It’s no secret that contact centres have far surpassed the stereotype that you will be kept on hold for hours, waiting to speak with someone that may or may not be able to help you. Instead, long waits and confusing channels were replaced with multichannel contact centres and now, customer experience (CX) through customer journey mapping.
If you’re scratching your head, confused not only about when this transition happened but also about the latest buzzword, ‘CX’ let us explain. CX is about exceeding customer expectations of how they, the customer, interact with and experience your organisation from brand perception to product or service exit.
Today, good customer service is driven by the customer’s needs and wants. The good news is that industry leaders are shaping those expectations. Companies are pushing for new and innovative technologies that pave the way for better customer experience and business success.
In recent years, CX has jumped on many technology trends. There is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Virtual Agents, Chatbots, Messenger Apps, Automated Quality Management, Customer Surveys, Voice, Speech or Text Analytics just to name a few. Not to mention, augmented agents are hot on the rise. CX is now moving into robotic automation, coexisting with businesses and completing sections of tasks that can be streamlined, leaving companies to continue to drive the direction of the more complex tasks. This is also helping agents remove some of the more monotonous and non-value adding elements of working with a CRM system and a customer at the same time (because why multitask when you don’t have to?!)
A key trend on the rise is the leap to instant messaging. Instant messaging is now leading the way in digital customer communication, making a bold leap to match company website web chat platforms. It was only a matter of time, with the number of people living in messenger and on social media. Thankfully, website web chat is still one of the largest avenues of customer communication – with many still relying on this direct agency contact rather than automated messenger chat.
What exactly are the expectations for the future of CX?
Organisations have started with a focus on re-engineering processes through customer journey mapping and process optimisation i.e. the easy place to start – because let’s be honest, it’s a lot easier to change a process (and sometimes even a system) than it is to change human behaviour! However, there are only so many processes that can be re-engineered before you actually have to look at how your customers are interacting with your business. Not to mention, it’s also a lot easier to dabble on the surface than it is to have to fundamentally change your business.
In the next 5 years, many companies will be able to continue this surface level dabbling of making tweaks to appease customer’s frustrations. They may be able to focus on just one of the channels of CX such as technology or maybe a customer experience lens over the marketing plans and strategies. However, the real long-term players will be able to rethink all of the elements of their business from a customer experience lens within the next 10 years. There will be many businesses that will be different to where they are today.
In the next 10 years, there is going to be greater integration between traditional business models, data scientists, and psychologists or human behaviour specialists. In his best-selling book, Yuval Harari makes the great case that what sets humans apart is our ability to cooperate on a large scale. Whilst this occurs at a societal level, there is going to be more cooperation across non-competitive fields to assess the efficiency of CX with a business lens. The complexity of the problems and the technology we are working with is going to increase and this will require more and more specialists coming together to be able to understand holistic problems and create real solutions. CX will move to more holistic and multi-faceted areas as these different parties bring their speciality to bear overall.
Ultimately, CX will cease to be an influencer and driver once it is more embedded into the baseline platform of a majority of organisations and these organisations will begin to find other unique ways to differentiate themselves in the market.
As a leading CX organisation, Probe is in the unique position of being able to work with different clients in different industries, providing insights into leading CX practises.
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