CX has become the key to business competitiveness. According to Gartner, 89% of companies now compete primarily based on customer experience. A Walker study forecasts that CX will imminently overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Digital technology is the engine that is powering CX forward.
What does this mean in tech terms?
It means APAC businesses should focus on getting closer to customers by building a data-driven CX operation. Data needs to flow throughout your whole organization if you want to maximize its potential and give your customers an enhanced experience. If your data-driven activities are siloed in your company, then your customers’ journeys will be fragmented.
How do we deliver an enhanced CX? You need to think, and act, digital. From an Orange perspective, that means an approach that combines listening, analyzing and predicting. That is the route to improving CX and anticipating the demands and expectations of your customers. “Listening” is about gathering data from customer engagements and feedback, leveraging all your interactions with your customers and using it to enhance your offering. That might be engagements via your customer support agents in your contact center, or chatbots, or your website or artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) solutions. But it should happen at each stage of your customer’s journey with you.
The “analysis” stage is about taking that customer data and analyzing it at different touchpoints along the customer journey. You might have one customer who is very satisfied with their interactions with you using one channel, but that might change using a different channel. So, visibility is essential.
“Predicting” is the third element of the experience management mix: with full visibility of what your customers think of their experiences with you, you’re able to anticipate their future demands and activities. Maximizing your omnichannel operations and your social interactions with customers helps build a profile of your customers, which helps you deliver a tailored, personalized experience.
The AI factor
AI can help you get more out of your data and enhance CX. AI tools can understand unstructured information in the same way humans do but are able to process vast amounts of data at much faster speeds. Machine learning (ML) also learns from interactions, remembers customers’ preferences, and can understand speech and text. And because it learns the more it is used, ML grows to understand your customers and thereby drives greater personalization.
AI enhances your customer support at a fundamental level using chatbots: voice bots can address basic customer needs like solving queries and providing efficient customer service. Using AI, your chatbots can operate as virtual assistants that obey commands and answer questions and engage customers in a conversation. AI, supported by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and ML, automates simple services for customers and saves them time and hassle.
Furthermore, AI also enables smarter, faster decision-making in your organization. For example, AI can analyze the time your customers spend on your website, or how long they spend engaging with you by email or other social channels. Doing this lets you join up all your communication channels and share data across your whole company. This prevents silos, enhances your customers’ CX journey overall and makes sure you don’t miss any data along the way.
A workforce management solution is another tool that helps enterprises maximize the quality of CX operations. It helps you fully optimize resources and boost worker performance. By being able to accurately predict your future staffing needs and skill combinations in line with customer demand, you can reduce overtime costs and labor waste. The result is an improved ROI and more satisfied customers, thanks to better employee scheduling.
Data powering CX today and tomorrow
The leading CX trends for 2020 in APAC were considered to be digital customer experience and data and analytics, with 50% of companies saying digital CX is their top priority. On top of that, three of the top five fastest-growing countries in the world for Internet usage are in APAC. These countries’ users generate more data than ever before, and the way they consume products and services is powered by it. Enterprises need to make the most of that data. Research by Salesforce found that 90% of companies that use data analytics found they improved their company’s ability to deliver a great CX.
These trends should influence how APAC companies engage with customers. I believe CX is going to be more essential than ever to business success, and moving forward, customers will expect an experience that merges the digital and the physical.
With that in mind, you need the right CX strategy in place to give your customers what they expect. You need to align and integrate all the tools, systems and underlying processes that sit beneath your CX and make it as easy as possible for customers to engage and interact with you. Data and digital are now more essential than ever.
To read more about how Orange can help your organization remain resilient and create memorable, effective customer experiences, read our ebook: Be resilient at all times – Best practices for enriched digital customer experiences.
Nick Lambert is Senior Vice President and Head of Asia Pacific at Orange Business. As head of the region, he is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the business and spearheading growth across all market segments, including the key markets of China, India, Australasia, Japan, Hong Kong, ASEAN and Korea. Nick has a passion for cars, jazz and contemporary music, and in his spare time, he enjoys cooking and learning Greek.