The customer service landscape has evolved at a phenomenal rate. In recent years, customers have begun to expect more from the companies they work with.

They want every interaction with a business to be as convenient, streamlined, and personalized as possible, and they’re unwilling to accept anything less than the best. To meet these changing expectations, companies mustn’t only upgrade, train and reskill their service teams. They must also be prepared to adapt to a new age of communication.

Because to achieve the convenience and simplicity they crave, consumers are increasingly turning away from traditional communication channels and embracing the digital age. More than ever, consumers are using self-service channels, online chats, and other tools to engage with brands. If you don’t offer high-quality digital customer service, you can’t compete in the CX space.

What is Digital Customer Service?

Digital Customer Service is essentially a strategy for supporting and advising customers through a range of “digital” channels, including mobile apps, email, chat, and messaging apps. The number of digital communication channels is quickly outpacing traditional methods of engaging with customers, and consumers are demanding more options from the brands they connect with.

With a digital customer service strategy, companies can ensure they’re providing service that fits their customers’ needs and lifestyles. For example, there are now 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. They use their digital devices for texting and messaging, buying products and services, consume services. It’s only logical that they’d want to continue using the same tools and platforms when engaging with brands.

Consumers also appreciate the convenience, speed, and simplicity that many digital channels offer. Sending a message to a customer service representative is often easier than waiting for a representative to answer a call. Even if conversations can’t be handled faster through digital channels, these platforms give customers more freedom to engage in other tasks while they wait for assistance.

 

How to Audit Your Digital Customer Service Strategy

Building an effective digital customer service strategy starts with assessing your current CX efforts. Assessing your ecosystem, your customer’s journey, and the pain points customers currently face will ensure you’re on the right path to evolution. For example, take a look at:

 

• How customers engage: Start by asking yourself how your customers are currently engaging with you. Which channels do they use, and which do they prefer to avoid? Do they constantly use email or messaging instead of voice? What kind of communication methods do your customers constantly ask for? Do your customers want or need self-service applications to solve their own problems?
• Your communication channels: What channels are currently available to you for customer communication? Chances are you use at least a handful of methods to connect with your customers, such as email and phone. Ask yourself if you’re providing the right range of solutions based on what you know about your customers.
• The marketplace: How does your CX strategy compare to your competitors’ options? What channels do they offer that you don’t currently have? What new trends are emerging in your industry when it comes to customer service and communications? Are there opportunities for you to differentiate your service?

Areas to Prioritize for Better Digital Customer Service

After examining your current CX strategy, you’ll be in a better position to make some effective changes to your digital customer service. While there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for keeping customers happy and loyal, focusing on a few key areas can boost your chances of success.

Here’s where you should start if you want to upgrade your digital customer service.

 

1.    Expand Your Omnichannel Strategy

Most companies know that they need to offer an omnichannel customer service strategy if they want to delight their customers in the modern world. While it’s important not to overwhelm your employees with too many channels at once, offering the right set of options can be a great way to stand out from the competition.

For example, in addition to instant messaging, email, and voice calls, you could also offer video-based customer service for VIP customers. Some 24% of retailers are even considering options like augmented reality and the metaverse for customer experiences.

No matter which channels you choose, make sure they’re all properly aligned. Make sure your channels are connected on the backend so you can push information from chatbots to agents and vice versa across a range of platforms. This leads to a more consistent experience.

2.    Leverage the Power of AI

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a buzzword, but an integral part of digital customer service experience. Some 85% of CX experts believe it’s important for companies to take advantage of AI right away.

One of the best and easiest ways to implement AI into your CX strategy is through self-service. Developing self-service apps and virtual assistants that are able to respond to common customer issues, help customers troubleshoot problems, and even route calls to the right agent can provide a number of benefits. Empowering customers to resolve issues on their own leads to higher customer satisfaction and retention.

It also helps you reduce the workload your team members have to handle on a daily basis. With an AI system that solves common problems for customers, fewer calls and messages are likely to be routed to your agents, giving them more time to focus on important conversations.

 

3.    Dive into Automation

Hyper-automation is likely to be one of the most important trends in the CX landscape in the coming years. Numerous companies have already found that effective automation not only improves the customer experience but also has a positive impact on the employee experience. Some 76% of agents say automation helps them focus on more complex tasks that bring actual value to the customers.

Automation options can take many forms for customer service agents. They can use automated routing services to ensure customers are always routed to the agent best suited to handle their calls and inquiries, reducing the need for transfers.

In a customer service environment, you can use automation to eliminate repetitive tasks that employees perform daily. For example, recording calls and updating customer information. You can even use automated bots to provide agents with valuable information in real-time as they deal with customer inquiries and issues.

 

4.    Unlock Your Staff’s Full Potential

Part of building an exceptional digital customer service strategy is recognizing that in today’s world, it’s not just about providing a great customer experience. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to think about the “total experience”. In other words, consider how your employees’ and managers’ experiences impact your operations.

To improve the engagement, productivity, and efficiency of your team members, adopt an all-in-one customer service platform. A flexible platform that is able to connect all of your omnichannel communication strategies will reduce the amount of time your employees spend switching between different applications. You can even connect CRM tools and other useful resources to improve the flow of data between team members. With the use of such platforms, you can empower your team through automated guidance and full-scale automation to diminish repetitive tasks and create a unified process regardless of which agent is completing the steps of the flow.

Regular training and guidance on how to effectively use new digital tools can also be of great benefit. You can even help your employees become developers themselves by teaching them how to use low-code and no-code tools to automate their own workflows.

 

5.    Keep Evolving

Excellent digital customer service doesn’t mean updating your platforms and tools once and leaving it at that. The landscape of customer experience is constantly changing. New technologies are constantly coming to the market, and customer expectations are evolving accordingly. That means it’s important for any business to stay agile.

Leverage open and flexible technologies that can scale your business and evolve over time. Take advantage of analytics and reporting tools that help you track key business performance and employee satisfaction metrics, and then use those insights to make smart decisions. Measure how your processes are performing. This is very important for processes that are only partially automated. Do not operate in the dark, you will trip.

You can even extend your insights by supplementing your analytics and reporting tools with automated surveys of your key customers. This gives you a behind-the-scenes look at what your customers want most from your team.

Prepare for the Digital Age

Digital Customer Experience is quickly becoming the new norm for companies around the world. If you can’t serve and support clients on the right digital channels, you’ll have no hope of competing with the other companies in your industry.

Fortunately, taking advantage of the benefits digital customer service can offer doesn’t have to be difficult. With Bulb Technologies and the Cempresso platform, you can easily begin building a strategy for digital transformation today. Contact us to find out more.

 

 

Figuring out how to meet and exceed customer expectations isn’t as easy as it seems.

All companies know that if they want to compete in today’s marketplace, attract new customers, and retain their existing ones, they need to provide excellent service. However, in recent years, customer expectations have changed and evolved.

Currently, 66% of customers say they expect the companies they work with to understand their needs, and 52% expect every interaction to be personalized. In addition, in a world of digital transformation and same-day shipping, consumers expect every service to be available instantly.

This puts a lot of pressure on companies to develop CX strategies that are fast, efficient, and personalized for each customer. Fortunately, while meeting customer expectations isn’t always easy, it can be done. Below are 8 strategies you can use to ensure you’re aligning your service strategy with your customer expectations.

1.    Get to Know Your Customers

The first step to meeting customer expectations is to understand what your customers want from you. In most cases, many customers value the same things as speed, convenience, and personalization. However, you’ll find that some customers value things like empathy and compassion more than others.

