What Does the Future of CX Look Like?

If you know how critical Customer Experience is to the happiness of your customers and your team, you’re probably already trying to anticipate the next big trends in CX.

Things That Won’t Change Anytime Soon:

1. Customer Experience Still Reigns Supreme

More customers are stating that customer experience is a big part of how they make purchasing decisions. This means more of us are demanding better treatment and are willing to pay for it.

According to a large study by PWC, 73% of us say the customer experience is an important factor.

68% of business-to-business marketers agree that delivering a consistent, high-quality customer experience is very important in today’s marketplace.

Despite this, only 49% of Indian consumers say they’re getting a good Customer Experience from companies.

These numbers will keep going up, meaning that if you aren’t on board the CX train by now, you are already behind your competition.

But don’t fret — Instead, think of closing the CX gap as a huge opportunity. If your organization can address and close the gap, you’ll have a massive advantage in the future.

2. Employee Experience Will Remain One of the Top Influences on Customer Experience

There is no doubt the way employees feel influences how they treat customers.

But this isn’t just touchy-feely stuff. Engaged employees are in demand, and frankly getting harder to keep.

Investing in employees can pay off in big ways, like how Google gives employees 20% of their time to dedicate to their own projects. These independent, employee-driven ideas have created products like Google Maps and Gmail!

So it’s not terribly surprising to learn that the organizations who earned “good” or “very good” employee engagement ratings in the State of CX Management 2018 report by the Temkin Group (now part of the XM Institute) are also much more likely to be ranked as CX Leaders.

In fact, the percentage of CX Leaders who earned “good” or “very good” employee engagement ratings is more than 5-times larger than the percentage of CX Laggards.

Your employees matter more than most pieces of the customer experience puzzle. Don’t expect this to change in 2020 or the future beyond it.

So… What Changes Will Come to CX in 2020?

1. Customer Experience Will Become Part of the Business Operations in More Organizations… But it Will Continue to be an Unpredictable Journey.

More organizations are understanding the importance of customer experience, but they are still struggling with what to do about it.

Some are assigning CX as an additional responsibility to leaders like Chief Marketing Officers or Retail Operations leaders. Some are just asking everyone in the organization to “own” customer experience.

We need to mature past these ways to really start operationalizing CX in our organizations.

This means creating a dynamic loop of gathering customer feedback, assigning real responsibilities and treating CX like we treat sales, marketing or technology.

It’s not an extra part of doing business, it’s simply a part of doing business well.

More organizations will move to this phase in the coming years, but we still have a long way to go!

2.  Agile principles will be brought to CX Innovation

As we (hopefully) move into an era when we’re responding to customer feedback and allowing for more innovation around experience design, we’ll need to act a lot faster than we are today. Organizations that prioritize quick improvements using agile principles will move to the head of the pack.

While agile is typically used among development teams, these same principles to harness change on behalf of customers can be used to innovate around CX.

It’s not just about the technology, it’s about innovation for things like in-store experience and better customer communications.

3. Technology WILL replace some roles in customer service and other departments. New roles will be created.

It’s true that the robots are coming for (some) of our jobs.

Automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will drive real, lasting changes to the contact center structure and overall org charts of many brands. Already, chatbots and other tools are serving customers in big and small ways.

The latest prediction is a 136% increase in the number of organizations that use AI chatbots from 2019 to 2020!

While this can sound frightening, the role of these technologies will actually help customer service agents and others to provide better experiences for customers.

When leveraged well, this means human agents will have customer histories and relevant data served at the appropriate time. The agent can then provide more personalized, relevant experiences in a faster, more convenient way to customers.

It’s critical to provide a seamless transfer between human agent and bot as we learn just what this type of technology can do best. Now we need a different type of role for some of these agents. We need humans to train and supervise the automated experiences these bots are creating.

We can’t think we’ll simply “flip the switch” and replace our human agent force. Humans are still required to connect with customers when they need us the most. Humans are also the only way these tools will be developed and designed in ways that truly put the customer first.

4. Customers will not tolerate outdated technology, processes or communications.

Customers understand so much more than they ever did.

Because we all have access to so much more information now, brands can no longer hide behind press releases or advertising.

As customers, we want brands to respond not just to our needs, but the needs of the world around us. Outdated technology is a signal to customers that the overall experience might not be a priority. Watching employees struggle with processes that don’t make sense is a point of frustration for customers.

Communications with customers also have to not only be seamless, but updated in their language and tone.

Customers don’t want to interact with formal, stuffy brands using industry-specific terms and acronyms. They want to be in conversation with them.

This means reducing the jargon and replying as a human does. It also means reviewing your communications for outdated terms around our shared humanity, with terms referring to gender, race, and ability given particular care.

