would need to change to make people's interactions with your brand better.

Rethink your business:

You cannot transform anything by doing things that have always been done. Many business areas must be overhauled. This is an overwhelming undertaking, maybe even frightening, but absolutely necessary.

Instead of working with existing teams, create a new cross-functional team with members having the ability to redesign CX, and develop or enhance products and services that resonate better with your brand.

The team must have the technical proficiency, a solution-driven attitude, and the inclination to fully own responsibilities to deliver on a truly transformative CX promise.

Build technological solutions:

It is a digitally driven world. No transformation happens without the backing of technology. Although this is industry-specific, here are a few general pointers that might be of help:

Technology that favours an omnichannel CX:

All platforms must integrate with one another with data exchange happening in real-time to provide a seamless experience for customers as well as make it easy for the support staff.

IoT technologies to revamp CX:

The Internet of things is a popular way to track and improve customer experience. Digital sensors are a great way to understand how customers are using products and devise ways to improve them.

Big data to address shortcomings in CX

Prediction is the future of CX. With the rise of predictive analysis, it is becoming easier to design a superior CX.

With companies having access to massive volumes of data on customer interactions, predicting their experience has never been easier. Predictive analytical tools let companies measure and regulate their CX performance effectively, enabling strategic decision-making. These systems empower CX leaders to create an accurate assessment of the factors that drive customer experience and influence business performance. Thus, big data analysis lays the foundation for CX improvement.

Prepare the facilitators:

Train employees on the new “hard” and “soft” skills they would require to be armed with.

“Hard” skills training would consist of the know-how of using new software.

“Soft” skills training would include educating them about empathy and communication.

CX not just a facade

When it comes to delivering a memorable customer experience, every company should adopt this approach, because a positive customer experience reflects the culture of the company. If the company wants to distinguish itself, it will need to create a customer-centric model and embark on the CX transformation journey.

CX transformation is not any surface-level plan for temporary success, but something that will solve a lot of inefficiencies and customer pain points, and hence keep them engaged with your brand well into the future.

Customers need a compelling story to connect with your brand, products, and services that they can value to sustain connections, and meaningful interactions to stay loyal to you. A good CX requires all boxes to be ticked. Don’t leave CX to chance. Design a stellar one and watch revenues soar.

*For organizations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed on organizational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organizations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organizations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.