Every year, consumers become more impatient and more likely to switch brands for better experiences. To win and keep them, you have to go above and beyond. With the advances in AI and cloud technologies, companies today have tremendous opportunities to surge ahead with next-generation customer experience.
There is a new standard in customer experience called CXi—Customer Experience Interactions. This includes a more sophisticated approach for personalising customer journeys that is only possible by harnessing AI and massive amounts of customer data across every touch point: physical, digital, self-service, and traditional contact center.
The new standard for hyper-personalised customer journeys requires real-time intelligence across every interaction. Offering a lot of digital channels for customers isn’t personal enough. Now you must give customers the ability to move effortlessly between self-service and agent-assisted digital channels for faster, more convenient experiences.
In order to scale personalisation at every step along each individual customer’s personal journey, you need the following:
- Engage customers at the very beginning—at the first moment of need. NICE’s research shows that this is long before they contact you or even visit your website. It starts with an online search.
- Prioritise smarter, more intelligent self-service that delivers quick answers to the majority of needs and saves customer time. Faster service—instant gratification—builds customer loyalty.
- Leverage AI to understand customers needs and intents in order to personalize each interaction at every step of the journey.
- Delight customers with proactive communications in ways that are only possible if you anticipate individual needs at just the right moment in time.
- Seamlessly transition customers for more complex service needs to informed and prepared agents. Empowered agents who have real-time interaction guidance and in-depth knowledge management will make that possible.
Acceleration is happening in so many areas –
- Rapidly changing consumer expectations,
- Demand for better digital experiences and faster self-service, and
- The opportunity to create a truly connected customer journey across all physical and digital touch points.
The companies that win now and over the long haul are those who understand how to harness these advancements to delight their customers with extraordinary customer experiences.
Personalisation isn’t just nice-to-have: 57% of customers have stopped buying because a competitor provided a better experience. Customers expect omnichannel personalisation where engagements are tailored based on their past interactions. Here is an example from the transportation industry of proactive communication.
The company understood that travel delays made customers angry and frustrated. Prefacing their customary satisfaction survey with an acknowledgement and apology for the service problems, the company showed they heard the customer, and mitigated escalating anger further by addressing in-progress actions.
According to Harvard Business Review, “companies that have adopted different approaches to customer journey and experience practices have seen more than six times greater growth in year-on-year profitability. With many exciting technology developments, consumer expectations at an all-time high, and competition on all sides, we are at the next great disruption in customer experience. Reinventing customer journeys with a hyper-personalised approach is the next leap ahead.”
Every few years everyone talks about reinventing whereas the companies that succeed over the long term are those who are constantly reinventing; those who can harness the potential of the latest technologies and apply them in new and exciting ways to create great customer experiences. The companies that lose ground are those who either don’t develop the muscles for constant innovation or lack the courage to do so.