Calling All Superheroes! It’s Time to Transform the Customer Experience.

Cisco Live US 2017 is coming up later this month, and the event is CALLING ALL SUPERHEROES to participate. At Upstream Works, we can relate to this theme. Every day we support and empower Customer Experience (CX) Superheroes – Power Partners, Super Solution Providers, and Action Agents. United, they fight for CX Excellence, defending the customer right to a satisfying and personalized experience.

But when we think of a superhero, we can’t help but think of the corresponding arch nemesis – whether it’s Superman’s Lex Luthor or Wonder Woman’s Cheetah. In the world of contact centers and CX superheroes, who do we see as the sworn enemy?

It might be the infamous Generic Service, crushing the personal touch and humanity of customer engagement. Or perhaps it’s the villainous Data Silos, destroying any hope of consistency and continuity in the agent experience. This duo has infiltrated even the best-intentioned organizations and is wreaking havoc while their agents valiantly try to deliver a satisfying customer experience. Certainly, they are worthy candidates for the role of arch nemesis, but today we focus on a different perpetrator. One who can be found slinking in the shadows, rising, unrelenting, to fulfil his dark task: Crude Makeshift.

Crude Makeshift is a Frankenstein’s-monster-culmination of bolted-on bits and pieces, stitched together with whatever materials were available at the time. A rotting leg of AS400 here, a weathered arm of CRM there, a smattering of social media entrails added during the last attempt to create a singular entity. The disconnected body parts are as numerous as the disparate systems they represent in a typical customer service organization.

He’s not a bad guy, really. Much like Frankenstein’s sad creation, Makeshift is a victim of circumstance. His creator had a plan that was understandable and relatable – gather high quality parts and make them work together. As a concept, that’s not too bad. Unfortunately, the plan was doomed to failure – the parts were unrelated and incompatible with each other, and the “whole” that was created was more monstrous than human.

Makeshift rears his head in many contact centers today as they try to transform the agent and customer experience. Organizations, eager to modernize and unify their technologies into one “single pane of glass” solution, are shackled by the disparate nature of the various systems they’ve come to depend on.

Sadly, it’s the Action Agents who suffer. They’re tasked with piecing together data and functionality from sometimes 30 different applications. They spend so much time flipping between screens, copying and pasting, that they are sabotaging the very CX that they are valiantly trying to save. Body parts stop functioning and Makeshift keeps limping along, threatening to destroy customer satisfaction and loyalty each time he stumbles. Are the CX Superheroes doomed to fail under the awkward clumsiness of Crude Makeshift? Have our heroes finally met their match?

What they need to win this battle is a clear view to the customer journey with full context that spans all channels. UWF provides agents with the power to know whether a customer reached out via phone, email, chat, or sms, and the ability to be proactive and offer personalized service. In this day and age, with customer expectations at an all-time high – Crude Makeshift just can’t compete.

Though we don’t claim to be imbued with superpowers, Upstream Works does have a master plan to transform the world of CX. It involves helping businesses strike a critical balance between technological innovation and doing more with the resources they have. We help by integrating and connecting disparate systems, applications, data, channels and interactions in a way that isn’t a bolted-together-and-mismatched Frankenstein’s monster – through the Single Agent Desktop. Want to join the ranks of a league of CX superheroes and contribute your own superpowers to save the day?

Join us at Cisco Live June 25-29 for a talk on Driving Innovation while Delivering Customer Care. We’ll be in the Cisco Collaboration Village – stop by and explore our omnichannel CX solutions. Learn more about Upstream Works for Finesse.