While customer experience (CX) will always require a human touch, there’s something to be said about technology and its role in keeping customers happy and engaged. And if you look at the current landscape of business tools, you’ll see that there’s never been a better time to focus on modern CX.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience might sound like a buzzword or fancy term that Silicon Valley startups paste into PowerPoint presentations when raising a fresh round of capital. Still, it’s a tangible concept that has a real-world impact on your business (for better or worse).
According to HubSpot, “Customer experience is the impression your customers have of your brand as a whole throughout all aspects of the buyer’s journey. It results in their view of your brand and impacts factors related to your bottom line including revenue.”
Modern CX is especially important when you think about the sheer volume of options the average customer has to choose from. With so many similar services and products being sold by competitors, you need something that sets you apart. A positive customer experience can help you do this. Likewise, ongoing CX impacts loyalty, repeat purchases, customer lifetime value, and more.
Customer experience is created and influenced by two primary touch points within your organization: Your people and your products. If you’re going to enhance customer experience, start by thinking about (1) how you can improve the way your people interact with and serve your customers, and (2) the quality, utility, and perceived value of your products by the customer.
Exploring High-Tech Approaches to Customer Experience
If you want to elevate the customer experience and grow your business, you must reduce friction. And the best way to reduce friction is by streamlining your approach using technology and innovation.
Here are several technologies and approaches that successful companies rely on (and you can too).
1. IT Help Desk Software
If you’re still using a basic ticketing system to handle support tickets and IT requests, you’re playing from behind. Not only are your customers extremely frustrated with the slow pace and poor service, but your employees are drowning behind the scenes.
IT help desk software decreases end-user confusion, streamlines problem resolution, and makes quick use of pesky tickets. Some features of IT help desk software could include the following.
- Assign individual tickets to specific team members based on skillsets, certifications, experience, and availability. This ensures customers get the best (and fastest) support for their individualized needs.
- Automatically and intelligently triage support tickets so that simple fixes can be automatically addressed without requiring manual input from a team member.
- Get notifications and reminders on outstanding support tickets so that no customer request is left open for too long.
Most advanced help desk software is built on the cloud, which increases your team’s flexibility and allows you to provide customer support from anywhere (without being dependent on location or device).
It’s also entirely scalable, which makes it easy to continue providing great support, even as your customer base and volume of support tickets grow.
2. AI and ML Chatbots
People want as many different customer service options and channels as they can get. And they expect someone to be available to help them regardless of the time or day. From a company’s perspective, this creates a lot of pressure and expectation. Thankfully, technology comes to the rescue once again. This time, it’s in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) chatbots.
AI and ML chatbots are essentially online chat technology with smart algorithms. Companies program them to understand and interpret customer questions. They can provide answers, suggest solutions, and/or triage customer support requests. Employees can then send tickets to the correct support person.
While some companies choose to develop their own chatbots, you can also leverage existing platforms.
3. 24/7 Social Monitoring
You can’t afford to clock out. While 9-to-5 may be standard work hours, companies with high modern CX scores are tuned into what’s happening with their customers 24/7/365…and you should be, too.
While 24/7 monitoring is important, you don’t have to physically park yourself (or employees) in front of a computer or phone around the clock. Using monitoring software, you can listen to what’s happening and gather insights about what people are saying on social media. You can also track, analyze, and respond to email and chat requests.
Some of the top 24/7 monitoring platforms on the market include Zendesk, Hubspot, LiveAgent, and Hootsuite.
4. Virtual and Augmented Reality
While maybe not as common as some of the other technologies listed in this article, don’t underestimate the rise of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). We live in a virtual world where more of the buying process is happening at a distance. This is leading brands are always looking for ways to increase customer engagement and enhance the shopping experience. AR and VR are game-changers in this regard.
Amazon, which is always on the bleeding edge when it comes to modern CX – is a great example. Their new AR View technology allows shoppers to view items in their homes before purchasing.
Amazon’s technology allows prospective customers to view products in the setting of their own homes before they make a purchase. They can make their purchases based on how the product looks and fits their current setting, color scheme, and so forth. They no longer need to move furniture around once something arrives only to discover it doesn’t really work as they thought. Instead, they use a smartphone to boost confidence prior to purchase.
Aside from being interesting and unique, this “view in your room” technology serves the distinct purpose of reducing the friction that shoppers often experience when they don’t know what a product will look like in their home and/or if it’ll fit the space. Customers who use this augmented reality technology end up happier with their final purchases and are less likely to return the products they purchase.
Measuring Customer Experience
If you’re going to commit to strategically improving your CX, you want to make sure you’re measuring it. (This is the only way to track progress and know if you’re getting the results you’re searching for.) Again, there are several ways you can do this, including the following.
- Start tracking your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). This is basically a measurement of how happy your customers are with your products and service.
- To calculate a CSAT score, you simply send customers a one-question survey after a purchase or support interaction that asks: “How satisfied were you with [company/product]?”
- Typically, you ask customers to rank their satisfaction on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the most positive).
- Over time, you can track your CSAT score and watch as it moves up or down. This will give you some context for how customers feel.
- It’s natural to have some churn. However, tracking customer churn rates will help you understand when and why customers are leaving.
- Dig in and analyze the data. Determine the reasons for the churn and any actions you can take to reduce future churn.
- Engage with customers and proactively gather feedback. If possible, meet with customers face-to-face or have extended open-ended discussions via phone or video conferencing.
- This allows you to measure both the experience and the sentiment. (You can tell a lot through tone of voice, inflection, word choice, etc.)
Adding It All Up
Customer experience is more than a buzzword. It’s a tangible measurement of the way customers feel about your brand and its products.
By prioritizing modern CX with the right high-tech investments, you can improve your results and experience success.
Featured Image: CottonBro; Pexels.com. Thank you!
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