By gathering as much information as you can about your target audience, you can develop a customer service strategy that meets their expectations. Don’t just determine basic demographic information like where your customers live or their age. Find out which communication channels they prefer to use, what their main problems are, and what their goals are.

Using a reporting tool integrated with your contact center is a great way to continuously gather more data about your customers so you can map their service history.

2.    Evaluate Your Competitors

88% of customers say they expect companies to constantly innovate and improve their services. If you stand out from other competing brands, you have a good chance of attracting and retaining customers. But you can only do that if you know what your competitors are offering. Conducting a competitor analysis SWOT can help you do this.

Identify the key competitors in your current market and ask yourself how they address your customers’ needs. Do they offer self-service options while you do not? Can they serve their customers through a variety of different channels, from voice to video?

Knowing what your competitors are doing will also give you clues on how to stand out from the crowd. For example, if none of your competitors offer face-to-face interactions with human agents, consider this strategy.

3.    Prioritize Speed

As mentioned earlier, speed is one of the most important things a customer expects when working with a company these days. With this in mind, you should constantly be looking for ways to make your strategy even more streamlined and efficient. Around 90% of customers today say they consider an “immediate” response from customer service to be important.

While you may not be able to set up a support team that’s available 24/7 to handle inquiries, you can implement automated systems to keep your customers in the loop. For example, you can deploy a chatbot that automatically responds to customer inquiries and gathers information about their concerns before forwarding them to an agent.

You can also use smart tools to help your agents handle calls faster. For example, an all-in-one contact center management dashboard that integrates with your CRM gives your agents access to the information they need to instantly personalize the customer experience. Chat assistants and automated bots that can provide customer profile data to agents can also speed up the service process, as agents spend less time searching for information.

4.    Set Metrics for Success

Impressing and delighting your customers is something you need to work on consistently. You can’t just put policies in place and hope for the best. You need to be able to track and monitor the changing customer service landscape and the success of your teams.

Decide which key support metrics you want to focus on to improve your CX strategy. For example, you might focus on things like first resolution rate, average resolution time, and customer satisfaction scores. Once you have an idea of the metrics you want to monitor, be sure to share them with your staff. Having access to dashboards where team members can track their performance in real-time can help increase engagement and productivity.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on which employees aren’t meeting expectations. By monitoring the right metrics, you can identify where you need to provide additional training and support to your team members.

5.    Connect your Teams

Around 76% of customers say they expect consistent interactions with companies across departments. However, more than half also say they feel that marketing, sales, and service teams never share information. Breaking down corporate silos will help you provide a more connected journey for your customers. So make sure your employees can easily collaborate and share information.

Use automated systems to transfer information between teams and improve the customer experience as customers move from one communication channel to the next. It might even be a good idea to implement internal communication tools for your teams to easily collaborate with other professionals on complex issues.

By linking your Unified Communication System and Contact Centre ecosystem, your employees can easily access additional support without having to constantly refer customers to other employees.

6.    Use the Right Technology

Technology is one of the most valuable tools at your disposal when it comes to improving customer service. With the right tools, you empower your agents. More engaged, better-supported agents lead to happier customers. Think about what tools you can use to improve your employees’ workflow.

An all-in-one ecosystem for tracking messages and requests across channels can help your employees deliver a more connected experience without having to jump back and forth between different applications. Automation tools can reduce the number of repetitive tasks your employees have to complete when handling calls and data entry. That means they have more time to focus on customer service.

You could even consider integrating AI bots and virtual assistants into the agent dashboard for your team members. These tools can offer advice and best-practice guidance, or deliver real-time coaching based on customer sentiment and needs.

7.    Empower your Customers

Today’s customers do not just want companies to make sure their employees are able to serve them effectively. They also want the ability to ask questions and solve problems themselves. Self-service solutions such as chatbots, automated assistants, and FAQs are becoming increasingly popular. By using self-service solutions, you can give your customers the freedom to take control of their service experience whenever they want.

Self-service solutions not only lead to higher customer satisfaction but can also save your business time and money. Self-service solutions can help you deflect frequent and repetitive calls that would otherwise take up the attention of your experts.

Remember, the best self-service tools can help businesses not only with simple issues but also with more complex questions and concerns. The smarter your bots and systems are, the easier it will be for them to provide 24/7 support. Use machine learning, natural language processing, and conversational intelligence to create human-like experiences with automated tools.

8.    Listen to Your Customers

Perhaps the most effective way to ensure you’re meeting your customer’s expectations is to listen to their feedback. Use social and digital listening tools to keep your finger on the pulse of the conversations that revolve around your brand. Find out how your customers feel about your business, and ask yourself if you can identify any trends or patterns in their complaints.

Sending out regular customer satisfaction surveys and asking your customers for reviews and testimonials can help you make sure you know what they really want from you. You can even consider offering your customers rewards and discounts in exchange for their reviews to increase your chances of getting more feedback.

Once you’ve gathered as much information as you can from your customers, use it to make decisions about how to evolve and expand your CX strategy.

Live Up to Customer Expectations

Meeting the expectations of today’s customers can be more difficult than it used to be. Today’s customers expect more from businesses than ever before, and many brands are struggling to keep up. However, if you can ensure that you’re delivering experiences that meet your customers’ expectations, you can achieve phenomenal results.

Contact Bulb Tech today to find out how our comprehensive Cempresso platform can provide you with the resources you need to improve employee and customer experiences.

6 Strategies for CX Success

Good customer experiences are something that virtually every company strives for today.

After all, we know that customers aren’t just looking for great prices or exceptional features when making purchasing decisions, they’re also looking for amazing experiences. In fact, 73% of consumers say CX is a critical factor in purchasing decisions.

While customer experience may be the ultimate battleground for modern businesses, there is no universal definition of what a “good customer experience” should look like.

Virtually every company has its own idea of the perfect customer experience. Some focus on speed, others on the power of empathy, and so on.

So how do you define a good customer experience, and more importantly, how do you craft it?

What is a Good Customer Experience?

According to Gartner, 81% of companies compete with other organizations based solely on their customer service initiatives. To win in this environment, companies must have at least a basic understanding of a “good customer experience” is.

Simply put, a good customer experience isn’t necessarily about providing support faster than the competition or offering a wider choice of communication channels. Rather, it’s about consistently meeting and often exceeding your customers’ expectations.

In other words, a good customer experience is subjective. It depends entirely on what your customers expect most from you. This means that defining what “good CX” should look like in your business starts with one simple thing: you need to get to know your audience.

Gathering insights about your customers’ sentiment, CSAT scores, NPS ratings, etc. will help you define where you should focus your efforts.

How to Deliver Good Customer Experiences

While the exact nature of an excellent experience can vary from company to company, there are some core components that virtually every customer associates with a good experience. If you want to ensure you’re competitive in the CX landscape, your strategy should revolve around these points:

• Convenience
• Speed
• Efficiency
• Proactivity
• Personalization
• Empowerment

Now let’s look at some ways you can integrate each of these components into your CX strategy.

1.    Provide Convenience with Omnichannel Service

Every customer, whether a B2C customer or a B2B customer, wants their interaction with businesses to be convenient. There are a few ways you can eliminate customer service friction with the right CX software, but the easiest way is to meet your customers where they’re and provide support through their preferred channels.

When customers spend most of their time interacting with brands on social media, they don’t want to have to find a phone number and contact a call center to get help; they want to be able to message you on the same channels they use to read news about your company and chat with their friends.

