How To Offer An Exceptional Customer Experience (CX)?

In a world of infinite data where our every move is monitored, why aren’t we greeted by name when we call a call center? Why should we constantly repeat ourselves? Why isn’t customer service more proactive?

A genuine understanding of customers—where they are, what they want, and how they want it drives exceptional CX.

How Do You Deliver An Exceptional Customer Experience?

1) Prioritizing The “Customer Everywhere”

“The Everything Customer” is a term coined by Gartner to illustrate modern customers who want to maximize their technology and the brands they access through it, all at once. Thus, consumers almost always start their service journey outside the reach of a company, doing an online search or visiting their social networks, according to LocaliQ.

2) Knowing What The KPIs Measure

Why are KPIs like standard CX measures of Average Handle Time (AHT) when they are driven by performance and cost? These aspects matter, but to whom? Exceptional CX focuses on what matters most to the customer. For this reason, it is important to define the KPIs that are really convenient to measure.

The best indicators of CX success are difficult for companies to measure, such as empathy, understanding, and tone of voice.

3) IVRs And Chatbots Are New In a Self-Service World

The best way to assess an organization’s self-service is to use it as a hypothetical customer. Suppose a user initiates a conversation using proactive chat, that is, a pop-up chat window that appears on a website with a message such as “How can we help you?” and starts a conversation like:

Customer: “I want to know more about a product.”

Company: “Hello! We are very happy that you have contacted our company. Most likely you are looking for something in particular. Whether it’s technical support, information about products or services, we have what you need. What can we help you today?”

The warning signs are clear: lack of context and a response that forces the customers to repeat themselves. Small changes can be made here to have a big impact, like limiting the length of chatbot responses to one or two sentences and prioritizing customer value when writing copy for your chat interface.

How To Create a More Intelligent and Intuitive Self-Service?

• Asking: what are clients trying to solve for themselves that they can’t? This will help understand user intent.
• Being completely transparent about any limitations or issues with self-service.
• Easily launching an intelligent bot trained to understand the different intentions of customers.

4) Rethinking The Entire Agent Experience (AX)

After searching for answers on their own, interacting with a bot, and waiting to speak to a human, the last thing a customer wants is to talk to an agent who’s busy with administrative stuff and doesn’t know their background. We can find three problems: 

1. a) Agents Do Not Have The Right Technology To Help Customers Effectively

There are solutions that help agents work smarter and faster, from real-time guidance (information that automatically appears on the screen to inform the next step, etc.) to omnichannel attention that allows customers to connect with agents through your favorite channel.

Many of these solutions are simple and address some of today’s biggest CX issues, such as customers having to repeat their query over and over and agents feeling like they’re having a hard time resolving user issues.

1. b) Agents Are Buried Under Organizational Silos

Different business units solve different parts of a customer problem, all of which play a crucial role in the customer journey. These units often use different tools that prevent communication and data insights from flowing freely throughout the organization. Therefore, departments have to work together to solve what customers see as a single problem. Organizational silos are obstacles in what should be a seamless end-to-end service journey.

1. c) Agents Are Not Free To Work Autonomously

Customer service employees are capable of skillful and creative problem solving, but they need the freedom to do so. Agent training needs to be reassessed in line with CX-focused measures and empowered. To create real human connections, agents have to be real and human.