Customer Service Strategy: What is the Future of Customer Experience?

The key to creating successful customer service outcomes in 2021 is to build a customer experience (CX) that delights your customers and keeps them coming back to your brand time and time again. 

It’s for this reason that businesses have invested heavily in tools and technologies that enable them to understand their customers more deeply and, as a result, provide superior customer experience and customer service results. 

Yet, despite this, so many companies are still using aging survey-based measurements systems to determine what their customers expect from their brand. 

In fact, in new research from McKinsey that draws on a survey of 260 CX leaders from US-based companies of all sizes, the consulting firm found that: “Ninety-three percent of these respondents reported using a survey-based metric (such as Customer Satisfaction Score or Customer Effort Score) as their primary means of measuring CX performance, but only 15 percent of leaders said they were fully satisfied with how their company was measuring CX - and only 6 percent expressed confidence that their measurement system enables both strategic and tactical decision making.”

Now, we’re not saying these surveys aren’t useful as they are, but there’s a range of innovative technologies that give even deeper insight into customer expectations in 2021. 

So, how can organizations take a better approach to gaining customer insights and improving the customer experience. In this blog, Advantage Communications recaps some of the points discussed in the McKinsey study.

A new way to proactively address customer expectations

A few leading companies are pioneering a better approach that takes full advantage of the wealth of customer data now available. Brands now can gain deep insights about their customer expectations through interaction data, whether it be messaging over a smartphone, phoning into a call center or completing actions on a website.

New technologies give organizations the capabilities to collect data and analytics that drive their customer support strategies and customer experiences into the future. 

In fact, these technologies allow brands to connect more closely with their customers, anticipate behaviours, identify CX issues and discover customer service representative opportunities in real time. 

The result? Companies that use these deeper insights to improve call center outcomes will reduce customer churn, increase customer loyalty, boost revenue and lower their cost to serve. 

The technologies brands are using to gain insights into customer service success

The McKinsey study points at three key sources of information that companies can use to improve their customer experience today. 

1. Customer-level data lake: A company gathers customer, financial and operational data and processes this information before storing it on a cloud-based platform. These comprehensive customer data insights allow organizations to track customer behaviour across interactions, transactions and operations - giving brands a rigorous understanding of customer experiences.
    
2. Predictive customer scores: Typically through the use of machine learning, companies can learn what is influencing customer satisfaction. This helps organizations predict customer satisfactions, revenue, customer loyalty, cost to serve and much more. 
   
   
3. Action and insight engine: Information, insights and suggestions are shared with a broad range of employees, including customer service agents, through a digital interface. This helps agents with in-the-moment advice on how they can personalize customer experiences and deliver improved customer service outcomes. 

How an outsourced contact center can help

The transition to a business that uses deep analytical insights to improve customer experience isn’t easy. It requires expensive technologies, complex strategies, big data expertise and in-depth customer service knowledge. 

Most organizations simply don’t have the time, resources or budget to make this change. 

That’s why outsourcing your customer service program to a contact center will help. Contact centers already have the technologies, customer service expertise and experienced agents needed to help your brand succeed. 

Partnering with the right contact center will help your business to save money, giving you the time you need to focus on core competencies, provide you with access to state-of-the-art analytical technologies and a huge range of further benefits. 

Interested in learning more about how an outsourced contact center will ensure your brand stays ahead of the increasingly evolving customer experience? Get in touch with Advantage Communications today. Our team of experts would love to help.