Important: customer expectations are constantly changing. The last good experience customers have with companies and brands in general is always the new norm for them. That makes always offering a good experience even more important.
66%
of consumers state that the experience is as important as the products and services.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
1. Contact automation
Automating customer contacts saves a lot of time for organizations. For example, by immediately routing phones, chats and emails to employees with the right expertise. That is something that customers appreciate. A contact center application also lets companies measure the effectiveness of such routings to make appropriate adjustments as a function of time and knowledge. It also lets them provide training on appropriate topics.
Automation can also be done with bots. Bots can be used to provide customers with answers to simple questions faster without contacting a real life agent. This gives contact center employees more time to answer the remaining - more difficult - questions and solve them there and then. In other words, employees can have more specialized and qualitative conversations with personal attention for the customer. This type of automation increases the quality of all interactions.
Anyone can introduce a bot, but not everyone can come up with a good one
At the basis of successful automation is a clear view of what questions the bot can answer. In this regard, contact center employees play an important role: a bot will improve more quickly based on their input, such as identifying frequently asked questions, or questions that are not correctly treated by the bot and hence are transferred to agents.
Pitfalls when implementing bots:
- Insufficient customer data
- No integration with other channels
- Not enough employees to answer the questions left unresolved by the bot
- Employees without sufficient expertise
- No measurement and continuous improvement plan after launch
“
Automation enables more human contact.”
In an integrated platform, employees can smoothly collaborate with each other to give customers the most satisfactory answer and solution. The combination with artificial intelligence (AI) opens the door to the automation of contact moments.
The importance of integrated data and channels
Integrated data and channels are the best way to meet customer expectations. In particular, customers expect a personalized approach:
- quick response
- recognition of who they are
- information about which products or services they are buying
- information about what communication has already taken place
- proactive advice
- taking into account their satisfaction level
86%
of your customers want to know how you use their information.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
Customer data are especially crucial to companies today. Data must provide a 360° view of the customer: which channels the customer contacted, when, with what questions, complaints or comments, satisfaction score, and what actions such as purchases, reservations ... they have performed. Phone numbers, email addresses, social media profiles ... help companies record all customer interactions. The most accurate and quality customer data for automation can be gathered through an audit that analyses the available and necessary data.
Integrate data, channels and applications
A company’s goals and IT architecture determine the ways in which quality customer data can be made accessible for different applications. Access for all departments and employees who encounter customers and the security of customer data is the basis.
One of the most forward-looking solutions is a data platform in the cloud. The data analysis that happens there is much more effective than the data analysis that each sales department, customer service or other department can do for itself. That allows new patterns to be discovered such as recurring complaints after price increases. These can be addressed, for example, through proactive communication about why, how and when.
Companies can gain an overall picture of each customer individually using integrated data analysis based on a complete customer history. But in this process, not all possible data should be available in every application. Only the data that is necessary, taking into account GDPR that protects privacy-sensitive data.
2. Access to data
2. Access to customer data
3. Contact center in the cloud
4. Empathic and proactive approach
5. Customer experience by design
5 trends in customer interaction
1. Contact automation
Customer data will continue to grow, and AI will continue to evolve. Those two evolutions can only be accommodated with the flexibility and scalability of public cloud platforms. A contact center in the cloud allows for seasonal peaks and flexible scaling.
Switching to a contact center in the cloud can also provide a cost advantage. Taking out a pay-per-use subscription, for example, based on the staffing of a contact center in off-peak and peak periods. The cost of IT resources and data usage is then higher during that peak and lower in off-peak periods. The cloud makes providing maximum capacity for an entire year unnecessary. A travel agency just before and during the vacation period is a good example of this. Infrastructure management also no longer needs to be organized internally.
By switching to the cloud, companies and enterprises are immediately ready to use data services and AI. AI is gradually maturing and is already truly self-learning for operations that are not overly complex. There are two ways for organizations to use AI in their contact center:
1. To assist employees.
For example: AI can make contact routing even more intelligent, based on open questions, personality and channel preference of customers. AI can also suggest structured answers to respond more quickly and easily to customers.
