Companies That Are Serious About CX Need to Up their Mobile Customer Support Game

It is no secret that customer experience (CX) has become perhaps the most compelling influence in the consumer’s decisions to initially do business—and build an ongoing relationship  –with a company. CX can be defined as the sum of all experiences a customer has in their interactions with a company and its products or services. Understanding these interactions, specifically what makes them positive or negative, is central to making improvements. Effective CX is determined by the quality of the experience customers have when they seek product information and seek support—tasks they now mostly use mobile devices to accomplish.

Engaging mobile consumers requires businesses to become more creative. Mobile devices are more than just hand-held web browsers. People have long since become accustomed to using mobile devices for a very wide range of activities, beyond calls: social media, taking/viewing photos, GPS navigation, downloading music and videos or watching live entertainment

SMS, or mobile text messaging is also a long-term primary use case, in social and now increasingly in business contexts. In fact, with the rise in mobile device usage, messaging is the default user behavior. But it goes beyond SMS texting alone. Mobile phone users throughout the world are sending messages back and forth, using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, and other emerging channels of mobile chat messaging. However, in the US where most of us are text messages, companies are just starting to learn more about these emerging channels and how they can use them to improve communications with their customers. These are developments that are taking hold and it’s becoming more critical for businesses to be knowledgeable about them. This particularly true for organizations that wish to expand their global presence.

According to research by Forrester, people don’t wish to go out of their way for support. This   put companies in the position of having to keep up when their customers are blazing new trails. As Forrester put it in a recent report, “Customers will explore emerging channels to reduce friction. Customers want to move between channels without having to repeat their situation every time. They want to get service at any point in their pre- or post-purchase journey.” This need for flexibility and responsiveness becomes a serious problem when customers are unable to reach a company’s agents as quickly as they would like to. Then, once connected, customer frustration ramps up rapidly when they can’t adequately resolve their issue through a voice-only conversation. So, the undermined customer loyalty and increased cost becomes a lose-lose scenario for businesses.

Of course, there are more effective methods to deliver mobile customer service that enhance as opposed to detract from the customer experience., Mobile service specialist UJET will share detailed information on how organizations can to transition from voice-only interactions to engaging their customers on a variety of rich and responsive messaging channels. On Thursday, May 27 at 1:00pm, UJET will present a complimentary webinar on CrmXchange entitled “Mobile Support For Cost-Effective and Enhanced Customer Experience.”

Josh Mazgelis, Solutions Consultant, UJET, will draw on his 25 years of contact center experience. He will discuss how to cost-effectively deploy the company’s cloud-based mobile-focused customer satisfaction platform to enable customers and reps to share photos and videos, take screenshots, and even combine voice and text together. Among the topics to be covered are:

• Enabling end-users to easily share multimedia with agents
• Elevating the customer experience with Rich Communications Services
• Using data intelligence to customize and improve support channels

Register now to see how your company can upgrade its mobile service. If you can’t attend the live webinar, a link to it will posted 24 hours after it is presented.

Discovering the Value of Attended Automation as a Digital Transformation Tool to Enhance the Productivity of Remote Agents

It was a transition that was already in progress before the current emergency unfolded. The migration to a reduced population of work-at-home agents, coupled with the unprecedented spike in demand for information, has dramatically accelerated the need for digital transformation. While just about every business already knew it had to digitize its operations to remain competitive, many are now scrambling to get up to speed.

Three key process automation technologies: Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Cognitive Intelligence and Attended Automation are the core elements in any digital transformation initiative. Attended Automation is the orchestrator that binds them together by ensuring that agents are aligned to both customer-facing and back-office processes. It acts as a kind of digital personal assistant to all employees, giving them real-time, context-specific guidance when needed in interaction processes.

In its truest form, Attended Automation is comprised of software robots that reside in each employee’s desktop. These robots have cognitive intelligence that enables them to navigate the dynamic desktop environment: a robust functionality that empowers them to bubble up when they sense an employee needs guidance. They communicate with employees via intelligent, interactive screens that are fully customizable.

When businesses adapt Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or chatbot solutions to support both the automation of repetitive tasks and the accessibility of self-service channels, the central focus will continue to be on humans. It is live people who are responsible for the proper functioning and sustainability of these solutions. Applying Attended Automation technology to customer-centric operational processes further augments the role played by humans.

Attended Automation was initially designed to work in collaboration with live agents to enable them to focus on high-value tasks that require a human touch. But with the need to keep business continuity in crisis mode becoming the new norm, it has also become a tool to allow people to achieve their full potential while helping them adjust to organizational change. This in turn helps companies maintain service consistency and process efficiency while keeping their growing number of remote agents on-target.

Learn more about the benefits by attending a complimentary webcast presented by NICE on CrmXchange on Tuesday, May 19 at 1:00 PM ET. It’s entitled “Keep Your Remote Agents Engaged and Productive with Intelligent Attended Automation” and will be delivered by Karen Inbar, Director of Marketing for NICE Advanced Process Solutions, an expert with a 20-year track record in the high-tech field, including stints at leaders such as Microsoft and SAP.