5. Soft skills will stop being seen as a nice to have and become the important “Empathy Toolkit” we need in CX.

Let’s make 2020 the year we kill the term “soft skills” in business. This vague description of ideas like getting along with others and listening doesn’t serve us or our customers.

These soft skills – listening well, responding with empathy and understanding, proactively reading the emotional state of a person or situation – are absolutely critical to great customer experiences.

And let’s not forget this applies inside the organization, too. Engaged employees not only serve their customers with this respect and compassion but also serve their colleagues and partners this way, too.

Using the term “soft skills” make them sound secondary and unnecessary. CX Leaders in the future will prioritize them and give them the respect they deserve to hire, train and empower employees.

CXREFRESH was incorporated to create a global community of CX leaders and thought leaders who will come together to create world class CX strategies for businesses to grow. In our quest to showcase industry leaders and iconic professionals on CXREFRESH, we got a chance to meet Mr. Kashish Ahuja, Chief Experience Officer, Excitel Broadband.

Know how Excitel is transforming CX benchmarks in the competitive ISP domain.

Introduction

Kashish is a part of the core team at Excitel with primary objective of growth & expansion. He is a renowned business leader with 15 years of rich experience in managing various functions & digital transformations across industries. Known for his result-oriented approach, his key strengths are formulating robust strategies, building high performing teams; backed by strong execution focusing on Customer Experience, Value Generation & Cost Optimization. Before Excitel, Kashish held key roles in Customer Experience & Marketing with companies like American Express, Home Credit & Hyatt Hotels.

Excerpts from his interview: Q&A

Q. We see that very recently you have taken up a new job, what is your role now with Excitel?

A. Yes, it’s been a few months since I joined Excitel which is an Internet Service Provider, I am a part of the core team with growth & expansion as our primary objective. From strategy to execution, I am accountable for everything that touches the customer. It’s a new industry for me so there is learning, some challenges & a lot of excitement. At present, I invest most of my time in studying the existing CRM landscape, shaping up essential processes, profiling our customer, understanding their challenges & expectations.

Q. What do you think is great customer experience in today’s age?

A. Customer expectations are ever evolving, there is a shift in customer behavior every now & then. Due to cut-throat competition, we must learn to value customer expectations & consistently adapt. Personalization has become very important, they want you to know their preferences & expect customized interactions (tailor made for them). More & more customers now prefer digital channels to communicate, be it a Mobile Application/website or Social Media, Email/Chat – any company’s Customer Relationship Management needs to be constantly evolving with customer needs in order to stay relevant in the industry.

Q. How do you build a CX strategy?

A. I would do this in three steps – First, use available data from internal sources to understand what your customers feel, identify what triggers dissatisfaction & what they appreciate. Second, draw a customer persona, draft an engaging discussion guide covering all aspects that can help you understand customer sentiment w.r.t. a product/service, conduct some focus groups, personal interviews & digital surveys directly with the customer. Third, stitch it all together to address gaps & expectations, improve processes, arrive at what can be potential wow factors, you could use what they already appreciate about you or innovate using learnings from the research to create these ‘wow factors’  that give you the competitive advantage.

Q. How do you identify the problems in your current CX strategy?

A. In order to measure how good or bad your CX strategy is, one must periodically solicit feedback from customers, could be in terms of Customer Satisfaction surveys or even Net Promoter Score through any digital channel. Though, not too often, else it could irritate your customers but just enough for you to know how your customers feel about your product or service, how they think you are doing right or wrong & you must use these insights to constantly sharpen your CX strategy – this is the most important part of this exercise.

Q. How do you think you can create an unfair advantage in CX in this futuristic competitive business environment?

A. Proactive versus Reactive – Don’t wait for the customer to point out where you’re going wrong, have systems in place that are monitoring your relationship with the customers, even the interactions & based on some predefined internal triggers such as usage patterns & external triggers such as market trends, you can proactively know if something needs to be addressed so you can take immediate corrective steps to recover before you’ve lost the customer.

Q. How is your organization making personalized interactions better during this entire journey?

A. We’re always trying to make it easier for the customer, be it reciprocating each customer’s choice of communication channel, or be it implementing a strong omnichannel CRM system so we can capture details from all previous interactions across touch points, highlight customized offers for customer benefit in order to value & strengthen the relationship. We’re trying to use a lot of data intelligence to build a strong CRM system which enables us to deliver unparalleled personalized experiences.

Q. Why do you think that the CX strategies should not work in silos?

A. Customer Experience cannot be a departmental goal, it must be a culture that is embedded consistently – the very system an organization lives by. In a customer life cycle, they may touch different departments and CX should be a consistent binding force built into the DNA of all employees across the organization in order to ensure seamless customer experience. The team in action – breaking the silos @ Excitel HQ, New Delhi.