Customer Experience (CX) has become the prime competitive differentiator, there’s no argument about that. However implementing and delivering a consistently better customer experience does have its challenges.
The challenges are no longer convincing stakeholders of its importance. The challenges are human, cultural ones such as aligning around a shared vision, embedding customer experience thinking across departments and teams, adopting new ways of working and embracing the right technology.
Why do some CX projects fail and others succeed?
A Gartner online survey conducted among 289 respondents in charge of CX projects found several common causes of CX project failures:
- poor overall direction and lack of senior management sponsorship
- failure to fix issues with business processes that damage the CX
- the lack of a customer-centric approach to business
- poor collaboration and coordination across the organisation.
In contrast, the drivers of successful CX projects include
- the improved use of customer feedback
- inspiring and consistent leadership
- improved business processes
- multi-channel management
- good collaboration and coordination across the whole organisation.
As technology plays a central role in half of CX projects (according to chief customer officers), it can determine if someone becomes, or even remains, a customer. So choosing the right technology solution, and provider, is paramount.
Technology for the CX hub
As your Contact Centre teams have emerged to become a key component and valuable asset of the new marketing differentiator, CX; it’s vital that they are equipped with leading edge technology that takes the customer experience to a new level.
Contact centre teams need cloud based technology that offers:
- multi-channel contact handling technologies deployed at each inbound answer point
- a flexible and sophisticated IVR platform to offer customers self-service options through voice calls or mobile phone interactions
- screen-popped customer or company data displayed within the desktop so the team members have all the information they need instantly
- skills based routing to ensure customers are connected with the right staff member; based on customer selection, service levels, staff skills, or other metrics
- a system which provides easy to use call recording to aid with compliance requirements and training needs
Contact centre team leaders need technology that provides:
- instant alerts about issues impacting key metrics such as service levels, to aid quick action and bring performance back on track
- real time dashboards to gain instant oversight of a range of key metrics across the organisation’s inbound and outbound queues
- customisable historical reports that display the drivers having the most effect on peak contact centre performance
Choose a technology partner, not a vendor
To ensure contact centre teams fully embrace new technology and do consistently deliver a much improved level of CX, the technology needs to be customised to suit the organisation’s processes and systems, and work from day one.
Many “out of the box” solutions are limited and can’t be tweaked or integrated effectively with other databases.
A technology partner (as distinct from a vendor) will work closely with all stakeholders to understand every process, system and service level requirement; and provide a customised solution which operates exactly as needed. The right technology partner will test and refine to ensure it meets all needs, and train all team members so that the moment it goes live, it truly does help the contact centre deliver a better CX. They will also provide ongoing live local support by the inhouse experts who built the system and know how to get the highest return on investment for each organisation.
The challenge of implementing impressive CX starts with the company culture. Commitment must permeate every corner of the business; and technology must support, not thwart, efforts to deliver better CX.
Premier Operates as a Technology Partner
Premier Contact Point is a world class, cloud-based contact centre solution that is fully customisable to suit every type of business requirement. It is also supported by the inhouse experts who built the solution and customise it for every client. Contact us today for a demo to see if it’s what you need in your contact centre.
