Customer Experience Excellence – What Does it Take?

It is CX Week, and that has a lot of organizations thinking about what it means to deliver a great Customer Experience. Is it about technology? Agent training? Self-service?

What exactly are we trying to achieve when we talk about improving the CX? Is it First Contact Resolution? Eliminating channel-hopping? Increasing customer spend per interaction? Or perhaps it’s increasing customer loyalty?

It really depends on the organization. But generally, if a business is losing customers, these days it’s a safe bet that it’s due to customer experience – namely that the competition offers a better one. It truly is the last differentiator, given how easy it is for today’s customer to comparison shop for the best products, services, and pricing. All that’s left is an organization’s ability to provide a purchasing and support experience that is easy, pleasant, successful, and even memorable. It’s increasingly common to not just provide customer service – but rather to provide customer “delight”. With social media, customers sharing CX experiences with the masses can be viewed as a blessing or a curse. More companies are beginning to see the free publicity as an opportunity to get accolades rather than a place for disenchanted customers to air grievances.

So what sorts of experiences get accolades?

It may come as a surprise that it’s not necessarily big, expensive overtures that win over customers. More often, it’s the little things – like being greeted by name. Or by having your request answered by the same person who helped you last time. Or by having your issue proactively addressed before you even knew there was a problem.

There has been a lot of focus in the industry lately on “Customer Experience Management”, or CEM, being the hot new acronym and answer to the world’s service issues. But it lacks a clear definition. Of those claiming to provide this capability, it seems it can refer to anything from new CRM features, to cross-channel awareness, to using AI to make interactions “smarter”.

Instead of being viewed as a single software that does it all, it should really be viewed more as an overall capability that is the result of effectively leveraging and interconnecting the tools, databases, and software that touch the customer. Customer Experience Management includes survey tools for collecting feedback, it includes the ability to know what’s happening on all the channels, it includes an awareness of social media activity and including it as part of the measurable CX, and it includes self-service, analytics, and journey mapping.

Expecting all these capabilities to be present and performing well in one piece of contact center software is unrealistic. As your organization looks to evaluate its Customer Experience Management goals and capabilities, ensure that you look to partner with a provider who seeks to provide you with tools that:

a) Meet your specific organization’s CX goals
b) Leverage existing applications, databases, and processes that work well for you today
c) Bring together the best-of-the-best through an integrated, holistic approach

Upstream Works for Finesse is a robust and full-featured CX Management and omnichannel customer service software platform that puts the agent desktop front and center. Its deep and broad integration capabilities along with extensive omnichannel reporting and analytics help organizations hone in on their specific CX goals and achieve them. Through one easy-to-use desktop, agents are presented with information from across the organization that empowers them to be proactive in delighting customers. See Upstream Works Omnichannel Contact Center solution in action and learn how it can help your organization meet its CX goals.