#56 | DCX - Perspectives and insights on digital customer experience

Navigating the Politics of Customer Experience; 10 Customer Experience Platforms Focus on AI; LI CX Professionals Poll of the Week; Links to Industry news, ideas, insights, and more!

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Navigating the Politics of Customer Experience

Overcoming Challenges for CX Leaders

In the aggressive battlefield that is today's business world, customer experience is your secret weapon. Mastering it can catapult your organization into the annals of success.

But this journey is laden with intricate politics and challenging obstacles. Offering a top-notch customer experience is more complicated than it appears. You will encounter many challenges when providing customer-focused solutions and practical methods to overcome these obstacles.

Today I will unravel some key challenges and offer tangible strategies to conquer them, ultimately paving the way for exceptional customer-centric solutions.

Understanding the Political Landscape of Customer Experience:

The "politics" of CX refers to the intricate web of stakeholders, competing interests, and internal and external factors that you must navigate. From marketing and sales teams to customer service representatives and IT and, of course, the customers themselves, each stakeholder has unique needs and expectations that can sometimes conflict with one another. Additionally, factors such as company culture, market trends, and regulatory changes can add layers of complexity to the CX landscape.

CX politics often boil down to one key skill: persuasion. Can you convince others that your CX strategy will lead to increased customer satisfaction, higher revenue, and improved reputation? Will it benefit them personally? Will it further their agenda or goals?

These are the questions that often circulate in the minds of your colleagues when you're presenting a new CX strategy or idea. Thus, anticipating and addressing these concerns can make the difference between your proposal being accepted or dismissed.

Conflicting interests are at the heart of CX politics. One department might focus on cutting costs, another on increasing sales, and another on innovation. In such a scenario, how do you promote a customer-centric culture?

The answer lies in finding common ground and promoting collaboration. A customer-centric strategy often leads to increased revenue, innovation, and operational efficiency. Hence, when you frame your CX strategy around these shared goals, you're more likely to get buy-in from different departments. Remember, when it comes to politics, diplomacy often trumps confrontation.

Identifying Key Challenges Faced by CX Leaders:

CX leaders like you often grapple with a myriad of challenges in their pursuit of customer-centric delivery. Let's take a look at two of the most common ones.

Challenge 1: Aligning Stakeholder Interests

For a CX initiative to succeed, the organization's objectives must align with it. This is, however, easier said than done. A major obstacle that you encounter is the task of aligning the interests of multiple stakeholders.

According to Insights from Forrester, companies must prioritize maximizing value for their customers to achieve strong growth and customer loyalty. This means focusing on customer needs and preferences at every level of the organization, from decision-makers to internal stakeholders.

Indeed, businesses with customer-obsessed leaders have been shown to outperform their peers in revenue growth and profitability. Companies with customer-obsessed decision-makers at the director level or higher have 2.5 times better revenue growth and 2.2 times higher profitability than organizations that are not customer-obsessed.

To achieve this level of customer obsession, companies must also foster internal alignment and communication to ensure that everyone is working together towards the same goal. Businesses can boost their growth curve and build long-term success by doing so.

Challenge 2: Adapting to Rapid Market Changes

We all know that it's crucial to stay ahead of the curve and proactively revamp our customer experience strategies and technologies to ensure they remain relevant and competitive. CX leaders often struggle to adapt their strategies quickly enough, which can lead to outdated customer experiences that no longer meet the expectations of their target audience.

Unfortunately, legacy systems, outdated operations, and personnel who are resistant to change can often hamper fast progress. These factors can make it difficult for businesses to keep up with shifting market trends and make necessary changes to their strategies.

Strategies to Overcome Challenges and Drive Customer-Centric Delivery:

However, with the right approach and mindset, you can overcome these obstacles and provide your customers with experiences that meet their ever-changing needs while staying ahead of their competitors. Here are effective strategies that you can employ to drive customer-centric delivery.

Strategy 1: Aligning Stakeholder Interests

Effective team communication and collaboration is crucial for any business looking to provide a seamless and satisfying customer experience. By aligning stakeholder interests, you can ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals, resulting in a more cohesive and efficient customer experience.