2. To analyze and anticipate.
For example: AI can more accurately predict, based on customer behavior, what the next best actions for a customer would be, and also which customers are at risk of falling into the dropout zone - known as churn. Such customers can then be proactively approached with a better offer by companies.
In both cases, the AI software needs a lot of data to learn to recognize patterns. The most flexible place to host growing data today is the cloud.
3. Contact center in the cloud
COVID-19 has elevated my expectations of companies' digital capabilities
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
80%
65%
Business buyer
Consumer
Better customer experience leads to greater loyalty
The more qualitative an experience with a channel, the more customers will use it. The experiences with a contact center and other channels such as websites and customer portals largely determine the overall customer experience and commitment to a brand and company.
Five trends in customer interaction
What do customers expect? Quality contact via a user-friendly channel. For companies' internal organization, that means making the right combination of channels, automation, resource management, knowledge and insights.
These five trends for contact centers improve the customer experience:
- Contact automation
- Access to customer data
- Contact center in the cloud
- Empathic and proactive approach
- Customer experience by design
5 trends for contactcenters for a better customer experience
In 2020, the number of contacts via remote channels rose to 71%, compared to 29% physical contacts. Customers most frequently use the phone, website and e-mail. The channel that the customer chooses depends on their question or problem. Five trends for contact centers help companies meet high customer expectations.
Moreover, not every channel offers the same experience. There is a difference between synchronous media such as phone, chat and messaging apps and asynchronous media such as website, email and a customer portal. Each channel also has different characteristics and customers have different expectations for each channel.
To deploy the right channel at the right time, companies must anticipate the questions based on previous contacts made with a customer. By combining self-service via a customer portal with the channel the customer uses most or used most recently, for example.
From cost to profit
A well-run contact center will make company performance improve in the long run. Engaged employees who achieve empathetic, quality interactions with customers thanks to integrated data and channels create happy, loyal customers. That has a positive effect on revenue and profitability.
That is not all. Customer services contain a wealth of information. Of course, this must flow through so that other departments can improve their products and services and make them more customer-centric.
In this way, customer service can evolve from a cost center to a profitable department or entity. That reduces the additional costs that would otherwise have to be incurred to keep customers and has a positive impact on loyalty and engagement. That in turn makes it easier to attract new customers
5. Customer experience by design
In order to implement a good strategy with a clear definition of what employee and customer experience an organization is and will be offering, it is important to take the following elements into account:
- the current status of the contact center and its way of working
- the future vision of customer interaction
- a timeline for the execution of the strategy
- the existing and future processes, resources and technologies
This global approach only works when companies have access to all the customer interaction data through integrated channels, enough qualitative, relevant data and employees with the right tools and information. This can only succeed with an adapted corporate culture that is supported by the entire company, management first.
Consistent experience
Customers want to be able to start, pick up and complete conversations and transactions in different ways. Depending on the situation they find themselves in, they want to be able to choose their preferred channels.
The challenge here is that they must receive the same answer on every channel. For example, the answer on a website must be the same as the answer from the chatbot.
Data sharing
76% of consumers expect consistent interactions across a company's departments.
54% of consumers say it feels like sales, service and marketing departments do not share information among themselves.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
One in five customers have at least once changed provider after negative experiences with a contact center."
© The House of Contact Centers, 2020
“
Companies are falling short in terms of customer expectations.
4. Data-based empathetic and proactive approach
To strike the right balance between employee and customer experience, customer experience initiatives must be carefully weighed against the value they bring to employees and organizations and the other way around.
New, customer-centric KPIs
Customer data allows optimizing human resource management such as capacity planning and employee coaching, training and development based on new, customer-centric KPIs.
For example:
- Customer effort score or CES – how much effort do customers have to put in to get the right answer?
- Customer satisfaction or Csat – how satisfied are customers?
- Net promoter score or NPS – to what extent do customers recommend a company to their friends and colleagues?
New profiles, needs and expectations
This feedback and knowledge are important. Not least because digitalization has widened the generational gap, created many new customer profiles and customers have new needs and expectations. Such as personalization and contact with people who know what they are talking about.
