Changing the way we interact with our customers is no small task. To do so, we need to understand customer experience (CX), why it matters, and how digital transformation can enhance that experience. Learn how a three-part framework can help you focus your efforts and resources toward customer experience transformation.
Why customer experience matters.
What do your customers experience when they do business with you? Do you know how they feel about that experience at every point of interaction?
Customers today have more choices than ever before. And it’s easier than ever to share their experiences — positive or not — with everyone they know. As you can imagine, achieving positive customer experience is crucial and can be the difference between business success and business failure.
What is the connection between digital transformation and customer experience?
Reaching that positive customer experience is also trickier than it used to be. Everyday, customers have more and more options for engaging with us, and ideally their experience should be consistent whether they’re walking through the door or chatting with a service agent online. That’s why digital transformation often goes hand-in-hand with efforts to improve customer experience.
Integrating digital technology into every aspect of business can be critical to improving customer experience — in a process often called service experience transformation. In fact, “digital solutions are being adopted up to 25 times faster than before the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to a McKinsey article titled, “Innovation Through the Digital Disruption of Customer Service.”
Analysts expect that up to 80 percent of customer interactions could move to digital as more and more businesses embrace both digital transformation and customer experience transformation.
What is customer service transformation?
Customer service transformation or customer experience transformation, then, means streamlining all of your business processes with the goal of improving customer experience at every touchpoint. If this sounds like a major undertaking, it is. But it doesn’t have to be intimidating. In fact, considering just three customer experience fundamentals can help focus your transformation efforts:
Fundamental 1: Meet your customers where they are.
Customers demand convenience. This makes customer experience transformation exciting, because it empowers you and your organization to meet your customers where they are. They want to be able to reach you from any device, from any location, at any time of the day or night.
“Meeting your customers” means thinking beyond traditional customer service channels and considering the technologies your customers are already using — like web chat, video calls, and remote troubleshooting. Transforming your service experience and building an omnichannel customer experience architecture enables you to make this possible.
Fundamental 2: Focus on fast, contextual service.
Effective customer service transformation should be easy for your customers and your agents. An example is using innovative technology like StreemCore® AR-powered video to literally see a situation just as the customer does.
Engaging through a contextual, rich, and visual experience eliminates confusion, overcomes jargon barriers, and even decreases the length of the interaction. If the goal is for customer service to be faster, easier, and more accessible, innovative technology like AR-video could be the key ingredient.
True omnichannel customer experiences emphasize integration and context. This ensures that customers receive a consistent experience no matter the channel and agents are able to address and solve problems without repeat inquiries, multiple site visits, or treating customer needs generically.
Fundamental 3: Connect data in real time.
Research by Salesforce suggests that 63 percent of consumers expect businesses to know their unique needs and expectations, while 76 percent of B2B buyers expect the same thing. Organized and usable data is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.
Perhaps the most exciting outcome of customer experience transformation is finally being able to meet these needs, collect accurate data, and connect key data insights to the customer journey.
Paying attention to and acting upon that information can help shape future customer experiences. For example, using innovative technologies that automatically sync with CRMs can provide consistent, seamless experiences, which is a vast improvement over the customer service phone trees that customers endured in the past.
As you build out your customer experience transformation journey map, use this framework to concentrate your efforts and resources on the most important factors in improving customer experience. If you’re ready to begin:
- Check out our ebook on Remote Innovation.
- Visit our Customer Experience hub.
- See the impact of AR video tools on your business
