Is Your Customer Experience (CX) Roadmap Still on Track?

How would you react if you found out that 73.6% of organizations operate without enterprise-wide CX analytics systems!

If experience isn’t central to your business, you’re likely to lose in the long race. It’s mostly a marathon, run at a pace of a Sprint runner.

NTT recently asked marketers, “Is CX a differentiator or detractor in your organization?”

Most marketers have heard about customer experience, but only a very few have mastered it. In the current COVID-19 scenario, client-facing teams are finding it hard to pin their Customer Experience Management to real-life situations. For the most part, we always thought CX Management as a medium to show how much brands really know about customers and then craft personalized messages to show they care. The secret to a perfectly designed CX Management lies with paying “attention to detail” at all steps along the purchase journeys. Your CX user-set could be a prospect, an existing customer, a loyalist, a brand evangelist, or an influencer — for each, the CX Management is different.

For CX leaders, the word spreads like a wildfire.

According to SurveyMonkey, nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of Americans would prefer to shop from brands that are known for making top-notch customer service a priority. 97% of these shoppers would share their experiences with family, friends and others in their social circles.

In simple context, CX Management is everything about knowing your ideal customers’ short-term and long-term personal needs, putting a great product infront of them, serving them in real-time, and making sure you interact with them to understand if they are happy before, during, and after the purchase.

Here’s what various CX Reports have to say about the depth of a Marketer’s understanding of Customer Experience.

NTT Data

According to the latest Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report, NTT found out board-level accountability for CX is rising. Yet, only 12.1% of organizations say customers rate their CX at a promoter level.

The report highlights significant gap between top performers and their industry peers. To deliver an effortless CX strategy, boardrooms need to follow through on sentiment. Leadership is the key to ensuring that CX strategies are clearly formulated, managed and delivered to create value for your customers and business.

Salesforce

Whether your company meets or misses customer expectations, research shows there’s an impact on the bottom line.

PwC

Bad Experiences are driving customers faster than you can possibly imagine. Automated solutions must learn what “human touch” means. It can be only delivered when employees are more engaged and they understand CX better than anybody else.

MuleSoft

72% of internet users worldwide said a disconnected experience would make them change service providers or brands.

Raise the Stakes with AI Technology

According to Zendesk, 84% of managers using AI to help customers have a self-service strategy in place.

Today, we have Open CRM platforms, Hybrid Content Management Systems, and powerful Customer Data platforms– all sourcing relevant user data into single-view dashboards. AI can boost productivity and efficiency, tying up these platforms to deliver powerful “Agency Experience” to customers.

When it comes to customer satisfaction, ease of resolution still matters most.

Jason Hemingway, CMO, Thunderhead, spoke to me about the NTT CX report and its findings. Jason said,

“The survey from NTT reinforces that while brands pay lip service to the importance of customer experience and engagement, most are struggling to deliver the level of experience that customers expect. While NTT rightly talks about the need to listen to the voice of the customer and integrate data across systems, there is a critical component brands need to add. They need to make the transition to the new era of engagement-led marketing, based on nurturing relationships with customers, understanding customer intent and focusing on lifetime customer value.

CX is a New Business Benchmark; But, What About the Fragmented CX Strategies?

Brands have been relying on CX to build a personal relation with customers. Yet, marketers have found it too primitive to really perceive what customers really feel about their business, products and their feedback when it comes to choosing another brand over theirs selling the same product and service.

CX with messaging is fine. CX without analytics and dimension is just another marketing cost-center.

According to Zoho, your CXM will only be as effective as the applications you use to manage it. Fragmented software suite and applications are the biggest obstacles to a seamless CXM.

Sean Durkin, Head of Enterprise, UK & Ireland, OpenText, said,

“By harnessing the opportunity that real-time journey analysis and orchestration provides in understanding true customer intent, brands will be well equipped to utilize that insight to drive engagement at scale, increase customer satisfaction, and drive business growth.”

“Despite customer expectations being at an all-time high, we have very strong evidence suggesting that many businesses are still missing the mark when it comes to customer experience.”

“In today’s world, regardless of a business’s size, products, service or industry, customer experience often determines success. Whether it’s using biometrics to unlock a mobile phone or asking Alexa to remember a shopping list, today’s digital generation are used to streamlined, instant services. For businesses in any sector, meeting these expectations is key to forging a loyal relationship.”

Sean adds, “The secret to creating a special customer journey, and adding real value, lies in analyzing data to better understand behaviors and preferences, which can help to create more personalized and impactful experiences. This report should act as yet another call to action; brands need to recognize that consumers have a preference for fast and flexible services and that modern technologies – such as artificial intelligence – could provide a way to meet these expectations.”

Facing Disruptions? Make CX Coaching Part of Company Culture

According to Zendesk, high-performing teams are twice as likely to use an omnichannel solution that combines support, self-service, chat, or phone. Companies can make incremental gains by clearly highlighting their CX objectives, by understanding their brand value proposition and matching these with the entire customer cycle, both online and offline.

PwC states that consumers are often left disappointed with what brands deliver. It’s called “Experience Disconnect.”

A good CX hinges on the foundation of accurate customer data, and pillars of:

• Speed
• Convenience
• Consistency
• Personal Touch
• Ease of Use

That’s why, we call for CX coaching. Here, we can leverage AI training to make CX efforts more realistic.

Meeting CX Experiences is a Bare Minimum; Time to Exceed Expectations

Salesforce recommends making Customer Experience a hallmark of every brand. Customers expect a lot from their favored brands— but, brands often fall to deliver on promises. In CX game, faith is rather low. 

Suman Nambiar, Head of Strategy, Partners and Offering for Digital at Mindtree, said —

“CX value of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within global enterprises is immense. Our findings tell us while some large enterprises are gaining a lot of value from AI (31%), a lot more can be done to coach the workforce on how to get their data infrastructure in shape so the business can deploy AI at scale.

The training and development required for businesses to thrive in the digital age is critical. NTT’s research also highlighted a skills gap which is hindering the delivery of world-class customer experiences. What we see is that businesses are coming up with creative approaches to acquire and develop these skills, as our findings say retraining current staff (47%) is the most popular option. “

Zendesk states that high-performing teams are twice as likely to use AI to engage with customers at a more personal level.

Suman added —

‘Delivering what the customer wants is an immutable law in business and the potential for automation and AI to transform the customer experience is immense, but defining business outcomes and providing the training required are critical first steps.”