The lightning-fast evolution of social media also has an impact on customer experiences and engagement. What customers post on Facebook and Instagram, for example, and how companies respond to it, also determines the image of brands.
Customer data also increases employees' empathy. They recognize customers immediately and know what products and services they have. This allows them to anticipate, listen to customers, show understanding and help them.
Today, employees can have a more empathetic interaction with the customer. By the second contact about the same problem, customers may be irritated. When employees start with an apology and show understanding, customers are more open to a solution.
That empathetic approach gives customers more confidence in a brand and a desire to contact again with questions, for example. Proactively asking them a question or making them an offer increases that trust. A bot can also provide customers with an empathetic experience based on data. For this, a company's style and brand perception must be carried through to how, for example, a bot communicates. Evolutions in NLP (natural language processing) mean that conversations with a bot can become increasingly natural.
Satisfied employees = satisfied customers
This empathic approach also has a positive influence on a company's employees. The better they understand that integrated approach and therefore the situation of customers, the more added value they can create. This makes them happier and more engaged.
Research from Forbes and Salesforce shows that customer and staff experiences go hand in hand. Companies should therefore start internally with the experience of employees. This has an immediate effect on customer satisfaction and is a necessary condition for a good customer experience. Because satisfied employees create positive customer experiences. That in turn makes them happier and more loyal.
© Gallup, State of the American Workplace Report, 2017
Companies with engaged employees perform better.
17% higher productivity
20% more sales
21% more profit
© Forbes Insights Research – The Experience Equation, June 2020
Influencing customer versus employee experience.
70% of all managers believe that a better employee experience immediately leads to a better customer experience. Only 33% think it is the other way around.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
EXPECTATION
68% of customers expect brands to empathize with them.
85% of professional customers expect sales to demonstrate an understanding of the needs of their business.
66% of professional customers expect sales to develop solutions rather than pitch products.
REALITY
37% of customers feel that companies do so effectively.
57% of professional customers say sales often do not understand their business sufficiently.
66% of professional customers say most sales interactions focus on products rather than solutions.
5 trends for contactcenters for a better customer experience
In 2020, the number of contacts via remote channels rose to 71%, compared to 29% physical contacts. Customers most frequently use the phone, website and e-mail. The channel that the customer chooses depends on their question or problem. Five trends for contact centers help companies meet high customer expectations.
Better customer experience leads to greater loyalty
The more qualitative an experience with a channel, the more customers will use it. The experiences with a contact center and other channels such as websites and customer portals largely determine the overall customer experience and commitment to a brand and company.
Five trends in customer interaction
What do customers expect? Quality contact via a user-friendly channel. For companies' internal organization, that means making the right combination of channels, automation, resource management, knowledge and insights.
These five trends for contact centers improve the customer experience:
- Contact automation
- Access to customer data
- Contact center in the cloud
- Empathic and proactive approach
- Customer experience by design
COVID-19 has elevated my expectations of companies' digital capabilities
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
80%
65%
Business buyer
Consumer
“
One in five customers have at least once changed provider after negative experiences with a contact center."
© The House of Contact Centers, 2020
1. Contact automation
Automating customer contacts saves a lot of time for organizations. For example, by immediately routing phones, chats and emails to employees with the right expertise. That is something that customers appreciate. A contact center application also lets companies measure the effectiveness of such routings to make appropriate adjustments as a function of time and knowledge. It also lets them provide training on appropriate topics.
Automation can also be done with bots. Bots can be used to provide customers with answers to simple questions faster without contacting a real life agent. This gives contact center employees more time to answer the remaining - more difficult - questions and solve them there and then. In other words, employees can have more specialized and qualitative conversations with personal attention for the customer. This type of automation increases the quality of all interactions.
Anyone can introduce a bot, but not everyone can come up with a good one
At the basis of successful automation is a clear view of what questions the bot can answer. In this regard, contact center employees play an important role: a bot will improve more quickly based on their input, such as identifying frequently asked questions, or questions that are not correctly treated by the bot and hence are transferred to agents.