Here are 5 of the best ways to drive alignment among teams:

Implement a shared CX vision by involving all teams in the development process and seeking feedback to ensure the vision aligns with their respective areas of expertise. This approach bridges any gaps in understanding and fosters a more cohesive customer experience that meets the needs of all stakeholders. Creating a shared CX vision that all teams can rally behind unlocks new opportunities for growth and success.

Encourage cross-functional collaboration by creating opportunities for teams to work together on customer projects, such as joint brainstorming sessions or shadowing each other's work. This approach breaks down silos and promotes a holistic approach to customer experience that considers all touchpoints in the customer journey.

Establish clear metrics and KPIs to track progress and hold teams accountable for their contributions to the overall customer experience. This includes metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, response times, and customer retention rates.

In addition to traditional metrics, it's important also to establish digital KPIs to track the success of your online customer experience. This could include digital engagement metrics such as transaction and containment rates, website traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and social media engagement.

By tracking these digital KPIs alongside traditional metrics, you can gain a comprehensive view of your overall customer experience and make data-driven decisions to improve it.

Facilitate regular communication between teams by scheduling weekly meetings, so team members can stay up-to-date on any relevant changes, updates, or challenges that may arise. In addition to regular meetings, providing a centralized platform for teams to share customer feedback and insights can be incredibly beneficial. This allows everyone to have access to the same information and collaborate effectively to address any issues. Overall, facilitating regular communication is crucial to ensuring that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

Provide training and resources to ensure all team members have the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver exceptional customer experiences. This includes regular in-depth training on specific products and services, customer service skills such as active listening and problem-solving, effective communication techniques, access and discussion of industry best practices and case studies, and ongoing coaching and support to help team members improve their performance.

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Strategy 2: Adapting to Rapid Market Changes

Adapting to changes in the market quickly requires a strategic approach to decision-making and a willingness to pivot when necessary.

Conduct thorough research. For example, with the increasingly rapid rise of artificial intelligence, it can be overwhelming for business leaders to navigate the numerous vendors that offer AI integration. It can be especially challenging when vendors claim to offer the same thing but use different jargon to describe their products. This can make it difficult to discern which vendor best fits your organization's needs.

Cross-functional collaboration. In addition to conducting thorough research and analysis, it's important to emphasize the value of cross-functional collaboration when it comes to making informed decisions about technology investments. By involving stakeholders from various departments and levels of the organization, you can ensure that everyone's needs and priorities are considered, resulting in greater alignment and more successful outcomes. Encourage open communication and collaboration between teams to achieve the best possible results.

Foster a culture of agility. Agility is not just a delivery method but a mindset that can be cultivated within a team. It involves being open to change, flexible, and willing to adapt to new situations. By embracing a culture of agility, teams can become more innovative and responsive to unexpected challenges.

This can lead to more efficient processes and faster decision-making, ultimately resulting in greater success for the team and the organization as a whole. It is important to recognize that agility is not a one-time solution but an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement and adaptation.

Encourage continuous learning and adaptation. To foster a mindset of continuous learning and adaptation among team members, CX leaders can implement various methods. One effective approach is to encourage employees to attend industry conferences and seminars, where they can learn about the latest technologies and best practices from experts in the field.

Another strategy is to provide ongoing training and development opportunities, such as online courses, workshops, and mentoring programs. Additionally, you can foster a culture of experimentation and innovation, where team members are encouraged to test new ideas and approaches and learn from their successes and failures.

By implementing these methods, you can create a dynamic and agile team that is always striving to improve and adapt to the changing needs of your customers.

As we maneuver through the politics of customer experience, it’s essential to remember that it's not about winning or losing—it's about creating a win-win situation for all stakeholders, including our customers, our team, and our organization.

Navigating the politics of CX doesn’t have to be a daunting task. It can be a path filled with opportunities to grow, learn, and make a significant impact on your organization's customer experience. So, are you ready to dive in and turn the politics of CX into your secret weapon?

