The Gist
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Find the root. Treating CX symptoms without understanding their cause leads to wasted efforts. Data, analytics and AI help uncover the real issues.
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Tech isn’t enough. Investing in new CX tools won’t fix deeper problems. Strategy, design and proper implementation must work alongside technology.
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Make the case. To drive CX change, present data-backed evidence that ties improvements to productivity, cost savings and revenue growth.
What are your CX symptoms? Maybe call volumes are through the roof. Average handle times are soaring. Productivity is way down. My advice is don’t make the mistake of treating these symptoms in a vacuum.
It’s important to pay attention to the whole patient, or in this case the entire customer experience. Here are some ways to diagnose the root causes of your symptoms and some strategies you can adopt to get on the path to better customer experience management, healthier CX and a healthier bottom line.
Table of Contents
Find the Root Cause of CX Issues
If your contact center or any aspect of your customer experience is sick, start by asking why. Why are so many calls coming to the contact center? Why can’t agents solve these problems quickly? Why do customers have to keep calling back?
Maybe call volumes are high because a product is defective. Maybe agents can’t solve problems quickly because your knowledge management system needs to be upgraded. And if customers keep calling back, maybe the problem is that orders are being misrouted by the fulfillment department.
The root causes to these customer experience management issues could be almost anything. But to find the right answers, you’ll often need to tap into your unstructured data. As a reminder, unstructured data is that information not easily captured in a spreadsheet. It could mean support tickets, chats, voice recordings, free flowing text and much more. Unstructured data is a treasure trove of customer insights and is often the key to understanding why your symptoms are occurring in the first place.
Until very recently, we lacked the tools and understanding to put unstructured data to use in a scalable way. That’s no longer the case. Data and analytics professionals can now use tools powered by machine learning, natural language processing and generative AI to organize and glean insights from unstructured data at scale.
In nearly every scenario, getting to the root causes of your CX symptoms will require data, analytics and AI expertise. In other words, it’s time to bring in a specialist or, in this case, a data scientist. Data scientists can bridge the domains of AI and machine learning modeling, business analysis and data wrangling to get to the root of your issues.
Related Article: Bridging the Customer Expectation Gap with Unstructured Data
The Diagnosis Determines the Treatment
Once you have an accurate diagnosis of what’s causing your CX symptoms, you can move on to a treatment plan. Remember, it’s important not to treat individual symptoms in a vacuum. For example, if a human patient is diagnosed with high cholesterol, then a prescription for statins can help. However, for lasting improvement, the patient will likely need to incorporate healthier eating and exercise into their routine along with prescribed medication.
The inclination of many businesses is to turn to new technology for pain or symptom relief. We’ve been promised that AI will solve just about any business challenge. But I think we’d do well to remember the lessons learned from previous technology investments.
Twenty years ago, Bain and Co. unveiled a report showing that while 80% of CEOs believed they were delivering a superior experience, only 8% of customers agreed. These findings kicked off decades of massive investments in technologies aimed at improving customer experience management.
But customers’ perception of their experiences isn’t any better today than it was in 2005. In fact, customer experience quality now sits at historic lows according to sources like Forrester and the Institute of Customer Service’s UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI). Technology alone can’t bridge the customer experience gap. We still need to make sure we’re employing user experience best practices and design principles in conjunction with any technology adoption.
Too many times, I’ve seen firsthand the consequences of downplaying strategy, design and implementation when rolling out new CX technology. The CX symptoms usually get worse, and often new symptoms (i.e., lower NPS and CSAT) enter the mix.
Related Article: A Guide to Bridging Customer Experience Gaps
Build a Strong Case for CX Transformation
Often, to make widespread improvements to your CX health, it takes buy-in from the very highest echelons of your organization, and that means you need to make the business case for change.
After diagnosing the root causes of your symptoms, you’ll have much of the evidence needed to make your case. The next step is presenting that evidence in a way that’s compelling for your stakeholders and that shows how change will have a positive effect on one or more of the three shareholder value levers (i.e., productivity, cost and revenue).
Example: A large dental insurance provider wants to deflect contacts to lower cost channels, reduce average handle times and decrease live agent-to-agent transfers. To achieve these goals, the IT department proposes investing in a new CCaaS platform. It would be a significant investment, so they need to make a compelling business case.
While the right technology could certainly help relieve many of the dental insurer’s symptoms, without understanding why these problems were occurring in the first place, the IT department can’t be sure the CCaaS investment was correct, nor could they make a strong case to the C-suite.
Diagnosing CX Issues: The Key to a Strong Business Case
The insurer uncovers the underlying issues that were leading to their symptoms. In some cases, they find processes and agent training fall short. These were issues that wouldn’t be solved by new technology. In other cases, they pinpoint where their current technology is causing friction in the customer experience.
The insurer puts together a comprehensive diagnosis and identifies where new technology would need configuration to achieve their business goals. They also conduct an ROI analysis, which helps make the case for change and secure C-suite approval.
Create Long-Term CX Health
Customer experience is so much more than discrete transactional moments. It’s the aggregate of every customer touchpoint, which is why it’s so important to take a holistic approach when treating CX pain points.
By using data, analytics and AI, you can reimagine your customer experience management strategy to get to the root causes of your CX problems and create plans to make lasting change throughout your organization.
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