What distinguishes the best customer experience software company from the rest? 4 things to look for

With so much emphasis on customer experience (CX) these days, many organizations are investing in new CX technology for their contact centers. In fact, our 2022 Digital-First research revealed that a high percentage of businesses were planning to invest in digital customer support channels such as chat (58%), visibility in search (59%), and website (61%). The key areas in which companies believe that consumers want improvement in are seeing less bots (25%), more personalization (19%), and search engine support (15%).

Businesses that are putting their money into improving customer experience know that providing consistently superior CX is a viable path to better business results. Salesforce found that 80% of consumers believe flawless engagement is as important as product quality. And Adobe reported that, "Companies that prioritized and effectively managed customer experience were three times as likely than their peers to have significantly exceeded their top business goals" in the prior year.

The quality of customer service experiences is especially important to the overall opinion customers have about a brand. Every contact center interaction is an opportunity to strengthen relationships. But things can quickly go south if contact centers aren't optimized to always provide the best possible experiences. One study found that 32% of consumers would abandon a brand they love after just one bad experience. Consumer expectations are high, and businesses need to be prepared to meet them.

One effective way to prepare is by modernizing contact center platforms. Today's exceptional customer service experiences are enabled by smart digital technology. Customers have come to expect seamless journeys and channel choice as they seek help, expectations that can only be met with industry-leading customer experience solutions.

A typical selection process for a new CX platform is highly driven by requirements, as it should be. But organizations also need to evaluate the customer experience software company to ensure they will be a supportive partner throughout, including post-implementation.

This article will provide four factors that can help determine if a customer experience software company is a good fit for your organization.

What is customer experience software?

Customer experience software is a collection of solutions that allows organizations to manage, measure, deliver, and continuously improve customer experiences. These tools enable organizations to better manage increasingly complex customer journeys so that every customer has an optimized experience.

In contact centers, almost every application could be considered part of the customer experience solution set because they all ultimately impact CX. These solutions include:

• Smart self-service systems that help customers help themselves from multiple devices
• Journey orchestration tools such as automatic contact distributors (ACDs) and integrated voice and digital channels
• Robust reporting and AI analytics tools that provide the insights organizations need to spot sources of friction within customer journeys and better manage the overall customer service experience
• Workforce engagement management software that helps contact centers forecast volume and schedule, develop, and engage agents

Additionally, an industry-leading customer experience software company may also provide solutions such as automation to help contact centers streamline operations and improve self-service experiences.

The importance of partnering with a good customer experience software company

The quality of CX software for contact centers is critical to your CX success, and so is your software provider. The right customer experience software company uses their knowledge and experience to help contact centers be successful throughout the customer life cycle, not just during the selection phase.

This type of partnership becomes especially important during the implementation phase of new software. Unfortunately, many digital transformations fail. BCG found that only 30% of transformations met or exceeded their target value and resulted in sustainable change.

However, those organizations that achieve success are richly rewarded. BCG also reports that, "From a comparative point of view, successful transformations created, on average, 66% more value, improved corporate capabilities by 82%, and met 120% more of their targets on time than transformations that created only limited value."

Finding the right customer experience software company to partner with can help businesses avoid failure and achieve their CX goals. A good partner can advise its customers on best practices that can help optimize configurations, integrations, and so much more.

Let's take a closer look at software provider capabilities and what to look for in a CX solution partner.

4 characteristics that distinguish the best customer experience software company from the rest

While organizations are doing their due diligence on a new contact center platform, they should also explore these software vendor characteristics to ensure they're choosing a competent partner that will help drive their transformations and support them long-term.

1. Proven leadership

Reputation does matter when it comes to CX software providers. Contact center software is ranked annually by organizations such as Gartner, Forrester, and Ventana Research and the results are published online. As an example, the Gartner Magic Quadrant plots contact center as a service (CCaaS) companies on a map according to "ability to deliver" and "completeness of vision." This enables businesses to see at a glance if they're dealing with a market leader.

