Long-term customer behavior changes and COVID have placed pressure on organizations to continue to deliver great customer service with increasingly stretched resources. Customer experience management (CXM) is a critical part of the solution to mitigating these problems. By putting customer satisfaction at the top of our priorities, we can enhance many important business metrics.
For example, most financial services companies report massive increases in customer call volume since COVID began changing customer behaviors in 2020. At the same time, working from home has reduced agent productivity, subtracting from the number of customer interaction events agents can perform.
While those gaps have closed a bit as teams have gotten used to the “new normal,” call center leaders and everyone focused on delivering customer experience must identify ways to improve organizational productivity and efficiency through optimized customer experience management (CXM.) This brief post outlines some of the technologies call center leaders are now implementing to improve both CX and internal operations.
CXM and Business Process Automation
Business process automation (BPA) refers to finding ways to automate common tasks. Some automation may be customer-facing, while other enhancements may be behind the scenes, out of sight for the customer. Automation relates to digitizing more and more processes across the organization.
Using the Contact Center as an Example
Many leaders start their BPA efforts examining data on the most common agent tasks. Then they study the workflow for each and determine if there are ways to re-engineer the customer experience more broadly. Many also create a customer journey map for the contact center touchpoints, in conjunction with mapping of other channels as well. Net promoter score data can also play an important role in defining a customer experience strategy because it identifies acute pain points for existing customers — bottlenecks that may be affecting customer loyalty.
Some of the key benefits of call center BPA are:
- Reducing call volumes and average handle time (AHT) so that agents can meet customer needs more quickly and efficiently
- Automation of error-prone repetitive tasks like data entry by delivering digital experiences that meet or exceed customer expectations
- Enhancing first call resolution (FCR) to enhance both customer acquisition and customer retention
- Improving employee experience: by focusing on value-added tasks that help ensure a truly great customer experience
Automation often benefits multiple customer relationship channels including live calls, online support, and in-app experiences. In fact, many of the best CX automation initiatives are interoperable, so they create a streamlined commonality across every customer touchpoint. Plus, the availability of great individual customer data can help you deliver more personalized interactions across your organization.
Popular Customer Experience Management Tactics
A number of new digital technologies are helping to drive dramatic CXM strategy improvements:
- Cobrowsing/Content Sharing: Customers can get lost or distracted when asked to take actions via email, on web pages, or in apps. Co-browsing and content sharing leverage the customer’s cellphone to share links and files. This sharing can dramatically shorten average call time, improve compliance, and deliver more accurate data. All these improvements can have a positive effect on brand loyalty.
- Visual IVR: Offers the customer the option of receiving a link to a form-based visual IVR path instead of wading through endless audio menus. By delivering an application to the customer’s smartphone, you empower them to more easily get what they need.
- Video Chat: Enables callers and agents to see one another, ensuring improved experience and faster resolution.
- Secure Data Collection: Masks customer data entry so that key steps like submission of payment information can be input securely on a call to a remote team member.
- Templated Form Builders: Powerful tools that create simple forms for specific purposes. Many teams create forms to speed customers to frequently requested information or to automate content submissions, like checking balances or uploading photos for insurance claims. The best forms can be deployed online, mobile web, apps, and contact center dashboards.
- e-Sign: When agents can send and receive e-sign form directly via the user’s smartphone, efficiency grows markedly.
Robotic Process Automation and CXM
With Robotic Process Automation or RPA, automated chatbots handle common tasks for customers without having them having to pick up the phone. These are an increasingly popular element in a CXM strategy. Call volume drops, and customers get answers faster. Many companies are now employing such chatbots as a core element of a customer behavior roadmap.
When automated chatbots were first introduced, the technology was quite primitive and the user experience often embarrassing for financial services companies. The technology lacked the finesse and specificity to deliver valuable personalized interactions. But times have changed, and today’s chatbots can accurately answer lots of customer questions. Many companies are finding that they can even contribute to creating more loyal customers.
Take the Next Steps for Great Experiences
Lots of companies start BPA by identifying one or two key initiatives with the greatest potential for improving customer satisfaction.
As you look for technologies to help address those opportunities, recognize that BPA is a constantly changing landscape. A new category of solution providers, “No-Code” CX Automation Platforms, focuses on delivering all of the above technologies and more, using a single tool. At FiCX, we’re focused on providing the most versatile platform for customer process automation and CXM available. “No-code” means that developing and implementing experiences and forms does not require a developer or coding. Instead, anyone can create simple or complex experiences and deploy them anywhere, without taxing the IT or dev teams.
How FiCX Can Help You Deliver More Robust Customer Experience
FiCX is the world’s first “No-Code” CX Automation Platform. Our platform and solutions help business leaders address the many opportunities to improve and optimize user experience without requiring changes to underlying systems and processes. A “No-Code” CX Automation Platform simply adds a powerful customer experience layer onto existing processes. We help leading companies execute their CX strategies by offering a full range of digital automation capabilities that deliver interoperable digital experiences. We also seamlessly connect to customer relationship management (CRM) and other systems and tool sets so that you can digitize the tech stack you already use.
With FiCX as a service provider, you can digitize any customer-facing experience and make it available anywhere customers interact with your brand. Additionally, our unified platform offers full analytics so you can gain customer insight that can empower future initiatives for your customer experience management program. For more information about FiCX, visit our website or request a demo. Experie
