The Urgency of AI in CX

THE

URGENCY OF

AI IN CX

FRESH THINKING

THE

pundits have discussed, assessed, and pontificated the rise of Artificial Intelligence and bots for years already. The pros, cons, risks, expense, and the dreaded C-H-A-N-G-E. As it turns out, the time for thinking about it has come and gone--the time to act is here.

Customers are sophisticated. They prefer to resolve everything themselves. They do not want to have to speak to a person unless they absolutely must. In fact, according to recent Gartner research, a staggering 81% of customers across all industries attempt to resolve matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative. Hence, the overwhelming urgency for exceptional self-service. It’s simply no longer optional.

Customers don’t care about your technology.

The ‘how’ is your issue. They just want what they want, when they want it, and they aren’t interested in the details. So, as you figure out how to attack that challenge, here are some things to keep in mind:

1. THE URGENCY OF AI IN CX

‘‘

A staggering 81% of customers across all industries attempt to resolve matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative.

DO

DON’T

Let bots and humans work together.

Put a bot in a silo -- no matter how great a bot you think you bought.

Send data the bot collected to the human with the interaction.

Make customers repeat themselves. Ever.

Not even once.

Pull in experts from across your business to solve the customer’s problem.

Transfer them all over creation hoping someone else will deal.

Invest wisely.

Cut corners.

Act.

Wait.

Pick the right CX technology that offers seamless self-service and intelligent bot assistance.

Think you can front-end your CX with a simple IVR and be done.

ONE

‘‘

“The battleground for superiority is no longer category dominance, it is customer engagement.”

3. THE URGENCY OF AI IN CX

of the biggest mistakes organizations make is rushing to beat the problem. This translates into investing too hastily in often inadequate technology that causes the opposite of the intended result. For example, if you buy and implement a self-service solution to take some load off your agents, yes, you will be cutting expenses associated with staffing, and giving customers their desired DIY service ... but what if the solution you chose too quickly isn’t good enough for your business in the long term -- then what happens? Customers probably call in, don’t get the support they need so they disconnect, and then call in again hoping for a different result -- increasing your call volume -- exactly what you did not want to do.

Customers get frustrated. They yell at the bad IVR and probably at the human, too, which stinks for morale, turnover, customer and employee satisfaction, and repeat business.

Take the time to understand your customers, what they want from you, what your own environment looks like, the limitations of your technology, your employees, and their skill sets.

Accenture says it best: “The battleground for superiority is no longer category dominance, it is customer engagement.” So, what are you going to do about it? We have some ideas.

1. GET A GOOD BOT.

Basics. Do the research. See what your choices are.

Figure out what bot is going to make the most sense for your current environment and also for where you see your organization and your CX strategy going. You want a bot that’s going to work as an extension of your human team, giving customers a personal, high-quality, efficient experience. You want a bot that’s going to do its best to help your customers fully complete a transaction or resolve an issue (which is exactly what they want!). And, of course, it has to be within the budget, easy to implement, and super smart!

2. START WITH THE EASY STUFF. What are your most straightforward yet voluminous interactions? Do people need to schedule appointments, change service times, or check an account status? Put your new bot on the road to success by starting with your most common interactions. Make the bot’s first job to take over the

4. THE URGENCY OF AI IN CX

simple stuff -- any interaction that doesn’t actually need a human touch to be stellar. And then, give the bot access to all the information it needs to be the best automatic problem-solver your customers never knew they’d love.

3. SYNC UP WITH HUMANS. We know the bots don’t get it right all the time and some customers actually do want to engage with a human, although that number is becoming smaller and smaller. To keep that demographic of customers happy, you need a bot that knows when it’s time to call for backup. Blending unassisted service with assisted service in a seamless way is the point where so many CX executions break down. In most cases, customers are forced to switch channels and all the information exchanged in the previous interaction does not travel with them. As a customer, there is nothing quite as irritating as this. But, a well-built communications platform with a built-in bot will automatically deliver the consistency your customers demand and, frankly, deserve.

4. MEASURE AND TWEAK.

No stellar CX strategy or implementation is ever really “done” so don’t kid yourself. To get it right in your customers’ eyes, you should be thinking of CX as a living, breathing, evolving thing. Accenture says, “With good design and implementation, we have repeatedly seen more than 80% of chat sessions resolved by a chatbot, which would have otherwise been handled by a human in a chat session or call.” That’s a great statistic and something everyone should strive for. But, be honest, if you can offload 10% or 15% of what you are now paying humans to handle, isn’t that a win? Yes, of course it is. Learn from that win, isolate what’s going well, replicate that, change what’s not working, and keep going. Then, get to 20% and 50% and 80% from there.

Delivering even a better-than-average customer experience takes a lot of work. So if you really want your business to live its best life, you’ve got to seriously commit to the process. The upside is there are leaders out there to hold your hand, technology to do the dirty work, and customers just waiting to fall madly in love with you.

5. THE URGENCY OF AI IN CX

edify.cx

About Edify Labs, Inc. Edify connects businesses with customers and employees with each other. The company’s Business Communications as a Service (BCaaS) platform, Huddle, is the only one uniting unified communications (UC), contact center (CC) and communications platform (API) functionality in a single, cloud-native software solution that lets users move seamlessly among channels within one conversation. Edify removes all the risk of using its cloud-based platform with five free users forever, global availability, real-time redundancy, usage-based pricing, and a 100% SLA uptime guarantee.