CX Strategies that IT Must Target

    CX strategies

    As enterprises get increasingly digital, CIOs also need to work on business issues like enhancing customer experiences. AI and Data analytics can help the company’s customer experience strategy and fuel revenue for digital transformation.

    Enhancing the customer experience has become a significant business issue that the managing boards expect the IT departments to work on. According to a KPMG survey, over 90% of CIOs believe that the way customer data is used and managed by them, it will soon become as important as services and products for attracting customers.

    Experts also believe that customer experience might matter more than the product and the price of it as consumers these days are looking for hassle-free and personalized customer experiences. This has made it essential for businesses to be available round-the-clock and provide real-time service. Customer experience (CX) technologies can help.

    Gartner has estimated that by 2020, 25% of customer service interactions will involve AI. According to experts, organizations are already embracing the next-generation technologies that are utilizing apps, APIs, and integrations that drive efficiency with reduced waiting times by 35%. Currently, only 15% of enterprises use AI for customer experience.

    It is always crucial to focus on the benefits rather than the technologies. Technology-led initiatives do result in pilots in search of solutions to a problem. Experts think that a focus on benefits is the most important as most of the customers are not interested in a VR application from a brand and aren’t yet disappointed if a company doesn’t have a voice-experience. For conversational interfaces to help customers who want to avoid your site’s navigation and calling, chatbots are the answer.

    For CIOs to identify technologies to focus on it is critical to look at the existing services and the improvements needed, as well as the technologies that can deliver value to address those issues. To enhance customer experience, technology leaders must ensure that there is a faster problem resolution, intelligent online interactions to save customers’ time and that there is more information for the customers to build confidence in their decisions.

    These changes often demand AI-infused interactions, robust data integration and even augmented reality (AR) features to see the products.

    Chatbots help with scaling and can handle simple questions for human agents to focus on complex issues. Companies who have integrated AI chatbots can process more than five times the requests from customers as compared to their competitors who do not have the tech. According to a report from Gartner, a ‘high-effort’ experience makes 96% of customers turn to the competition. Experts also warn that to succeed, virtual agents and chatbots need to be readily accessible and have to be delivered naturally as part of customer experience.

    Customers don’t want to repeat themselves when they are transferred to a different department or an individual. Experts believe that for CIOs, it is crucial to identify how silos across the business and departments can be broken down to achieve a single customer view as well as a seamless support experience. This might also require connecting line of business systems like ERP, CRM, and customer loyalty programs. Since the chatbot is only as good as the knowledge it possesses, some companies also have over 30 system integrations feeding into their chatbots.

    The top CX always is not about CX tech or point channel tech. According to the Arm Treasure Data State of the Customer Journey report, almost 50% of enterprises struggle to get insights from the marketing data because it is stuck in siloes. The same number of CIOs is also not tracking what marketing is working for their company.

    Companies with the help of ML-powered analytics must dig deeper into how customers are using their applications and determine that patterns that lead to successful conversions.