Pitfalls when implementing bots:
- Insufficient customer data
- No integration with other channels
- Not enough employees to answer the questions left unresolved by the bot
- Employees without sufficient expertise
- No measurement and continuous improvement plan after launch
“
Automation enables more human contact.”
Customer data will continue to grow, and AI will continue to evolve. Those two evolutions can only be accommodated with the flexibility and scalability of public cloud platforms. A contact center in the cloud allows for seasonal peaks and flexible scaling.
Switching to a contact center in the cloud can also provide a cost advantage. Taking out a pay-per-use subscription, for example, based on the staffing of a contact center in off-peak and peak periods. The cost of IT resources and data usage is then higher during that peak and lower in off-peak periods. The cloud makes providing maximum capacity for an entire year unnecessary. A travel agency just before and during the vacation period is a good example of this. Infrastructure management also no longer needs to be organized internally.
By switching to the cloud, companies and enterprises are immediately ready to use data services and AI. AI is gradually maturing and is already truly self-learning for operations that are not overly complex. There are two ways for organizations to use AI in their contact center:
1. To assist employees.
For example: AI can make contact routing even more intelligent, based on open questions, personality and channel preference of customers. AI can also suggest structured answers to respond more quickly and easily to customers.
2. To analyze and anticipate.
For example: AI can more accurately predict, based on customer behavior, what the next best actions for a customer would be, and also which customers are at risk of falling into the dropout zone - known as churn. Such customers can then be proactively approached with a better offer by companies.
In both cases, the AI software needs a lot of data to learn to recognize patterns. The most flexible place to host growing data today is the cloud.
3. Contact center in the cloud
In an integrated platform, employees can smoothly collaborate with each other to give customers the most satisfactory answer and solution. The combination with artificial intelligence (AI) opens the door to the automation of contact moments.
The importance of integrated data and channels
Integrated data and channels are the best way to meet customer expectations. In particular, customers expect a personalized approach:
- quick response
- recognition of who they are
- information about which products or services they are buying
- information about what communication has already taken place
- proactive advice
- taking into account their satisfaction level
Important: customer expectations are constantly changing. The last good experience customers have with companies and brands in general is always the new norm for them. That makes always offering a good experience even more important.
66%
of consumers state that the experience is as important as the products and services.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
Customer data are especially crucial to companies today. Data must provide a 360° view of the customer: which channels the customer contacted, when, with what questions, complaints or comments, satisfaction score, and what actions such as purchases, reservations ... they have performed. Phone numbers, email addresses, social media profiles ... help companies record all customer interactions. The most accurate and quality customer data for automation can be gathered through an audit that analyses the available and necessary data.
Integrate data, channels and applications
A company’s goals and IT architecture determine the ways in which quality customer data can be made accessible for different applications. Access for all departments and employees who encounter customers and the security of customer data is the basis.
One of the most forward-looking solutions is a data platform in the cloud. The data analysis that happens there is much more effective than the data analysis that each sales department, customer service or other department can do for itself. That allows new patterns to be discovered such as recurring complaints after price increases. These can be addressed, for example, through proactive communication about why, how and when.
Companies can gain an overall picture of each customer individually using integrated data analysis based on a complete customer history. But in this process, not all possible data should be available in every application. Only the data that is necessary, taking into account GDPR that protects privacy-sensitive data.
2. Access to data
86%
of your customers want to know how you use their information.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
Companies are falling short in terms of customer expectations.
4. Data-based empathetic and proactive approach
To strike the right balance between employee and customer experience, customer experience initiatives must be carefully weighed against the value they bring to employees and organizations and the other way around.
New, customer-centric KPIs
Customer data allows optimizing human resource management such as capacity planning and employee coaching, training and development based on new, customer-centric KPIs.
For example:
- Customer effort score or CES – how much effort do customers have to put in to get the right answer?
- Customer satisfaction or Csat – how satisfied are customers?
- Net promoter score or NPS – to what extent do customers recommend a company to their friends and colleagues?
New profiles, needs and expectations
This feedback and knowledge are important. Not least because digitalization has widened the generational gap, created many new customer profiles and customers have new needs and expectations. Such as personalization and contact with people who know what they are talking about.