Among the topics she will address include using intelligent attended automation to:

• Positively impact service operations and consistent delivery within a new distributed working environment.
• Enable remote agents to adapt to their new working environment during an uncertain and turbulent period.
• Practical ways in which intelligent Attended Automation helps agents stay informed, productive and empathetic to customer issues.

Register now at no cost for this timely and informative webcast. If you are unable to at attend the live session, a link to the webcast will be posted within 24 hours of the presentation.

Robotic Process Automation: Bridging the Widening Gap Between Customer Demand for Service and Real-Time Agent Availability

Driven by the instant gratification offered by ubiquitous handheld devices, consumers want all their issues resolved a minute ago and any other questions answered instantly. In the current contact center environment, these constantly rising expectations have reached a level where it’s simply no longer always humanly possible to meet them.

While call routing and scheduling software are constantly improving, even these solutions have difficulty keeping up with the demand for agent availability in real-time. Add in the ongoing corporate mindset of lowering costs and keeping headcount to a minimum and you often have the proverbial irresistible force meeting the unmovable object.

Fortunately, there is a rapidly emerging technological transformation that is changing this seemingly insoluble equation. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) gives companies the capacity to meet the growing challenges of maintaining service levels while improving efficiency and providing greater bandwidth. RPA automates the routine, repetitive and time-consuming tasks that can slow contact centers down to a crawl, enabling front-line personnel to pay greater attention to more complex interactions that require empathy and a human touch in decision-making.

The improvement starts from the point of contact. In traditional contact centers, when a customer reaches the agent, he or she needs to identify them within the system to get the necessary information such as status, order number, pending support tickets and more This puts the agent in the awkward position of having to interact with the customer while simultaneously toggling from one system to another. Multiple logins can also further slow down the agents, as can silos pertaining to different systems.

By implementing RPA, contact centers can significantly diminish the time required to identify a customer in the system, viewing all necessary details associated with them in one screen. When customers don’t have to wait for the agent to load all the details, it reduces the average call duration, contributing to an improved customer experience.

In addition, the technology can make it far easier to make necessary data updates to a customer’s account during an interaction. Instead of having agents entering data manually across multiple fields in different systems — a tedious and error-prone process– RPA enables integration of data across various fields of associated systems using a single agent entry. RPA can create auto-fill templates that enable simple copy-pasting of information, with limited human intervention. Integrations with CRM and other third-party tools almost totally eliminate the need to spend time on cross-application desktop activities. RPA can also help consolidate customer information over a variety of channels, giving agents information they need to help the customer no matter what touch point the conversation is taking place on.

What is the economic impact of RPA for businesses? According to a KPMG study, use of RPA in financial institutions can help reduce operational costs by as much as 75%. “In terms of its potential to reshape the economy, it will be as significant as the Industrial Revolution,” said noted industry analyst Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting “It’s going to create a whole new class of employees, a technically savvy generation of workers coming from the Millennial and Generation Z cohorts. The AI/RPA revolution will be a game changer for companies that welcome the opportunity to improve the timeliness and accuracy of their work processes.”

Fluss will present a detailed analysis of the economic advantages, operational efficiency gains and customer experience enhancements made possible by RPA in a complimentary CRMXchange webcast on Wednesday, October 16 called “Attended Robots Improve Productivity and Agent Efficiency.” Among the topics covered will be

• An explanation of what RPA entails and present top use cases in the contact center
• A discussion of the effect of RPA on employees
• An outline of best practices for implementing RPA

The webcast, sponsored by NICE, is complimentary and those unable to attend it live can download it approximately 24 hours after it is completed. Register now.

3 Barriers to a Winning Digital Strategy

When it comes to your contact center’s digital strategy, there’s a never-ending amount of information to wade through and technology to choose from. All of these options can make it almost impossible to decide what you need to change or update and how to prioritize everything. When you do start planning, you can get so wrapped up in the digital side of things that you forget your very real audience.

Let’s go over three common barriers to creating a digital strategy that serves your customers.

Barrier #1: Assuming You’re Behind Everyone Else

One of the biggest assumptions about digital strategy is that every other contact center is doing it better. You know you have to create or improve your digital strategy but, feeling like you’re already behind your competitors, your don’t have the drive to do it.

Think of it this way, though – you wouldn’t skip over writing a business plan just because every other business has one, right? The same is true for creating your digital strategy, which is an integral part of your broader IT and business strategies.

Barrier #2: Focusing Solely on the Technology

Digital strategy is about so much more than the specific technologies you’re going to use. When you focus only on the tech, you can miss the bigger picture: connecting with people in the digital age. Your agents, employees and business partners have different expectations than in the past, and that’s due to the digital environment we now live, work and communicate in. Digital strategy has to take this into consideration. Instead of a replacement for relationship building, tech is best when used to uncover the better ways to connect and customize that connection.

Barrier #3: Converting Through Digital Interactions Alone

Your digital strategy only truly works if it makes your customers happy, right? If customer satisfaction goes down, you’re not really making progress, even if your contact center is operating in a high tech way. Since there are so many digital channels your customers are using, it can feel like the best way to spend your marketing budget is on more digital transactions. This is counterintuitive, though. Your digital strategy should leverage technology to help both your agents and your customers while leaving enough room for live, person-to-person communication.

How have you created a digital strategy that puts your customers first? Tell us in the comments.