Find out where your customers are most likely to connect with businesses and make sure you’re able to offer support on those platforms. Most importantly, give your customers the ability to move between channels without having to start over.

A true omnichannel customer service strategy allows you to provide a consistent, contextual experience as your customer moves from one platform to the next by ensuring that every agent has access to consistent information about the customer journey.

 

2.    Speed Service with Better Processes

Speed has long been a critical factor in good customer service. Whether your customers are buying a product or trying to solve a problem, they want a quick response. In recent years, the need for speed has only increased thanks to the rise of real-time chat tools, same-day delivery, and other speed-oriented service solutions. That means you need to be faster than ever.

The good news is that there are several ways to increase your speed by streamlining your CX processes. Start by training your employees and giving them the knowledge they need to solve problems quickly. Every employee should fully understand your products and services and have access to the tools they need to find information quickly. Virtual assistants and chatbots are great for giving agents faster access to information. You can also use automation technology to increase speed.

Automating processes like call routing and data entry means customers can get to the right agent faster, and agents can move between calls more quickly without having to complete the process faster.

 

3.    Give Agents the Right Tools to Boost Efficiency

Good customer experiences and good employee experiences are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other. According to one report, companies with the most engaged employees also have 81% higher customer satisfaction.

To keep your employees happy, you need to give them the tools they need to do their jobs effectively. Start by creating a unified workspace where employees can access all the tools and information, they need to serve customers in one convenient environment. That way, they spend less time switching back and forth between different applications. Improve workflow by automatically routing customers to the agents with the right skills to resolve their issues and eliminate repetitive tasks.

It’s also helpful to ensure that your agents can work collaboratively on customer issues. When you connect customer experience tools and software with collaboration apps, your agents can easily share ideas and transfer calls without requiring extra effort from the customer.

4.    Use Insights to Become Proactive

A study by Gartner shows that companies need to become more proactive and less reactive to compete in today’s customer service landscape. Good customer service means responding to customers’ needs as they arise, but great service starts with being ahead of the curve.

While no company can predict the future, you can use analytics, reporting, and business insights to effectively improve the way you respond to customers’ needs. With the right real-time and historical reporting tools, you can track customer service trends to identify your customers’ most common problems and find ways to solve them.

You can also use customer data to recommend products to your customers that meet their needs, provide insights into when subscriptions expire, and more. With the right tools, you can even proactively monitor technology remotely and fix problems automatically.

5.    Leverage AI for Personalization

Today’s customers not only want their experience to be fast and efficient, but they also want it to be tailored to their specific needs. When you tailor customer service to your customer’s needs, you lay the foundation for better relationships, stronger loyalty, and higher retention.

The good news is that you probably already have the tools you need to provide a more customized service. Some 83% of customers say they’re willing to share data with companies if they believe it’ll lead to a better customer experience. Using the data, you collect with your contact center and CRM technologies, you can tailor your services to each customer.

With automated screen pops built into CCaaS tools, companies can even give their agents insights into a customer’s preferences, past purchases, and needs before they even pick up the phone or respond to a chat message. Just be sure to protect the data you’ll use for personalization because data breaches can be devastating to a company’s reputation.

6.    Empower Customers with Self Service

Finally, it should be remembered that today’s consumers don’t necessarily need an agent to handle all their requests for them. Many consumers are perfectly capable of solving their problems themselves, provided they have the right resources at their disposal. With this in mind, it’s worth investing some time in developing the right self-service strategy.

You can start with simple solutions, such as the FAQ pages on your website. Or you can develop chatbots and virtual assistants that are able to recognize human speech and respond to individual customer requests. The best self-service solutions make it easy for customers to solve their own problems without human intervention.

These tools can also make it easier for agents to provide a better level of service when a call is transferred to them. A bot or virtual agent can relay information from previous self-service interactions to an agent, so the customer doesn’t have to explain their problem again. Used properly, these tools can’t only improve customer satisfaction, but also increase business productivity.

Achieve Amazing Customer Experience

The reality is that there is no single definition of a “good customer experience. Different customers place different importance on all the above factors. However, investing in these elements should ensure that you can provide at least the level of support your customers expect.

As you continue to gather data about your audience and monitor the evolving market, you can optimize your CX strategies based on what you learn about your own customers.

Of course, it all starts with access to the right tools. Bulb Tech’s Cempresso suite is an all-in-one customer experience solution that combines all the above to give you a much-needed CX boost. Contact Bulb Tech today to learn more about how we can help you redefine amazing customer experiences.

 

For some time now, companies have been focusing more on the concept of “CX” (Customer Experience). They know that they need to provide a perfect balance of personalization, convenience, and innovation in every interaction if they want to succeed in a competitive market.

While it’s a good strategy for any company to prioritize CX, some brands have overlooked another critical experience concept in their quest to become more customer-obsessed: the employee experience.

If you want to keep your customers happy, you must first start with engaged, empowered employees. Happier team members make better agents, and better agents lead to better customer interactions. In essence, CX and EX (Employee Experience) aren’t separate initiatives – they’re two sides of the same coin.

 

What is Agent Experience?

To generate positive EX, organizations must first define what the agent experience actually is. Fortunately, this isn’t a difficult concept. The term “Agent experience” simply refers to all aspects of how your employees interact with your company.

Companies ensure a positive employee experience by prioritizing the well-being of their employees, enabling them to do their jobs effectively, and avoiding frustration as much as possible.

The factors that influence the employee experience vary from company to company.

For example, if you operate a contact center, you can ensure a positive experience by providing employees with access to quality technology, flexible work schedules, and supervisor support. In most cases, you can provide a better experience by simply listening to your employees.

 

Why is Agent Experience Important?

Happier, more satisfied, and more engaged employees ultimately lead to better results for organizations. Studies show that engaged team members are 21% more productive than their peers and also generate up to 20% more revenue than other team members. And why? Because people prefer to interact with other happy, knowledgeable people.

When we approach a customer service team and are connected to someone who is clearly exhausted, frustrated, and just itching to get their paycheck, we can tell. An employee who has had a good agent experience is more likely to be confident, well-informed, and cordial when interacting with customers.

Improving agent experience isn’t just important for CX. It directly impacts your company’s performance by determining how many employees stay with your brand. Talented employees don’t want to work at companies where they feel undervalued or burned out. In an age where people can work from anywhere, not prioritizing agent experience could mean you quickly lose your best employees to the competition.

 

The Challenge of Delivering Great Agent Experience

On the surface, creating happy agents doesn’t seem like an overly complicated concept. You simply pay attention to the needs of your employees and respond accordingly. In recent years, however, mastering the agent experience has become more difficult.

Changing work strategies such as hybrid and remote work offer new flexibility to today’s service agents, but they also bring other challenges, such as feelings of isolation and disengagement.

In addition, 70% of agents say they regularly feel overwhelmed and burned out due to the increasing demands of customer service. In today’s fast-paced service environment, only about 15% of agents are satisfied with their workload.

To make matters worse, many agents are also dissatisfied with the training and support they receive. Only 30% of agents say they feel they’re sufficiently empowered to do their jobs well. All of this shows that companies need to develop new strategies if they want to improve the agent experience and interactions with customers.

It’s not enough to simply offer employees flexible hours and good benefits. Business leaders must also pay attention to the frustrations their employees face daily.

 

How Bulb Technologies Can Help

Bulb Technologies is a leader in developing software solutions and platforms for businesses focused on digital transformation and customer experience. However, we don’t just focus on “CX”. We believe in the power of “Total Experience,” which means our platform addresses all parts of the customer experience ecosystem – including the agent experience.

