Top 3 CX tech trends around the world
Top 3 CX tech trends
In a customer-first world, the best performing organisations integrate technology and operations to deliver a connected customer journey. But, as businesses seek to optimise their customer experience (CX ) to ensure long term business success, many find themselves in a technology trap – where digital ‘solutions’ fall short on their improved service promise.
According to the 2019 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report being released in January 2019, CX is recognised at the number one driver of digital transformation. Yet in reality, organisations are being held back by budget restrictions, tough market conditions and the integration headaches associated with old technology systems.
Mind the gap
Under pressure to automate and deliver a connected customer experience, CX teams need to understand what their customers really want. That’s why CX teams across the globe have prioritised the following technology trends – as they bridge the gap between their goals and real customer-focused change:
- Customer analytics
- Self-service (including web, mobile, interactive voice response)
- Omni channel – integration of technologies
While a powerful force in any CX strategy, robotics and AI (or machine learning) comes with its own set of challenges. With robotic automation and AI set to surge by 2020, almost half of the CX teams surveyed in the Report are worried about cybersecurity, along with costs and negative feedback.
1. Customer Analytics
What’s encouraging is the shared focus on analytics for CX from a business and technology perspective. By aligning their strategies, organisations will be better placed to understand their customers to deliver personalised, proactive interactions.
From a practical perspective, it means using market intelligence through data. By implementing tracking systems across every customer channel and touchpoint, organisations will be able to share information across the business to deliver a consistent experience and enable powerful internal shifts in culture.
2. Self-Service
Appropriate automation can help boost productivity levels and enhance CX. Self-service can empower agents in handling more complex queries, while automating routine tasks helps reduce cost to serve and improve handle times and resolution rates.
Yet many businesses are holding back. According to the Report, organisations know they need to invest in their self-service robotics capabilities. Yet, they are still concerned about cost, security and negative customer feedback.
Going forward, as companies move to combine automation with human interactions, they’ll need to spend time on planning. This means involving CX teams in the design of a clear digital strategy that uses appropriate automation to meet customer needs. It will also mean using technology to track productivity and agent analytics.
3. Omni-channel integration
As the number of customer channels continues to grow, organisations are still managing channels in siloes, and tracking them independently. Report results show that less than 10% have all their channels connected. And while many CX teams are focused on integrating technologies, they’re still only looking at a few core channels, which suggests that full omni-channel is more of a long-term goal. Consistency rather than connectedness seems to be the focus now, with most looking to evolve their multichannel plans.
As organisations strive to deliver a connected CX experience, they’ll need to better understand their customer channels. This means taking the time to design a clear digital strategy that demonstrates how each digital channel will actually meet specific customer needs. By involving CX teams in the planning phase, and implementing performance measures across all channels, organisations will be able to use data to prove the return on investment.