The lightning-fast evolution of social media also has an impact on customer experiences and engagement. What customers post on Facebook and Instagram, for example, and how companies respond to it, also determines the image of brands.
Customer data also increases employees' empathy. They recognize customers immediately and know what products and services they have. This allows them to anticipate, listen to customers, show understanding and help them.
Today, employees can have a more empathetic interaction with the customer. By the second contact about the same problem, customers may be irritated. When employees start with an apology and show understanding, customers are more open to a solution.
That empathetic approach gives customers more confidence in a brand and a desire to contact again with questions, for example. Proactively asking them a question or making them an offer increases that trust. A bot can also provide customers with an empathetic experience based on data. For this, a company's style and brand perception must be carried through to how, for example, a bot communicates. Evolutions in NLP (natural language processing) mean that conversations with a bot can become increasingly natural.
Satisfied employees = satisfied customers
This empathic approach also has a positive influence on a company's employees. The better they understand that integrated approach and therefore the situation of customers, the more added value they can create. This makes them happier and more engaged.
Research from Forbes and Salesforce shows that customer and staff experiences go hand in hand. Companies should therefore start internally with the experience of employees. This has an immediate effect on customer satisfaction and is a necessary condition for a good customer experience. Because satisfied employees create positive customer experiences. That in turn makes them happier and more loyal.
© Gallup, State of the American Workplace Report, 2017
Companies with engaged employees perform better.
17% higher productivity
20% more sales
21% more profit
© Forbes Insights Research – The Experience Equation, June 2020
Influencing customer versus employee experience.
70% of all managers believe that a better employee experience immediately leads to a better customer experience. Only 33% think it is the other way around.
66% of professional customers expect sales to develop solutions rather than pitch products.
EXPECTATION
REALITY
66% of professional customers say most sales interactions focus on products rather than solutions.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
EXPECTATION
68% of customers expect brands to empathize with them.
REALITY
37% of customers feel that companies do so effectively.
EXPECTATION
85% of professional customers expect sales to demonstrate an understanding of the needs of their business.
REALITY
57% of professional customers say sales often do not understand their business sufficiently.
5. Customer experience by design
In order to implement a good strategy with a clear definition of what employee and customer experience an organization is and will be offering, it is important to take the following elements into account:
- the current status of the contact center and its way of working
- the future vision of customer interaction
- a timeline for the execution of the strategy
- the existing and future processes, resources and technologies
This global approach only works when companies have access to all the customer interaction data through integrated channels, enough qualitative, relevant data and employees with the right tools and information. This can only succeed with an adapted corporate culture that is supported by the entire company, management first.
Data sharing
76% of consumers expect consistent interactions across a company's departments.
54% of consumers say it feels like sales, service and marketing departments do not share information among themselves.
© Salesforce research, State of the Connected Customer, August 2020
Moreover, not every channel offers the same experience. There is a difference between synchronous media such as phone, chat and messaging apps and asynchronous media such as website, email and a customer portal. Each channel also has different characteristics and customers have different expectations for each channel.
To deploy the right channel at the right time, companies must anticipate the questions based on previous contacts made with a customer. By combining self-service via a customer portal with the channel the customer uses most or used most recently, for example.
From cost to profit
A well-run contact center will make company performance improve in the long run. Engaged employees who achieve empathetic, quality interactions with customers thanks to integrated data and channels create happy, loyal customers. That has a positive effect on revenue and profitability.
That is not all. Customer services contain a wealth of information. Of course, this must flow through so that other departments can improve their products and services and make them more customer-centric.
In this way, customer service can evolve from a cost center to a profitable department or entity. That reduces the additional costs that would otherwise have to be incurred to keep customers and has a positive impact on loyalty and engagement. That in turn makes it easier to attract new customers
Multichannel or not?
58% of customers want at least two channels.
68% think companies should be reachable through multiple channels.
Consistent experience
Customers want to be able to start, pick up and complete conversations and transactions in different ways. Depending on the situation they find themselves in, they want to be able to choose their preferred channels.
The challenge here is that they must receive the same answer on every channel. For example, the answer on a website must be the same as the answer from the chatbot.