CX Pulse: Conversations with 4 experts on how AI, other innovations are redefining CX – Part 1

Customer experience (CX) excellence isn’t achieved by standing still. Your customers expect more these days. Organizations must be able to resolve issues quickly at every touchpoint of their entire journey, and those touchpoints are changing and expanding constantly. Companies need to do the same with their CX strategies.

Successful, forward-thinking companies are leveraging one core concept in their CX operations: innovation. Leveraging not only new and unique technologies, but also ideas, processes, and even mindsets will have a significant positive impact and value on customers, employees, and the organization itself.

According to Andy Traba, Vice President of Product Marketing at NiCE, “Innovation is the key when creating a winning approach to CX to drive customer satisfaction. The lack of an innovation mindset is what killed many once-successful brands such as Blockbuster and Kodak.”

We spoke to several experts recently in a series of CX Pulse podcasts about innovative directions that are redefining the CX industry. The following are highlights of those conversations sharing their thoughts about this topic. They reveal insights on topics including artificial intelligence (AI), change management, scientific methods for understanding customer behavior, and what one expert calls “the economics of empathy.”

Each section title below is the title of the specific podcast. To hear the full CX Pulse podcasts, click on the links at the end of each section.

The CX Leader as a Change Agent

Change management is defined as making positive adjustments in an organization. Mark Slatin, Customer Experience Advisor and Consultant at consulting firm Empowered CX, said an innovative way of improving a company’s CX strategy is through change, and that change management is a hidden role for CX leaders.

He added that the most important aspect to implement when making changes in the CX experience is value. In the case of CX, organizations need to focus on how they’re creating value for the customer, and, at the same time, how they’re creating value for the company.

A change agent wears many hats, Slatin pointed out. Their job, at its core, is guiding their company from its current state to a desired future state to create a value or benefit.

“And your goal really is to transform the culture because the change doesn't happen in one pocket, and it certainly doesn't happen in the CX department,” he said. “So, the only way it can work is if it's cultural transformation.”

According to Slatin, there are five steps necessary for implementing change successfully:

1. Assess the current state
2. Define your CX mission
3. Identify the gaps
4. Prioritize projects
5. Build your CX roadmap

Slatin covers details on each step in the podcast and he emphasizes that it is critical to work with senior leadership during the process.

“It's your job as the CX leader as a change agent to draw out of them what they're thinking and feeling about a particular change initiative,” he said.

He added that it’s important to build trust by getting feedback and listening to them very closely.

Hear the full “The CX Leader as a Change Agent” episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Reimagining Experience Ecosystems

Shawn Nason, Founder, and Chief Experience Officer at consulting firm MOFI, feels that companies have become so enamored with technology that they’ve started losing touch with humanity in the CX space. As a self-proclaimed experience evangelist, he wanted to know how we can humanize experience again and leverage it as a competitive advantage.

“Using this approach increases engagement, loyalty, and revenue year after year, but it requires engaging and humanizing the entire ecosystem,” he said.

Nason explained that an experience ecosystem is the web of people, touchpoints and systems that define the experiences of everyone who interacts with an organization. He added that organizations need to refocus on humanity in that ecosystem, and one way is to be more empathetic.

Empathy is a word that's getting thrown around a lot in the CX industry, he continued, though many people don't truly understand what it is.

“You can be sympathetic with somebody, but to be empathetic is a completely different space,” he said.

It's about asking questions like, “What is your experience?” and “Tell me what it's like to be you,” and then listening to the answers and making positive changes based on them, according to Nason.

Nason advised CX leaders to go walk in their customers’ and employees’ day-to-day lives. Get to know them. Fully understand them. Then apply what you learn to your CX strategy. If you don't, you aren’t doing justice to your organization.

Also, he added that, while he is a huge fan of digital and technology, it should only be used as an enabler for customers and agents, and not as a means of replacing employees. Part of having a well-rounded ecosystem and satisfied, loyal customers is by supporting and treating agents like humans too. If you don't have engaged employees and take care of your own people, they won’t take care of your customers or your business, Nason said.