We develop tools that support agents and customers at the same time, providing more assistance and guidance to both parties in the conversation. In this way, we enable companies to provide agents with a more valuable experience:

• All-in-one omnichannel tools: Switching between a variety of different apps and tools to serve today’s omnichannel customers is time-consuming and frustrating for agents. These disparate tools not only waste time but also make it difficult to retain contextual information throughout the customer journey. Our all-in-one omnichannel environments give agents access to all the information they need for personalized interactions in one convenient place, without the need for complicated interfaces or app changes.
• Implementing AI: Artificial intelligence can be an extremely powerful tool for agent experience. Our chatbots and virtual assistants act as partners to team members in your organization, helping them get more work done without having to worry about it. Virtual assistants can provide instant, useful access to information to streamline your employees’ workflow. At the same time, chatbots provide a useful way for teams to sort through potential customer service requests, so you can reduce the number of calls your employees handle each day.
• Workflow automation: Agent’s work delivers the best results when they can focus on serving and supporting customers. The last thing they want is to spend their days on boring repetitive tasks. Our workforce automation tools make it easy to eliminate the time-consuming chores that would otherwise take up your agent’s valuable time. We even have low-code and no-code solutions available which allow employees to build their own workflow from scratch. This means every employee has the power to improve their work experience.
• Simple, intuitive technology: The platforms offered by Bulb Technologies are simple, straightforward, and require minimal training to learn. They integrate with the tools your customer service representatives are already using, so they have access to all the resources they need in a single place. Users can customize their ecosystem to meet their specific needs, so every team member has all the tools they need at their fingertips.
• In-depth analytics: Informed employees are more productive and efficient. Integrated analytics and reporting tools in Bulb Technologies’ Cempresso DCS platform give your team members access to valuable insights on all metrics and KPIs relevant to their work. The comprehensive tools we offer can make it easier for employees to figure out what they need to do to continue delighting customers. At the same time, supervisors and managers can use their own analytical insights to track employee performance and engagement.

 

Build the Ultimate Agent Experience with Bulb Technologies

With our Total Experience platform, companies can create a powerful employee and customer experience in a convenient all-in-one environment. Our tools are easy to implement, deploy, and maintain, so business leaders spend less time worrying about technology and more time exploring new growth strategies.

An all-in-one environment gives any organization a unified suite to enhance their experience ecosystem with access to endless customization options and integrations. That means you’re not limited to a one-size-fits-all strategy. Find the Agent Experience solution that works best for your team and customers.

Contact Bulb Tech today to find out how we can help you improve your agent experience and engage your employees.

 

 

Customer service is undergoing a massive transformation, driven by the rising expectations and demands of the changing consumer landscape. According to Salesforce, 80% of customers believe that the experience provided by a brand is as important as its products and services. In addition, 66% of customers expect companies to automatically understand their needs and expectations.

Fortunately, companies are starting to respond to this changing landscape. We’ve seen the average “call center” evolve into a contact center designed to deliver a phenomenal customer experience across all channels.

With the aid of artificial intelligence, new technologies consolidate desktop applications, guide customer service agents through interactions, and provide insight into customer sentiment. Companies are even beginning to automate their CX strategies to help their employees and increase productivity. But even as companies struggle to keep up with the latest changes in the customer service landscape, the pace of evolution is rapid.

If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to know what’s coming.

What Does the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

While it’s impossible to predict exactly what the future will hold for customer service, we can use the trends uncovered in recent years to determine where CX is headed. Examining the evolving landscape and the many changes that have taken place within the service ecosystem over the past year offers us some important insights into what customers expect today.

Here are some of the trends you should prepare for as we head into 2023 and beyond.

1.    Frictionless, Omnichannel Experiences

In recent years, customers have begun to discover the benefits of communicating with companies across multiple channels and platforms. Long gone are the days when customers relied solely on phone calls to connect with brands. Today’s consumers expect you to know where they prefer to have their conversations and to be accessible on every channel.

Perhaps most importantly, as we develop omnichannel experiences for customer service of the future, every interaction should be “frictionless.” In other words: Not only do your customers want the ability to switch between channels when seeking information and support, but they also want to be able to move seamlessly from one platform to the next.

96% of consumers say they expect companies to make it as easy as possible for them to switch between channels. That means your backend environment should make it easy to move context from one channel to the next as the customer conversation evolves.

2.    Streamlined, Simple Interactions

Customer service in the new age must not only be omnichannel but also free of the usual hassles that today’s consumers are tired of. In today’s fast-paced world, customers are less willing to deal with long wait times, stressful self-service experiences, and understaffed customer service. They want you to solve these problems and provide a simple, flexible experience.

Companies need to upgrade their service strategies with tools that enable employees to get more done in less time. This means investing in solutions that automate repetitive tasks so employees can focus more on developing stronger customer relationships. It also means leveraging artificial intelligence for things like intelligent routing and virtual assistants that give employees quick access to relevant information about each customer’s needs.

Speaking of artificial intelligence, as customers look forward to an era of “predictive” and “proactive” service, it will become increasingly important to use intelligent tools that can detect and prevent problems before they occur. Eliminating potential problems before they occur can greatly improve the customer experience while freeing up the staff responsible for delivering excellent customer care.

3.    Augmented Customer Service Reps

As expectations rise and customer needs become more complex, customer service representatives are under greater pressure than ever before. In a world where most customers can find solutions to simple problems through a simple online search, many will only communicate with a customer service representative when they have a more complicated problem to solve.

Customer service representatives are facing increasingly complicated scenarios requiring further training and extended support. Fortunately, there are tools available to help these employees succeed. As mentioned earlier, automation solutions can help eliminate some of the repetitive tasks from an employee’s to-do list, allowing them to focus on the issues that really matter.

At the same time, smart solutions can provide team members with additional support when it comes to managing the increasing volume of support requests they receive each day. Smart chatbots can gather information about a customer before routing them to an agent, and even walk them through troubleshooting specific issues in advance.

4.    More Comprehensive Self-Service

According to Gartner, 70% of customers now use self-service channels at some point in their customer experience journey. However, only 9% of customers can fully complete their interaction with self-service applications alone. The main reason for this is that many old-fashioned bots and self-service tools simply don’t have the power to solve more complex customer problems.

As customers increasingly turn to self-service solutions to quickly resolve issues without human assistance, companies need to invest more time and effort into making these tools as intuitive and efficient as possible. This means they need to invest in solutions powered by AI, machine learning, and natural language processing and include automation.

The right tools should be able to intelligently respond to any customer question, using information from the company’s database and CRM solution. Modern self-service solutions should handle even complicated interactions without having to constantly refer customers to an agent, so customers can resolve issues faster and companies can make the best use of their human resources.

 

5.    Hyper-Personalization is a Must

As the future of customer service becomes increasingly digital, consumers are unwilling to trade personal, human experiences for convenience. They want every interaction tailored to their specific needs. This means companies need to do more to provide each customer with a unique interaction based on their specific needs.

Companies have already begun to focus more on hyper-personalized interactions by giving consumers more choices in how they interact with a brand. Today’s customers can request a video call if they want a representative to walk them through the steps of setting up a new system, or they can request a call back from a representative if a service representative is unavailable.

In the coming years, however, it’ll be critical to take this personalization strategy to the next level. Service workers, both human and digital, must be able to access up-to-date insights about a customer directly from embedded CRM systems and tools within their communications ecosystem. An all-in-one environment that gives employees instant access to relevant information will be critical to ensuring that the service offered is unique to each customer.