While product leadership is highly important, there are other signs of leadership contact centers should assess, including the following:

• Length of time in the CX software market. Entrusting your customer service experiences to a newer startup software provider is a risky move. With something as important as CX, organizations should look for a customer experience software company that's been around a while. This will help ensure they have a proven product, plenty of experience helping businesses transform their contact centers, and the tools, processes and infrastructure needed to help new users be successful.

• Financial health. I once worked for a Fortune 500 company that inadvertently put a small software company out of business because their product couldn't handle our volume of data and the code fixes became too costly for them. Because it was a mission essential system, we acquired the code and had to support the application ourselves, which was far from ideal. Contact centers should ensure their CX software vendor has the financial strength to weather disruptions and setbacks.

• Investment in innovation and research and development. Market leaders in any industry are usually at the head of the pack because they innovate. Keeping up with ever-evolving consumer demands requires contact centers to have software that leverages modern, innovative technology such as artificial intelligence and smart automation. Organizations should find out how much their prospective vendor spends on R&D and see if they have a history of acquiring other software companies to give their product (and their clients) additional capabilities.

2. Track record of collaboration

The best customer experience software companies have a proven and consistent record of collaborating with their clients, and plenty of clients willing to act as references and attest to their ability to partner. Experienced, collaborative CX software providers share their knowledge and expertise to make their customers successful.

Some ways they do that include:

• Implementation project management
• Experienced consultants to advise on ways to optimize performance
• Cloud and digital maturity assessments
• Transformation roadmaps
• Use cases
• Baselined KPIs aligned to strategic business objectives
• Comprehensive change management plans that incorporate best practices

A true partner believes they aren't successful unless their clients are successful. Organizations don't need to transform their customer service alone. Contact centers should look for a CX software provider that is focused on helping them maximize their software investment and getting them up-to-speed quickly for a faster return on investment (ROI).

3. Support options and knowledge sharing

Some software users need more support than others, and a good customer experience software company recognizes this and offers a range of support packages. Contact centers with simpler needs may want to rely mostly on self-service or pay-as-you-go support, while those who need a higher level of service may want to purchase a premium package. A true partner doesn't try to shoehorn its customers into one-size-fits-all support. That would be bad CX!

Businesses should also look for a CX software provider that readily shares knowledge and helps its client better understand the software and how to use it to transform the customer experience. Knowledge and learning tools can include:

• An active user community
• Instructor-led training taught by contact center experts
• Self-paced training options
• Robust library of reference materials
• Comprehensive and well-maintained knowledge base

Post-implementation support can be a key differentiator of the best customer experience software company. Contact centers don't need a technology provider who neglects them once the sales and implementation phases are complete.

4. Strong development partners and ecosystem

When assessing a customer experience software company, contact centers should find out if they have a strong and deep bench of development and implementation partners.

An online application marketplace is a fast and easy way to extend the value of your investment by adding cutting-edge functionality to your contact center. A strong developer community and ecosystem extends the software product's capabilities through additional apps and services. The ecosystem is composed of businesses that know the software and have developed their own complementary solutions that integrate easily with the core software.

For example, if the CX software provider doesn't have a virtual agent solution, clients should be able to choose from a menu of third-party options and be confident that they will work with the CX system. A strong developer community can also custom build solutions, such as mobile apps, that meet a business's specific CX requirements.

In addition to a developer community, CX software providers should also have a deep bench of experienced implementation partners who understand how to guide clients through software implementations so that they get the most value out of their new technology.

Is NiCE the right customer experience software company for your business?

At NiCE, we are passionate about removing the friction between companies and consumers, creating extraordinary experiences that build brand loyalty and create unbreakable bonds. We enable organizations to address today’s consumer and employee expectations, by delivering effortless, consistent, and personalized digital-first experiences with CXone, the world’s leading cloud CX platform.

We offer a complete CX solution for contact centers and our company was the only one designated by Gartner as a leader in both CCaaS and workforce optimization (WFO).

To find out more about us, our software, and our partnering abilities, visit our home page and explore from there.