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Great customer experience (CX) is vital for business success, although many of us don’t identify our experiences as positive. Brands should be able to identify and fix their own faults to demonstrate that they listen to customers’ frustrations. However, a recent research report shows that brands may not be as aware of their own CX shortcomings as they should be.
Conversational AI leader Interactions recently conducted a survey of 1,000 US consumers to learn about their CX experiences. They also surveyed 500 business decision-makers in the financial services, consumer technology and SaaS industries to get company leaders’ perspectives on the same topic. Together, these surveys paint a picture of what CX looks like now versus how leaders believe it is.
To truly provide high quality CX, companies must take an honest look at what they're doing and address any gaps present. And one major takeaway is that companies shouldn’t overestimate the success of their own CX efforts. They won’t be able to address challenges in their strategy without accurately defining what’s actually going on.
Leaders Are Overly Optimistic
CX decision-makers know that customers aren’t receiving the quality of customer service that they expect, with 94% of respondents saying customers expect better service than they receive. However, many also have a blind spot toward their own company’s performance. Consider how a large majority (85%) say their own customer service is excellent. This large disconnect will likely prevent decision-makers from both realizing the magnitude of customer service issues they have and being able to solve them effectively.
In the customer survey, people cited their major frustrations with customer service experiences. The most common frustrating experiences included long wait times, multiple transfers and inefficient CX technology. More than half (55%) believe that the CX is continuing to get worse.
In this instance, CX leaders and decision-makers will benefit greatly from rethinking their CX strategy and investing in new, innovative ways to improve CX metrics. For example, an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) can naturally communicate with customers, understand their concerns and offer resolutions — all while allowing customers to access support right away. Not only does this eliminate customer wait times, but also these intelligent AI solutions understand customers significantly better than a basic robotic chatbot solution. As a result, it is much less likely that a customer will have to be transferred to a different agent. Removing common frustrations like these can improve CX greatly.
Greater Understanding From the C-suite
Another major survey finding was that while 78% of CX decision-makers who say they understand customer frustrations are director-level executives, only 43% are in the C-suite. Even with the right strategy and a sufficient budget, CX leaders must also convince their C-suite to support them. Proving the business case for innovative CX strategies requires CX teams to pay careful attention to KPIs and present the data to the C-suite.
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This is especially important now, when the gap between customer and company perceptions of the quality of CX are so different. The C-suite needs to know what is and is not working so they can properly support teams in their efforts to improve the customer experience. Once executives understand any CX gaps their organization is experiencing, they can make better, higher-level strategies and decisions to impact CX for the better.
Invest in the Right Technology
Almost all (90%) respondents in the decision-maker survey said that the right technology could help provide better service and address customer pain points. Similarly, 87% of customers love when they can quickly resolve questions by using CX technology. They especially appreciate it when they have access to a virtual assistant or chatbot that can help them with their requests.
Investing in AI solutions will be a game changer for teams trying to evolve their CX strategy. AI-enabled tools can handle simple tasks so that human agents have the time to handle more complex customer issues — a solution that pleases both customers and customer support teams.
According to the customer survey, a third of customers say that being unable to speak to a person when they have a complex issue drives them crazy. That’s why AI solutions should also include a human-in-the-loop approach, in which people take over tasks that require more complex thinking and work in the backend to improve the performance of AI tools over time. With this approach, customers get the CX benefits of both AI and human agents. They receive empathy when they’re facing an emotional or complex customer support issue, and they experience a quick, efficient, seamless resolution when they interact with AI to solve simpler problems.
Start Narrowing the CX Gap Today
Great customer service helps organizations achieve greater ROI in terms of higher revenue as well as lower operational costs. Meanwhile, bad customer service causes frustration among customers and harms the company’s reputation or brand image. While many CX teams recognize that customer experience issues are a much too common problem, they often fail to recognize their own organization’s faults. With this blindspot, these companies can’t rise to the occasion and do their part to improve customer experience. Once CX teams identify their own gaps, they can begin finding the best technology solutions that combine the strengths of humans and AI to optimize CX for everyone.
Conversational AI leader Interactions’ research report,“How Businesses and Customers Think About Tech-Driven Customer Service,” explores this gap and gives organizations guidance on what they can do to acknowledge their shortcomings and achieve the best possible CX. Learn more about these findings in the link below!
Download "How Businesses and Customers Think About Tech-Driven Customer Service" here!