 

Transforming the Future of Customer Service

Perhaps one of the most important things that all the upcoming trends in the customer service landscape have in common is that they all point to a future where digital interactions are the norm. Companies clearly need to invest in a digital transformation strategy for their service initiatives if they want to keep pace with their customers’ demands for hyper-personalized, intelligent, and optimized service experiences.

However, simply adding new tools to your ecosystem isn’t enough to create a frictionless digital solution for customer service. Building a plan for true innovation requires a careful strategy and a platform capable of adapting to the ever-changing needs of your business.

Contact Bulb Technologies today to find out how our powerful Total Experience platform can help you empower your workforce, improve customer service, and drive self-service strategies – all at the same time, without breaking your budget.

 

Regardless of the industry you’re in, you probably already know that the customer experience is the key to success.

More than any other factor, the convenience, practicality, and speed of service you can provide your customers will determine whether they become loyal advocates or frustrated naysayers. In a world where consumers have more opportunities to share their negative thoughts about a company than ever before, one bad experience can destroy the reputation of your entire business.

Part of delivering a phenomenal customer experience is engaging your audience through the right channels. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of debate about which channels businesses should actually use. Most companies don’t have the budget or time to make sure their employees are accessible everywhere.

So, do you go for the traditional voice calls or do you invest in the new opportunities that chat offers? Let’s find out.

The Benefits of Calling over Chat

Since the 1960s, the telephone has been the primary service channel for most conversations between brands and consumers. However, that is beginning to change rapidly. Today, 75% of Millennials say they’d rather give up the ability to make a phone call than the ability to text.

Phone support has a number of weaknesses. Not only is it far from a preferred option for most consumers to call, but it’s also not particularly cost-effective. In a business environment, phone support staff can only answer one call at a time and support a single customer. That means you need more staff to handle a larger volume of contacts.

Not to mention that even with a reasonable number of employees, you may suffer from long queues and long wait times at peak times. Another problem is that phone calls aren’t always recorded and documented as well as they should be.

So why do companies still use telephones at all? It’s simple: they still have value. 95% of customers say they still want the opportunity to speak with an employee in person, even if they won’t use that option.

Phone calls also enable:

• Personal, human connections: Phone interactions capture the emotions, tone, and inflection of the speaker. This can help build a personal relationship between an agent and a customer. Also, it can pave the way for better relationships in the long run.
• Better management of complex issues: When faced with a complicated problem, most customers would prefer to call and speak directly with an agent.
• Instant responses: Although customers may have to wait on hold for a call to be answered, they can usually resolve their concerns the same day. On the other hand, it might take longer for agents to resolve chat messages completely.
• Data insights: Many phone systems allow companies to collect valuable data about customers, figuring sentiment from the tone of voice, and capturing other important details. It’s also possible to track information about call handling and quality.

The Benefits of Chat over Calling

Although the importance of making phone calls in the contact center hasn’t completely disappeared, phone calls are certainly less popular than they used to be. In fact, some studies show that businesses that use chat services are 2.8 times more likely to convert customers.

Chat comes in several varieties to suit virtually any business need. Businesses can offer asynchronous chat services during the day so employees can handle multiple questions at once, and then switch to chatbots when customers aren’t available. In particular, “asynchronous” chat has some serious advantages for brands.

Is asynchronous chat the hidden gem?

With asynchronous chat, employees don’t have to answer every question immediately. Instead, they can handle one question at a time, depending on its importance. This means that companies can ensure that the most pressing issues are addressed first. Also, with asynchronous chat, customers don’t have to wait at the end of the phone line for a call to be answered.

Customers can send a message to a team and simply get a response as soon as someone is available. This ensures that individuals can continue with other tasks while waiting for a resolution or response. Perhaps most importantly, asynchronous chat gives companies the ability to respond to the belief that businesses today should be available 24/7.

Even if an employee isn’t available to answer a message right now, a customer can still reach out, voice their concern, and put the issue in your hands. This takes some of the stress off your customer. In some cases, chatbots and AI assistants can help customers resolve their issues without waiting for an available agent.

The key benefits of chat in the contact center include:

• 24/7 Service: Companies can combine asynchronous chat with chatbots and virtual assistants to provide customers with constant answers to their questions. Customers can ask their questions immediately and then get on with their lives without having to wait for a response. They also often get answers a lot faster
• Improved employee experience: Great customer experience starts with a good employee experience. If your employees are overwhelmed and stressed by endless calls, they’re more likely to rush service, damaging the customer relationship. Asynchronous chat reduces stress levels and keeps teams happy.
• Better customer experience: With a normal phone call, a customer must wait on hold for their call to be answered, often without the opportunity to do anything else. With a chat system, they can continue their day with relative ease and simply receive a message when a representative is available. This makes life much more convenient for most customers.
• Reduced repetition: Chat is a great way to consistently log conversations between your customers and your employees. When someone picks up the chat, he doesn’t have to start from scratch and ask the customer about his problems. He can review previous messages and CRM data and gather more details before starting the conversation. This leads to faster resolutions and less repetition.
• Improved productivity: Even if a customer decides to start a customer service exchange with a chatbot, it provides useful information that your employees can pick up later. When an employee takes over the conversation, they have all the information they need to provide an appropriate response. Employees can run troubleshooting tests and find information about an issue before answering the question to get almost instant results.
• Fewer transfers: With a chat system, it’s easy to deliver customer questions and queries directly to the agent with the right skills for the task. An agent can work with another agent on the back end of the system to get answers to a question. This way customers don’t have to be passed from one agent to the next. This streamlines conversations and reduces customer frustration.
• Better rapport:  A chat system can easily store information about previous conversations with a customer in a CRM or database. Consequently, it’s easy to gain behind-the-scenes insight into each of your customers. This means that company employees can have a better experience by tailoring the conversation to the needs of the business.

 

Which is Better: Calling or Chat?

Overall, chat offers today’s customers and teams many more benefits than the average phone call system. It’s more streamlined and effective, helping to improve the customer and employee experience simultaneously. Asynchronous chat helps reduce agent frustration, strengthen customer relationships, and improve productivity.

However, that doesn’t mean calls should be ignored entirely. Rather, the best customer service is usually delivered on an omnichannel basis. While many companies start with chat as a core part of their strategy, they’ll likely still include the option of calling in case the conversation needs to be escalated. Fortunately, Cempresso Digital Customer Service makes it easy to create a workflow that works for any customer base.

Reach out to Bulb Technologies and leverage Cempresso. Cempresso makes it quick and easy to set up powerful asynchronous chat workflows, complete with access to data insights, custom integrations, and powerful AI chatbots. You can even include the option to escalate a chat into a call without losing previously collected data about customers.

 

 

The way companies serve their customers has changed drastically in recent years. As consumers become more digitally focused, old-fashioned call centers are quickly being replaced by engaging omnichannel customer experience environments. CCaaS solutions and customer experience suites offer businesses the ability to engage with their customers through virtually any channel.

The emerging digital revolution has also paved the way for high levels of automation. Companies have found new ways to reduce call volume by allowing customers to solve their own problems with FAQs, chatbots, and virtual assistants. In fact, some 68% of customers say they now prefer to use self-service solutions rather than interact with an agent.

Unfortunately, Gartner found that while more and more customers are beginning their journey into the self-service environment, only about 9% expect to be able to solve their problems entirely on their own. There are countless scenarios where a customer needs to move to a different platform and level of service to resolve a transaction or issue.

This means that companies need to focus not only on creating digital experiences but on a digital customer experience strategy that combines both automation and human contact.

