How connected tech can help throughout the customer journey

No com­pa­ny can afford to ignore the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX) it pro­vides. In fact, any busi­ness that fails to pro­vide a great CX runs a real risk of fail­ure. But, in an age of ever-increas­ing choice for con­sumers, how can a firm offer out­stand­ing per­for­mance in this respect? 

Initial contact

“When they first encounter your brand, con­sumers typ­i­cal­ly want to be pleas­ant­ly sur­prised,” accord­ing to Amale Ghal­bouni, expe­ri­ence direc­tor at Siegel & Gale, who has advised Levi Strauss, UBS and Unilever, among oth­ers, on CX. 

“Your brand is com­pet­ing for a share of their time, wal­let, heart and mind,” she says. “Any tech­nol­o­gy you choose when build­ing aware­ness should help to strength­en the emo­tion­al con­nec­tion and get them excit­ed about future inter­ac­tions with your brand.”

This tech­nol­o­gy could include AI-based chat­bots, which can pro­vide infor­ma­tion to online cus­tomers. Although they need to be used judi­cious­ly and trained to avoid annoy­ing peo­ple with sub­stan­dard respons­es, chat­bots can quick­ly answer com­mon queries or redi­rect users to the right human rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Soar Dig­i­tal has installed the Frase Answers chat­bot on its web­site. This analy­ses the whole site to learn about the ser­vices the com­pa­ny offers, FAQs, blog posts, con­tact details and more. The com­pa­ny has been able to refine the qual­i­ty of bot’s respons­es over time. 

“Each answer can be upvot­ed or down­vot­ed by vis­i­tors based on its rel­e­vance, so the whole process is improved with their feed­back,” says Soar Digital’s own­er, James John­son. “If the answer can’t be found through AI, the cus­tomer can talk to a mem­ber of our team via the same chat screen.”

Vis­i­tors are ben­e­fit­ing from reduced wait­ing times, more rel­e­vant answers and faster access to resources, says John­son, who adds: “This addi­tion­al sup­port enables our team mem­bers to allo­cate more time to deliv­er­ing the best cus­tomer care we can offer.”

Purchase experience

ResponseTap’s call per­son­al­i­sa­tion tech pro­vid­ed the solu­tion to this prob­lem. By analysing thou­sands of data points from a caller’s web­site vis­it, it can pre­dict the des­ti­na­tion they are enquir­ing about to a rea­son­able degree of accu­ra­cy. Using these insights, it routes callers direct­ly to the spe­cial­ists best suit­ed to help them, bypass­ing the IVR alto­geth­er.

When it comes to secur­ing a sale, tech that enables a seam­less CX across dif­fer­ent chan­nels can make all the dif­fer­ence. That’s some­thing Vir­gin Hol­i­days under­stands bet­ter than most. Its call-han­dlers under­go exten­sive train­ing to become experts about the hol­i­days on offer. But the process of rout­ing a call to the right expert used to oblige cus­tomers to nav­i­gate an inter­ac­tive voice response (IVR) sys­tem, which result­ed in high drop-off rates.

ResponseTap’s vice-pres­i­dent of cus­tomer suc­cess and oper­a­tions, Bar­ry Cochrane, recalls that its sys­tem was able to con­nect “more calls to agents – and those calls that were con­nect­ed were more like­ly to con­vert into sales”. Indeed, the num­ber of dai­ly phone book­ings at Vir­gin Hol­i­days increased by 48% after the sys­tem was installed. 

Con­vert­ing cus­tomer inter­est into sales rev­enue has always been tricky in ecom­merce, where shop­ping-cart aban­don­ment rates remain stub­born­ly high. As the pan­dem­ic has high­light­ed, the per­son­alised expe­ri­ence that in-store cus­tomer-ser­vice spe­cial­ists can offer is hard to repli­cate online. But soft­ware com­pa­ny Go Instore believes that its live video tech­nol­o­gy, which con­nects online cus­tomers to these in-store experts, could help to close the gap. 

Clive Hud­son, senior pro­gramme man­ag­er at Marks and Spencer, says: “Video-pow­ered retail, in part­ner­ship with Go Instore, allows us to bring the exper­tise of our col­leagues in stores straight to cus­tomers at home, offer­ing con­ve­nience and flex­i­bil­i­ty along­side the ser­vice they expect from M&S.”

Cus­tomers brows­ing the company’s web­site can also watch live broad­casts of experts demon­strat­ing new prod­ucts. But, once cus­tomers have made a pur­chase, how can com­pa­nies ensure that they con­tin­ue to have a great expe­ri­ence?

After-sales service

Iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion is a big part of online CX. Research in March by YouGov and Auth0, an ID man­age­ment plat­form for app devel­op­ers, found that 48% of UK con­sumers are more will­ing to sign up for an app if it offers a bio­met­ric log-in sys­tem. Yet only 14% of British firms have apps that pro­vide this facil­i­ty.

“Busi­ness­es tend to con­sid­er iden­ti­ty as a log-in box,” says Steven Rees-Pull­man, senior vice-pres­i­dent, inter­na­tion­al, at Auth0. “In real­i­ty, it’s about pro­vid­ing an easy, secure way for users to come on board and log in, which is cru­cial for encour­ag­ing con­ver­sions and build­ing loy­al­ty.”

Data ana­lyt­ics tech can also improve the lat­ter stages of a customer’s online jour­ney by uncov­er­ing insights that can be used to per­son­alise future inter­ac­tions. But the effec­tive­ness of these tools relies on the company’s abil­i­ty to break down func­tion­al silos so that the infor­ma­tion can flow eas­i­ly between var­i­ous parts of the organ­i­sa­tion. 

TSB uses ana­lyt­ics not only to bet­ter under­stand the cus­tomer jour­ney, but also to ensure that it meets its own high stan­dards. Its direc­tor of design and deliv­ery, Mike Gam­ble, explains: “We con­stant­ly mon­i­tor and analyse cus­tomers’ non-dig­i­tal activ­i­ties too. This helps to ensure that our con­stant­ly evolv­ing dig­i­tal roadmap match­es their chang­ing behav­iour. We are then bet­ter able to react and build the nec­es­sary ser­vices and capa­bil­i­ty for our cus­tomers’ ben­e­fit.”

While cus­tomers’ behav­iour might change over time, one thing will nev­er change: their desire for high-qual­i­ty, per­son­alised expe­ri­ences.