This week I asked our colleagues in the Customer Experience Professionals Group on Linkedin, about their perspective on how often politics plays a part in their org’s CX strategy and delivery. Not a surprising response, eh?

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10 Customer Experience Platforms Focus on AI

For this post, I've rounded up 10 of the top Customer Experience platforms that are offering AI integrations and enhancements and the benefits they claim it brings to their users. Just a heads up, I'm not here to endorse any platform or its supposed benefits. I suggest you check them out for yourself and form your own opinions. Let's dive in!

Platform Name: Latest Focus on AI; Promoted AI Benefits

Adobe Experience Cloud: Real-time customer analytics using AI; Enhanced personalized customer experiences.

Genesys Cloud CX: AI-powered Experience Orchestration; Unlocking customer and employee loyalty, enhanced customer experiences.

Salesforce Service Cloud: Einstein AI for automated service processes; Reduced response times, increased agent productivity.

Pega Customer Engagement Suite: Pega AI for real-time decisioning; Consistent, tuned customer interactions across all channels.

Nice inContact CXone: AI-powered routing and forecasting; Improved customer journey, increased efficiency.

Qualtrics CustomerXM: Predict iQ uses AI to predict churn; Improved customer retention, increased sales.

Zendesk Suite: Zendesk's AI chatbot, Answer Bot; Immediate customer responses, reduced ticket volume.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service: Dynamics 365 AI for customer insights; Proactive customer service, personalized interactions.

Freshworks Customer-for-Life Cloud: Freddy AI for customer predictions; Improved customer interactions, increased loyalty.

ServiceNow Customer Service Management: AI Chatbot for self-service; Lower operating costs, improved customer satisfaction.

Harnessing the power of AI has become an essential strategy for the top CX platforms to enhance customer service, improve efficiency and increase brand loyalty. Clearly, each platform offers unique AI solutions to fulfill specific customer experience goals. Selecting the right platform involves aligning its AI capabilities with your organization’s specific CX priorities. Good luck!

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Google introduces new AI virtual try-on feature (blog.google)

Google is introducing two new features that bring the clothes-shopping experience to online shoppers: virtual try-on for apparel and new filters to help shoppers refine their search results. Virtual try-on uses AI to show shoppers how clothes will look on real models of various sizes, skin tones, body shapes, ethnicities, and hair types. The filters help shoppers refine their search results by color, style, and pattern, and they can see options from multiple retailers.

Average UK customer service issue takes nine hours to be resolved (marketingtechnews.net) - Yext recently did a survey that showed it takes 9 hours for a typical customer service issue to be resolved, which is much longer than the expected time of 14.5 minutes.

Ikea's AI-Powered Billie chatbot revolutionises customer experience and empowers co-workers | Retail News UK (apparelresources.com)

Ingka Group, the largest retailer of Ikea, has implemented an AI-powered chatbot named Billie to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Billie is available around the clock and can handle multiple conversations simultaneously.

Since its introduction, Billie has resolved 47% of customer inquiries, resulting in cost savings and enabling 8,500 call center co-workers to gain diverse skills. The success of Billie has led to an increase in sales, and Ingka Group plans to increase its share of digital sales to 10% in the future.

Each week, I share a profile of a person from LinkedIn whom I believe can positively impact your life and career.

This week, meet Jason Bradshaw, Founder of Bradshaw, Koh & Co in Sydney, Australia, Working with individuals and businesses to inspire and deliver excellence in employee and customer experience.

Jason S Bradshaw is a globally recognized Experience Management and Customer Experience authority.

He began his entrepreneurial journey at 14, starting a telecommunications and hardware distribution business, where he developed a passion for customer experience.

Jason is the author of the Amazon Best Selling Book, "It's All About CEX! The Essential Guide to Customer & Employee Experience."

He has transformed customer and employee experiences across various sectors, currently serving as the Director of Customer Experience at Volkswagen Group Australia. He has also worked with organizations like Telstra, Fairfax Media Limited, Target Australia, and the New South Wales Government.

In addition to his professional roles, Jason has served as Chair of the Finance and Audit Committee and as Board Director of ACON Health Limited, Australia's largest LGBTI health promotion and services organization.

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