Why Does Digital Customer Experience Need a Human Element?

Seamless digital customer experiences are becoming increasingly popular with consumers who want to solve their own problems quickly using smart tools and interact with businesses across multiple channels. But as popular as self-service channels may be in the CX landscape, they’re rarely enough to solve all customer problems on their own.

While incorporating intelligent bots and tools that can understand and process natural language increases your chances of solving more complex customer issues, there will always be a need for a human element in customer service. Research often shows that agent-assisted digital channels are still among the preferred options for customers.

Live agents are essentially safety nets for customers who are willing to deal with issues that may not be resolved through a self-service strategy. They have additional training and knowledge that some self-service tools cannot provide. They’re also a valuable component of an empathetic and engaging customer experience. One study found that 58% of customers who had the opportunity to interact with a human during the purchasing process were more likely to purchase from the company again.

What’s more, even in a world of automation and artificial intelligence, customers still value real, genuine human relationships. One study found that about 82% of U.S. customers say they want more human interactions with companies in the future.

 

How to Embed Human Interaction into Digital Customer Experience

Creating a seamless digital customer experience means that companies must invest not only in new channels and technologies but also in solutions that connect the worlds of self-service and human services. A hybrid approach that allows customers to get the best of both worlds leads to smoother, more satisfying, and more engaging experiences.

So how can you properly combine the human agent with self-service and the digital landscape?

1.    Implement the Right CX Channels

The first step to creating a truly seamless digital customer experience strategy for your customers is to make sure you’re implementing and leveraging all the right customer experience channels. The best way to start is by observing your competitors and your customers. Find out where customers typically interact with brands like yours. For example, maybe they prefer SMS, social messaging, or video.

Once you know what channels your customers use, you can develop a strategy that combines digital self-service solutions with more agent-based options. For example, with an all-in-one CX platform, you can create a platform where customers can engage with your brand via a chatbot, a virtual agent, or a chatbot that connects them directly to a human agent.

The focus here should be to integrate all the channels you use, agent-based or not. It should be easy to track the customer journey from start to finish.

2.    Use the Right Self-Service Solutions

The second step is to make sure you invest in the right self-service solutions for your CX strategy. It’s no longer enough to simply add a simple chatbot to your website. As consumers’ problems become more complex, they’re looking for virtual agents and automated tools with built-in natural language processing and conversation analytics capabilities.

An intelligent chatbot or self-service tool can guide customers through a wider range of problem-solving techniques by responding intuitively to each question. It can also use data to personalize customer interactions more effectively from the beginning of the buyer journey.

A bonus is that these tools also more effectively collect the valuable data agents need to route them as customers move between different levels of service.

3.    Make Transitioning to an Agent Simple

Once you’ve implemented the right self-service tools across all digital channels, make sure your customers always have the option to easily switch to an agent if they need additional help. This could mean adding a button to a chatbot that allows customers to instantly choose whether they want a call or a video chat with an agent.

The technology you choose for your customer experience strategy should be able to seamlessly determine which agent is best suited to handle a call, with AI routing capabilities. It should also be able to pass relevant information from previous interactions with the customer to the agent, so the customer doesn’t have to repeat their problem or know what solutions they’ve already tried.

Using automated workflows and triggers, organizations can facilitate the direct transfer of data to agents so they can pick up where a previous support solution left off. This makes the entire experience easier for the agent and more seamless for the customer.

4.    Use Analytics To Transform Your Strategy

Developing a customer-obsessed experience strategy means taking into account the ever-changing needs and expectations of your target audience. The only way to do this is to set up a way to monitor and analyze every customer interaction. Your CX tool should have built-in analytics capabilities that allow you to collect real-time and historical data.

The more information you collect, the more you’ll learn about the customer journey map and what you can do to improve it. Analytics can also help you develop more effective tools to support your agents throughout the service lifecycle. Virtual assistants powered by machine learning can make suggestions to agents about how to handle an issue based on past interactions. These same tools can monitor customer sentiment in real-time and tell supervisors when a call is going south.

Using real-time and historical data in your customer service strategy makes it easier to target your campaigns to the real needs and intentions of your audience. It can also show you which channels your customers use most often.

5.    Invest in Proactive Outbound Support

Once you’ve embedded analytics into your CX efforts, the next step will be much easier. The data you collect from historical conversations makes it easier to understand where customers’ problems start and what kind of help, they need most. This paves the way for developing a proactive outbound support strategy.

Research shows that 89% of customers find their favorite brand’s proactive customer service a pleasant surprise. If you want to delight your audience, identifying the source of problems and finding ways to proactively resolve them is a great way to do it.

You can even use automation and RPA tools to create automated solutions that let you actively report and fix issues while employees are working on other tasks. This gives you the opportunity to create a true end-to-end customer experience strategy.

Create The Ultimate Digital Experience

A great digital customer experience doesn’t just mean investing in the latest self-service or digital interaction tools. It also means knowing how to align your human talent with your digital strategies. With the tips above, you can ensure your customers get the best balance of straightforward self-service solutions and empathetic human support.

Learn more about how Bulb Tech’s end-to-end technology can help you create the ultimate digital experience strategy today.

 

 

Today, we’re taking a look at 5 of the most important technology trends by 2025.

The speed of technological change in today’s world is hard to underestimate. Although innovation in the tech landscape is nothing new, our changes since the pandemic seem to be happening at an accelerating pace. In recent years, we’ve seen a significant increase in everything from AI initiatives to the Internet of Things (IoT).

While not all technology trends are a necessity for every brand, there are some new innovations that will have a lasting impact on most businesses.

5 technology trends you need to be prepared for by 2025 (if you’re not already investing in these areas) are:

1.    Automation at scale

The concept of “hyper-automation” has gained increasing attention in recent years. As companies struggle with increasingly demanding customers, rapid employee turnover, and increasingly complex processes, automation is becoming a critical factor in keeping things running smoothly.

Many companies are already investing in simple automation processes, such as managing IT and data processing. However, hyper-automation will take this concept to the next level. With hyper-automation, companies are taking advantage of the combined benefits of RPA (Robotic Process Automation), machine learning, and AI.

Hyper-automation will impact all types of workflows by enabling companies to respond more intelligently and instantly to a range of common problems. The right solutions will involve building “smart workflows” with robotic systems capable of responding to context. The key to success for most brands, of course, is knowing what to automate and how to implement the right workflow strategies.

For example, while various aspects of customer service such as onboarding and routine payment management can be easily automated, there will still need to be humans providing compassion and empathy to end users. The future depends on the perfect balance between human and machine innovation.

 

2.    New Standards for AI Investments

There’s no way around the massive impact of Artificial Intelligence on businesses around the world today. Increasingly, we rely on intelligent solutions to help us identify trends in customer preferences, capture sentiment, and even predict future needs. However, the smarter our tools become, the more they can bring privacy and security challenges.

According to one study, 70% of U.S. citizens currently worry that AI is taking over our lives or collecting too much information. As technologies like natural language processing and biometric security solutions become more prevalent, it’s important that leaders take steps to develop policies and practices that keep everyone safe.

Organizations need to ensure that they aren’t only investing in AI solutions that will make their teams more efficient and productive, but also in solutions that have been developed with AI ethics in mind. Everything from how data is collected and stored to how companies invest in developing virtual agents needs to be rethought. In the future, we can expect to see a variety of new governance strategies in this space.

If you plan to implement more AI technology into your ecosystem in the coming years, it’s imperative that you also ensure you take steps to keep the landscape as secure as possible.

