Stellar customer experience (CX) today is possible only when the customer is made to feel a deeper emotional connection across every interaction with a brand.
Gone are those days when CX was templated by optimizing a few individual customer touchpoints. Now it’s time to build a competitive advantage when AI, sustainability, and omnichannel trends are taking over.
Back in Internet time, between the 2000s and 2010s, consumers began to have more options that met their needs owing to technology — thanks to eCommerce, social media, and smartphones.
This era saw a complete role reversal of product-centric to a customer-centric transformation, i.e., shifting from the transactional to conversational aspect. From TV, print, or radio to multiple channels across digital media. Just to provide a seamless and unified customer experience everywhere, through automated emails and chatbots.
However, a valuable 2013 McKinsey and Company insight mentions that even when the customer provides positive feedback on an interaction, it is not necessarily a signal for a great customer experience.
This gap in analyzing the customer exists when a business focuses on the isolated interactions of a customer. They may be looking to resolve an issue, or visiting the website for the time to make a purchase. Those interactions may be great on their own. That still does not provide the whole context, of what ultimately makes their overall experience with the brand truly satisfying or loyalty-worthy.
At the heart of every customer experience strategy now and in the future, personalization is vital. Today, 66% of consumers expect brands to understand their needs and wants. Meeting this expectation leads to increased engagement, loyalty, acquisition, and revenue growth.
Yet, there is much to infer from this bit of customer experience evolution that not only has begun to compel a shift in organization-wide mindset, but also embracing continuous value creation.
And, simply focusing on outdated personalization tactics through automation is not enough when industry 5.0 is right on the verge of sustaining society and merging humans, technology, and machines, and transitioning to Green Living.
The way forward in differentiating as an industry stalwart from the herd is embracing CX innovation as an organization.
One fine example is PepsiCo’s gestural interface that used UltraLeap haptic technology recently in the post-pandemic time. It introduced a unique touchless ordering kiosk that was based on hand-tracking movements, in collaboration with an agency, Method. 80% of customers had a positive experience with the touchless ordering system. Users could finish an order in 40 seconds as it was ergonomic, which indicated high efficiency.
Another avenue to achieve CX transformation lies within an organization itself.
This is possible when the cultural mindset in a company involves disruptive technologies, such as AI. While they must leverage it, but still keep the approach a human-centric one. Companies need to invest in analytics, sure, but they need to make efforts to reach the customer more collaboratively, cross-department wise.
Belgium’s fifth-largest banking institution, Argenta did exactly the same with its conversational AI chatbot, Charlie. Before that, the bank faced challenges with overworked agents. They had to handle a high volume of customer queries, often repetitive.
Charlie was integrated into the Argenta mobile banking app, which took 20% of incoming questions. It saved 24 hours of work within the first one and a half months. It also achieved a high CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) of 80% in messaging channels. Overall, it led to an increase in service quality.
Considering these factors is essential when delivering exceptional customer experiences. According to McKinsey, it can increase sales revenues by 2 to 7 percent and profitability by 1 to 2 percent.