Hear the full “Reimagining Experience Ecosystems” episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Improving the Relevance of AI for CX

According to Dave Michels, Lead Analyst at TalkingPointz, AI technology has been evolving rapidly and gaining more attention than ever. As a result, it’s changing contact centers and improving customer engagement in almost every way imaginable. That includes speeding up customers’ desires to resolve problems through self-service, as well as how organizations forecast, how they coach and mentor agents, and how they track quality metrics.

“It’s almost shocking how much AI is impacting the contact center or customer engagement in general,” said Michels. But he warns of downsides as companies rush to implement AI tools before they’re ready and cautions against implementing tools that don’t fit with the workflows of your company.

Michels pointed out that the big challenge for a lot of companies is assessing how AI will fit in their environment. There's a lot of AI opportunities to solve problems, but to do it properly, it takes a considerable amount of time and patience as well as a lot of data.

There are two factors that determine the difference between exceptional and good AI, he said:

• Invisible technology— When AI works in the background and makes things better for all parties without the customer knowing it’s AI, it can be exceptional.
• Whether AI is truly helpful— AI tends to make a lot of assumptions that aren’t always correct, and that can frustrate customers. Once it can ask customers questions like agents do to qualify and determine the best outcome, that will classify it as exceptional.

“I think our trust level is rising on the customer front,” Michels said. “And we're willing to trust those AI options as the first point of contact, which is good to see because AI is getting so much better.”

Yet, he cautioned that AI won’t solve every problem. He believes the most effective way of using it is to make it optional and let customers decide when using it may be appropriate. Also, AI isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. You need to work with the right vendors who can make the best use of your data.

Hear the full “Improving the Relevance of AI for CX” episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Key CX Areas Where Companies Should Be Investing

Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principal Analyst at Lopez Research, believes that companies are facing daunting challenges in their quest to engage customers much more effectively. To meet those challenges, many are looking at understanding the context of what customers are doing now to deliver the right personalized experiences to the right person at the right time.

But Lopez pointed out that trying to create that 360-degree view of the customer is a big task. It is possible, but to do so, companies need to invest time and money in the following four key areas.

First, she said, organizations struggle with trying to set up multiple channels and do them well. But it’s a critical area you must establish and improve. Now is the time to add tools that allow you to expand channels so that you can interact with customers at every touchpoint. Every channel should also be connected seamlessly to create a more integrated journey.

Second, CX analytics have never been more important than today. Problem is every company has tons of data but many of them don’t understand how to uncover integral insights from that data so they can make the best decisions. They need to leverage and capitalize AI and other tools to help them do that.

Third, one of the things that really is powerful for an organization is enabling agents to focus their valuable time on more important duties. Automating minor tasks takes those tasks off agent “to-do” lists and allows agents to spend their time helping customers. That not only increases agent efficiency and customer satisfaction, it also reduces agent-related costs and churn.

Finally, Lopez said if you look at the best-in-class modern contact center solutions today, what you're seeing is that there's a tremendous amount of AI that's been built into them. AI is helping with call routing, understanding customer sentiment and how to suggest next best actions to agents, as well as structuring things such as follow-up actions, transcripts, and much more. 

Besides the four key areas above, she added that organizations also need to invest in staff training and leveraging the voice of the customer. Training is critical so that companies can help agents understand how to get the most benefit from AI and other technology.

Voice of the customer (VoC) is the concept of analyzing and understanding how your customers really feel about you. Lopez added that AI is critical in determining VoC because it provides more in-depth and reliable data that’s not only highly relevant to businesses and customers, it’s also more accurate and reliable.

“There's a whole new way to do voice of the customer,” said Lopez. “You can collect all the information and have it analyzed and understand how your customers really feel about you, rather than sending them a one- or 15-question survey, which really might not meet the mark.”

Hear the full “Key CX Areas Where Companies Should Be Investing” episode on Spotify and Apple.

Read more in the second part of this series pulling insights on innovation from CX Pulse.