3.    The Rise of Distributed Cloud Environments

Cloud technology is probably one of the most far-reaching innovations we’ve seen in recent years. Although the shift to cloud processes has been underway at major brands for some time, it’s become increasingly important in recent years. The rise of hybrid working and distributed workers means we’re all spending more time in the cloud than ever before.

The concept of “distributed cloud” envisions a landscape where organizations can move services, management, and business operations outside of a centralized data center to be accessed wherever they’re needed, including on-edge device networks. Although large cloud service providers are still gaining traction today, the number of smaller providers that can deliver more flexible solutions is likely to increase.

Regardless of what happens next in the cloud landscape, interoperability and open standards will be critical. Teams will need access to simple and accessible cloud landscapes where they can combine multiple tools into a single platform. At the same time, organizations will need to ensure that the use of these cloud environments doesn’t cause problems with the team’s internal compliance and security strategies.

4.    The Extended Edge

With the advent of the cloud, there is also an increasing demand for distributed devices and tools that can connect to a larger network. The “extended edge” is a data processing and storage solution that enables higher levels of functionality and processing at the edge of enterprise networks.

As IoT solutions become more prevalent and connectivity solutions such as 5G technology emerge, the “extended edge” will become an increasingly valuable tool for many enterprises. For now, however, it’s important to note that not every enterprise necessarily has the infrastructure in place to harness the power of the edge.

Without access to 5G connectivity, many enterprises may struggle to provide true real-time interactions between devices and solutions with high processing power. Others will have to wait for their automation, machine learning, and AI strategies to mature further before they can also move into the edge environment. Distributed cloud could also prove to be a powerful feature in an enterprise’s transition to the edge, as it gives brands more control over their cloud networks.

 

5.    Innovative CX Strategies Evolve

It’s no secret that customer service and support have become the most important aspects of today’s business landscape. Many companies are already investing in new and innovative processes to improve the customer experience. Many of these new strategies take advantage of the trends mentioned above.

For example, hyper-automation solutions can enable faster and smarter self-service onboarding and troubleshooting experiences for team members. Implementing AI solutions to manage common transactions is also likely to become more important in the future. Companies are already implementing solutions such as AI systems that performed bio-metric checks to reduce the time it takes to identify a customer.

Another area we’re likely to see an increased focus on in the future is the world of XR. Augmented reality technology enables the creation of deep and futuristic experiences between companies and their customers. With an AR app, users can test the look of a product in their homes or walk them through the process of setting up a new application. VR Solutions enable more immersive demonstrations and support experiences.

XR is still in the very early stages of becoming a mainstream technology for the digital world, but many companies are beginning to participate. Already, we’re seeing the increasing development of AR solutions and the rapid integration of new tools to increase employee productivity and collaboration.

With the advent of 5G, AI and other powerful technologies that contribute to the XR environment, more and more companies are likely to follow this path.

 

Looking Forward to 2025

While it’s impossible to predict with certainty what the future holds for today’s tech-savvy companies, we can make some clear predictions based on the technology trends we’ve observed so far. All five of the above technology trends are already experiencing phenomenal growth and adoption across all industries, and many brands are planning to get more involved in the coming years.

If you want to ensure you’re competitive in the new age of digital transformation, the best thing you can do is start with the right plan. Contact Bulb Tech today to learn how implementing tools like IoT and hyper-automation can take your business to the next level.

 

Automation trends have many benefits

Right automation trends will not only increase the efficiency of your workforce, but can also help address the challenges of global labor shortages, improve the customer experience, and even save money for the right brands.  

Digital transformation has become a buzzword in every industry in recent years. As consumers become more demanding, regulations more complex, and workflows more detailed, businesses are increasingly turning to technology to increase efficiency and productivity.  

For companies planning their investment strategy for 2023, several revolutionary technologies are available, but few are as impactful as automation. Once considered a convenient option for minimizing repetitive tasks, automation has become an absolute requirement for many business leaders.  

 

The Evolution of Automation for 2023 

When the concept of automation was first introduced into the corporate and business landscape, it was met with great confusion. Many organizations viewed technology as an industry-specific requirement for specific sectors such as engineering and manufacturing. Others were worried about the potential impact of automation on the human workforce.  

 However, as more automation solutions have begun to emerge, we are discovering just how valuable technology can be. Today: 

 

• More than half of executives plan to increase their investments in automation in the coming years, and 73% expect significant revenue growth due to their new tools.  
• 73% of IT executives say their employees save between 10 and 50% of the time they would spend on manual tasks thanks to the implementation of automation capabilities.  
• 78% of business executives believe that automating tasks within the organization increases productivity and efficiency across the entire organization.  
• 85% of business executives believe that automating parts of their employees’ workflows allows them to focus on more strategic goals and accelerate business success.  

 

The Automation Trends to Watch in 2023 

Although all aspects of automation are experiencing significant growth in today’s enterprise landscape, there are some areas where we are seeing particularly strong interest. Here are some of the key automation trends to consider as you build your 2023 agenda. 

1. Customer Self Service Will Continue to Evolve  

According to Gartner, about 70% of customers currently use self-service channels to solve their issues. However, many companies are struggling to help customers complete the entire interaction without human assistance. Only 9% of service journeys are fully self-service. 

Customers are increasingly relying on automated tools to completely avoid conversations with the service agent or support provider. This means that tools must be able to provide intelligent, personalized, and guided support for even the most complicated challenges. In 2023, companies will begin to implement smarter forms of self-service for their target audiences. 

This will involve extending chatbot and virtual assistant capabilities with new AI innovations such as NLP, context, and intent analysis. More powerful conversational AI tools will be able to guide consumers through the self-service experience quickly and efficiently, reducing the number of calls the customer service team must handle. 

2. Automation will Empower Employees 

Today’s businesses must consider the benefits of this technology for both improving the customer experience and employee engagement. Concepts like “Total Experience” are becoming increasingly important for differentiating companies. Especially at a time when the “Great Resignation” has led to a massive shortage of skilled customer service employees cross-industries.  

Automation can help empower and support employees in many ways. First, self-service solutions reduce the number of calls employees deal with daily, freeing them up for other value-added tasks. Second, automated bots and solutions can guide employees through processes more quickly and conveniently.  

A virtual assistant for an agent can automatically leverage information about a customer in the contact center dashboard as soon as an agent answers a call, so they can immediately provide a personalized experience. The same tool can facilitate data searches about products and services and log call details at the end of a call. In this way, companies can significantly reduce the amount of work each employee has to do after a call. 

3. Intelligent Automation will Become the New Norm 

Automation has many faces in today’s technology landscape. Many traditional tools are designed to streamline simple processes using basic workflows and triggers. However, automation and artificial intelligence are becoming more interwoven, enabling a wider range of potential benefits. Intelligent automation combines concepts like machine learning and natural language processing with automation for a wide range of use cases.  

For example, an intelligent automation system could gather information about customers, determine which employees are best suited to handle which accounts, and automatically route calls based on that determination. These same tools could even be used to automatically resolve customer issues by setting processes in motion without human-employee involvement.  

Intelligent automation eliminates the need for employees to constantly monitor their automated workflows. It enables more end-to-end improvements in robotic process automation, workflow efficiency, and performance. 

4. Automated Solutions Will Allow for More Customization 

In the past, the concept of creating an automated solution for every business requirement from scratch would have been considered daunting, time-consuming, and expensive. This is especially true when we combine automation with artificial intelligence. Building intelligent workflows would have required deep programming and coding skills from industry experts.  

