Happy Friday! We’re bringing you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at cloud call centres’ ROI increase; new research into post-pandemic company culture; how Zoom has upgraded your remote working experience; and e-commerce personalisation tactics.
Key news
- To round off August, global consumer confidence has seen its further descent. Ipsos’ Global Consumer Confidence Index for August has fallen by 0.8 point since July. It is currently at its lowest point since April 2021.
- UK barristers are planning an indefinite strike from the 5th September. They are protesting underfunding and a lack of wage growth. Industrial and railway workers have also committed to strikes this year because of wage concerns.
- Medallia have now closed its acquisition of Mindful after being in talks for months, and working together closely since 2021.
- Instagram is now being accused of imitating the candid photo app, BeReal. This imitation game is being called ‘Candid Challenges’ on Instagram. This comes off the back of claims that Instagram’s feed is becoming a carbon copy of TikTok. Why though? Are they merely acting on the latest trending social media strategy to stay relevant? Or something deeper?
New Forrester study has found 213% ROI on the Five9 platform
New Forrester research has found deploying the Five9 platform can see a return on investment (ROI) of up to 213%. Companies that utilise Five9 will move their contact centre to the online cloud and deploy the help of AI solutions.
“Contact centres are mission critical especially during an economic slowdown. The study shows that contact centres that make the move to the cloud and invest in AI can not only see results in triple digit ROI and payback periods measured in months. They can also deliver improved experiences to their customers and employees resulting in greater brand loyalty.”
–Rowan Trollope, Five9 CEO
The study, conducted by Forrester, interviewed four of Five9’s enterprise customers across different industries to understand the benefits, costs, and risks. They found overwhelming advantages, but the top one being a net present value (NPV) of $18.77 million when implementing the solutions of the cloud provider.
CX is increasingly implementing more digital solutions. This, amongst other factors, is to keep up with our tech-advanced world, and to ensure frictionless, time-saving strategies, for both customers and employees.
Considering a switch to cloud solutions and utilising AI tools for contact centres is a consideration companies should take in line with the ROI stats found, and the previously mentioned benefits. All a company wants is the best CX possible, so any chance to better this is a great new opportunity.
With intelligent cloud contact centres, your organisation could see:
- Automation of repetitive tasks to save time and money
- Reduced handle time
- Money saved by retiring on-site environments
- Accelerated training
All these factors could improve CX, EX, and, of course, increase your ROI. Are you going to rethink your contact centre strategies?
Qualtrics research has found a divide in company culture
A new study from Qualtrics has found that there is a great divide in the impact of the pandemic on company culture. Half of European employee participants in the study (France, Germany and the UK) found the pandemic left a positive effect on their company. But what about the remaining half?
Those respondents reporting a positive impact have remarked on the increase in open and honest communication within their organisations. In the aftermath of the pandemic’s changes to working conditions, employees have felt that they were being listened to and understood by their companies in conjunction with better communication. Having managers who are reported to be effective listeners and personally care for their workers will undoubtedly make for a positive working culture.
The study also found that this increase in effective and empathetic listening and communication was a direct result of the move to digital channels to keep teams informed. Where organisations could no longer rely on physical togetherness, keeping in touch where possible and being more understanding was a huge new step.
However, we’ve found that this study was split in half. Where there was a reported positive working culture from better communication and empathy, the study found morale and a sense of belonging were suffering simultaneously.
Some of the negative pandemic-caused changes include:
- More division amongst co-workers
- Low employee morale (this was felt more by those in the UK at 19% – with Germany at 12% and France at 10%)
- Less than a fifth felt a good work/life balance
- Some employees felt that there was no real concern for their wellbeing in the workplace
Focusing on an employee experience that takes the positives in the study to improve on areas that were lacking is how we could move forwards. Employees should, and want to, feel valued and supported in their organisation in order to boost morale and work ethic. Employee retention is critical to the organisation’s CX and its overall success – but it can only occur where employees feel their presence being appreciated.
“The mission for leaders now is to have the right listening in place, at the right time and acting on that information to ensure they are keeping their employees engaged.”
–Phil Pringle, Employee Experience Specialist at Qualtrics
New Zoom updates to enhance your digital meetings
The cloud-based video conferencing service, Zoom, has seen exponential growth in the recent adoption of remote working. Their latest updates may enhance your digital meetings and webinars, especially for language barriers and accessibility needs.
These are the important features to note:
- In a bid to protect users’ data and private information with external, untrustworthy users, Zoom has implemented a new notification message box which will inform users of the presence of others from outside the organisation.
- New accessibility efforts include real-time transcriptions of a Zoom call. This is a great advancement towards the inclusion of those workers who are non-English speakers or have hearing impairments. This will also be beneficial to refer to a text view throughout the conversation for those who prefer it.
- To further aid accessibility and overcome language barriers, automated captions and translated captions are now available in 12 languages for both free and paid Zoom accounts. Any user present in a meeting can enable this without disrupting a meeting by asking the host to do so.
- When scheduling a meeting, language interpretation can be enabled of up to 25 custom languages.
- Meeting hosts can broadcast their microphone audio to all individual breakout rooms.
- The ‘Automated Next Steps’ feature can automatically identify the next steps for stakeholders to take after a call.
- Contact centre administrators can now manage all recordings.
- Integrations with third-party chatbots – Google Dialogflow and Amazon lex – have been implemented to provide self-service
These are all great new updates that can significantly upgrade remote working and digital engagement between co-workers. The advancements made in accessibility functions, especially, are an important step. This aims to include all workers in their digital conversations by any means possible.
AI tools now used for bespoke experiences on the e-commerce market
UK AI company Faculty has partnered with customer advocacy platform Mention Me. Brands including FatFace are already utilising this new partnership, and using the new AI tool which will deliver truly personalised offers and experiences.
When using this tool, AI will determine and predict how likely a customer is to interact with a referral offer by assessing customer profiles. In response to this, brands can adapt their strategies accordingly.
This enhances the customer experience by targeting customers in the post-purchase phase to show them relevant offers based off their own personal profile. This will deliver bespoke experiences based on unique first-party data and customer insights.
“Based on a decade’s worth of referral data, it empowers brands to serve highly targeted experiences across their marketing stack to turn every customer into a loyal brand fan. It’s the first step in a truly disruptive journey towards making referral a core marketing channel that provides indispensable advocacy insights.”
–Roy Robinson, Chief Product Officer at Mention Me
Creating this personalised purchase journey will aid brand loyalty and customer retention. Without this tool, customers would have continued to receive generic offers regardless of their likelihood to engage with them. This makes for a disengaged customer base that may seek out an experience that is more personally suited to them and their needs.
With e-commerce on the rise, online brands are truly upping their game to keep their customers engaged. Personalised marketing is proving to have a great effect alongside the help of AI technology.
CX is crucial for e-commerce success. Why not drive this forward by tailoring the customer purchase journey? This will keep them captivated in your brand.
Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!