They enable us to say no to those things that won't serve us.
Companies that are developing customer-obsessed digital experiences need guiding principles too.
Here are my top 5.
• Be Proactive - alert customers in advance of changes, updates or impacts. Better yet, solve the issues before they become problems.
• Channel Optimized - Design digital interactions that are best suited for the channel (mobile, website, chat). Don’t try to build the same experience in every channel.
• Seamless transitions - allow for effortless movement between digital channels and journey moments. If the customer is already logged in, keep them logged in.
• Data and Analytics - enable a continuous flow of data across all channels to help identify and prioritize optimization opportunities. Make sure you can track the entire customer journey.
• Contextual - ensure each channel, including employee assisted, has knowledge of prior interactions/states to drive orchestrated and personalized experiences. Don’t make the customer start the journey over again in every channel.
Why these 5?
Because, by investing here, they show your customer that you appreciate and value their time. The most precious commodity we all have.
What are your guiding principles?
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As the retail industry and consumer trends continue to shift, what can brands expect this holiday season?
The Future Of Customer Service Is Conversation-Based
Virtual Assistant: Hello, Mark.
Me: Hello.
VA: How may I help you today?
Me: I'm looking for the nearest store so I can return a recent purchase.
VA: Here is a link to search for the store nearest you.
Me: You have my address, why can't you tell me where the closest store is?
VA: Here is a link to search for the store nearest you.
Me: I could search that myself on Google. But since I was here on the app, I thought I would ask you
VA: How may I help you today?
Me: sigh..
Survey response - Score: 2 Comment: Chatbot made me do all the work…
When most people think of a virtual assistant or chatbot, they instantly think of an experience like this. They ask what seems to them like a simple question and for some reason, the bot doesn't understand or isn't programmed to deliver the information.
Touted as the future of customer service, clearly, Chatbots have not lived up to expectations. Yet.
Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of AI driving the customer experience.
I firmly see the near future where these applications can provide prompt, personalized answers with lightning-fast responses, reducing the burden on human agents by resolving a high number of customer queries while exhibiting human-like behavior.
In fact, I believe that in the next 3-5 years, the tech will have matured enough to allow companies to eliminate most, if not all tier 1 level customer service jobs because these bots will be able to take over all of these tasks.
The experience above will change to:
VA: How may I help you today, Mark?
Me: I'm looking for the nearest store so I can return a recent purchase.
VA: I see you are in Huntington Beach. There are two stores near you.
123 A Lane - 2.4 miles [Get Directions]
345 B Drive - 3.7 miles [Get Directions]
Both stores are open until 8pm.
Would you like me to make an appointment for you?
Also, did you know you can drop off the product at UPS to ship back to us for no charge?
Me: I didn’t know that - I’ll do that tomorrow. Thanks!
Survey Response - Score: 10; Comment: Was like talking to a human. Answered my question immediately with personalized details and even gave me very relevant options. Great experience!
Consumers want to interact with companies in ways that are convenient for them—which often means through technology like chat or messaging and they want a human-like experience.
As you can see in the first example, there’s quite a way to go to get there. As the tech matures and customer expectations increase, it's only a matter of time before conversational AI chatbots are the new trusted standard for customer service. In fact, Juniper Research asserts that the adoption of chatbots across the retail, banking and healthcare sectors will realize business cost savings of $11 billion annually by 2023, up from an estimated $6 billion in 2018.
There are many options to choose from in terms of whether to invest in your own technology and maintain your own infrastructure, or whether you should purchase an existing, off-the-shelf product and plug it into your system. Either way, you should get ready for a future where all your customer service questions are answered by a bot.
Digital customer experience (CX) programs have brought the voice of the customer into the boardroom, so you can't afford to leave them unchampioned. But many CX programs are struggling to reach critical mass throughout their organization.
A study from Capgemini found that there is a massive difference between intention and impact, especially when it comes to the culture shift required to have a successful transformation.
While the data in the report is a few years old, I contend the issues still exist and likely have worsened as companies who have started the transformational journey find themselves mired in new challenges.
Changing business priorities, personnel, and organizational structures during the pandemic increased the intensity of the need for digital CX, but the gap between employees and leadership perception and ability to align remains large.
Overall, there is misalignment between employees and leadership in key areas:
Employees don’t see their organizations’ culture as “digital”
41% vs. 85% Percentage of employees vs. leadership who believe they easily collaborate across their organization
66% vs 32% Percentage of leadership and employees who believe there is no bureaucracy for submitting ideas
So What is Digital Culture?
Culture is the glue that either keeps us doing things well or keeps us doing things poorly” Professor Ethan Bernstein, Harvard Business School
Capgemini have defined digital culture as a set of seven key attributes:
• Innovation: the prevalence of behaviors that support risk-taking, disruptive thinking, and the exploration of new ideas
• Data-driven Decision-Making: the use of data and analytics to make better business decisions
• Collaboration: the creation of cross-functional, inter-departmental teams to optimize the enterprise’s skills
• Open Culture: the extent of partnerships with external networks such as third-party vendors, startups or customers
• Digital First Mindset: a mindset where digital solutions are the default way forward
• Agility and Flexibility: the speed and dynamism of decision-making and the ability of the organization to adapt to changing demands and technologies
• Customer Centricity: the use of digital solutions to expand the customer base, transform the customer experience and co-create new products
How can you get there?
To create a digital culture, organizations will need to have the right blend of top-down and bottom-up approaches that engage, empower, and inspire employees to build the culture change together.
Using facial recognition technology, travelers in Detroit Metropolitan airport can each see personalized flight information tailored to their unique trip on a single, shared digital screen.
In addition to seamlessly moving through bag drop, security touchpoints and boarding, eligible customers who opt in to using digital identity at check-in can access the PARALLEL REALITY exhibit via facial recognition through the camera at the kiosk screen (non-digital identity customers can access it by scanning a boarding pass).
Agility, resilience, and flexibility continue to be essential to long-term contact center strategies that can anticipate and adapt to change. As a customer service leader, your workforce is at the center of this. The pendulum is swinging from automation to increasingly important touchpoints powered by human agents. This report reveals the top three customer service megatrends that customer service leaders must pay attention to in 2022.
Continuous Product Design is a cross-team approach to building better digital products faster — based on a shared, quantified, and continuous view of customer signals.
Emerge as a CPD leader in your org – in just one hour. CPD Foundations is a free digital leadership certification in Continuous Product Design. It’s geared for busy enterprise digital leaders like you.
There’s no one single way to create a customer journey map. See how brands are approaching journey mapping today in strategic, emotional and goal-driven ways. Shameless plug, my thoughts are included in the article.
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