However, intelligent automation and customer service platforms are eliminating this complexity. No-code and low-code capabilities allow companies to turn different team members into “citizen developers” in their ecosystem and implement automation where they see fit. These customizable platforms enable rapid innovation and process automation without significant initial investment from modern brands.  

As low-code and no-code platforms become more prevalent, companies will have more freedom to create the exact workflows they need to improve the performance of their teams. More importantly, individual team members will play a greater role in deciding the future of automation strategy. 

5. Automated Solutions will Streamline Data Strategies 

One of the main benefits of automated solutions is that they enable companies to quickly complete time-consuming and complex tasks in the business environment. For example, an automated system can gather data from a variety of different environments faster and more accurately and consolidate it into an only source of truth than any human employee can.  

As businesses become more data-driven, the use of automated tools to capture information about processes, people and customers will become more common. In 2023, brands are likely to invest heavily in automated tools that enable them to capture data more accurately while adhering to their industry’s compliance policies and regulations.  

Automated tools will collect data from conversations with customers and ensure that employees from different areas of the business have access to the information they need to complete service and support tasks. Intelligent automation could even provide the team with deeper insights in the form of sentiment and intent analysis. 

6. Automation will Empower Proactivity 

As customer expectations evolve, customers now expect their companies to be able to provide solutions to their problems before they even occur. The pace of service is becoming more “proactive,” and Gartner believes that by 2025, proactive service solutions will surpass the reactive strategies used by most brands today.  

Unfortunately, delivering a proactive level of service is extremely difficult without the right technology. Companies cannot automatically predict what will happen with a product or service without access to the right insights and data. Automated tools that can collect and analyze information quickly can help with this change  

Automation allows organizations to proactively monitor various systems. Additionally, it ensures that alerts or notifications are routed to the right people when action is needed. Automated tools can even leverage historical data to provide team members with predictions that help them make decisions. 

Get Ready for the Next Wave of Automation 

Automation is one of the most valuable solutions for any business seeking digital transformation and increasing productivity across the enterprise. As automation solutions become more efficient and intelligent, they are likely to play a significant role in tomorrow’s technology strategies.  

Investing in some of the automation trends above could help your business stand out from the competition, unlock new opportunities, and save money on day-to-day processes. Contact Bulb Tech today to find out how we can help you get your automation agenda on track for 2023. 

 

Is real-time communication what call centers need?

Contact centers have come a long way over the decades – but one premise still remains – is there a better alternative for real-time communication?

We’ve evolved from an era of bustling call centers with ringing phones to a customer-obsessed landscape characterized by countless different forms of communication. Throughout this evolution, the design and technology of the contact center have changed, but companies have continued to pursue the same goal: faster, more efficient, and more effective communication.

At a time when customers are demanding faster, real-time interactions, tools have emerged to help companies route interactions to the best agent in the shortest amount of time. We’ve innovated and evolved to focus on reducing wait times to near zero.

After all, 60% of customers say waiting on hold is the most frustrating part of contacting a company.

However, creating a landscape for true real-time communications hasn’t been easy. In fact, over the past 30 years, contact centers have been constantly searching for the best way to route interactions and minimize queues. In that time, we’ve discovered several flaws with the concept of “real-time communication”.

Let’s take a closer look at the problems with real-time communication from the perspective of the agent, the company, and the customer.

Real-Time Communications: The Agent Perspective

Immediately routing calls and interactions with agents seems like a good way to increase productivity. However, this can present several issues. For example, when a call is routed to an agent using a traditional “next-in-queue” process, the agent takes the call without any prior context.

You can use IVRs and virtual agents to determine which agent is best suited for which customer, but if you don’t also pass that information on to the agent, they’ll go in blind. For most agents, this lack of knowledge can be a cause of significant stress. It’s no wonder that 83% of contact center employees suffer from burnout on a regular basis.

And because the system and agents don’t know what the customer needs, there’s a good chance they don’t have the resources to help them. This creates another issue as the agent must either transfer the call to another agent or keep the customer on hold while they investigate the issue.

It’s also worth noting that the issues agents are handling in the contact center are becoming more complex. About 67% of contact centers now handle more difficult customer inquiries, as most consumers prefer to solve the issue themselves first. By the time a customer contacts an agent, they’re already frustrated, stressed, and tired of investing time in their problem. They want results quickly, and when they don’t get them, the agent is the one who suffers.

We could argue that this “stressful” experience is simply the status quo for every contact center agent – but it shouldn’t be. It’s one of the reasons why there are many stressed-out, burned-out agents in contact centers who can’t wait to leave their jobs for something more relaxing.

Perpetuating this stressful experience only contributes to rapid turnover in the contact center landscape and costs companies more in hiring and onboarding.

 

Real-Time Communications: The Organizational Perspective

For most companies, fast, real-time communication seems like a great idea. After all, companies want to provide great experiences for their customers. To do so, they must meet consumers’ growing need for convenience and speed. The promise of fast, real-time communication could be a great differentiator for a brand if there weren’t so many issues.

Providing real-time communication requires someone to be available, engaged, and ready to answer calls at a moment’s notice. In an age where customers expect 24/7 service, that would mean hiring employees who’re available 24/7 to handle an ever-increasing volume of calls. For most companies, that’s simply not a feasible option

It’s also worth noting that not just any agent will do when it comes to responding to customer concerns in real-time. 31% of customers say that a knowledgeable agent is one of the most important factors in a good customer service experience.

At the same time, these customers want their agents to be trained specifically for their needs. They don’t want to be redirected or repeat themselves. This enhances the issue companies face in delivering real-time communications. You don’t just always need an agent who’s available and accessible – you need the right agent who’s available.

 

Real-Time Communications: The Customer’s Perspective

The issues of real-time communication may be obvious from the point of view of agents and companies. But surely fast conversations are only beneficial to the customer, right?

Well, not necessarily. Sometimes customers want to contact a company and get an immediate response. Unfortunately, in these cases, it’s common for a customer to call a company and sit on hold waiting for someone to be available.

In other cases, they simply want to fit customer service into their schedule. One of the reasons consumers love online chat services is that they can send off a question and get on with their lives while they wait for a response.

Most customers don’t have the time to sit around during a company’s business hours to get a problem resolved. They want to be able to alert a company to the issue and have it resolved when it’s available. Customers want asynchronous solutions based on their availability and specific needs.

 

The solution – is asynchronous communication

Real-time communication can present problems for anyone involved in a customer service transaction. However, there is a way to solve these issues. Instead of focusing solely on real-time communications, companies should look for ways to enable asynchronous conversations.

When you enable asynchronous conversations via messaging, callbacks, and similar tools, both the agent and the customer can communicate sequentially. It’s a lot like sending an email, only with a higher level of engagement and context.

Asynchronous communication also gives consumers the freedom to get quick responses without having to constantly stare at a screen or wait for a phone line. According to HubSpot, 82% of customers want an immediate response, but they define “immediate” as up to 10 minutes, depending on the type of communication they use. With asynchronous communication, agents have more time to respond to a message without sacrificing customer service excellence.

 

How does this help with three types of pain?

For agents, asynchronous communication reduces the risk of having to deal with frustrated customers while ensuring they’ve access to more context. They can gather information about the actual issue before responding and can prepare the right answer or call on the assistance of another professional if needed, without having to redirect anyone.

For businesses, asynchronous communication provides an opportunity to set expectations. They can inform their customers that agents will take over and handle the issue as soon as they’re available. Some messaging tools can even provide real-time information about how long a customer will have to wait. This helps maintain a good customer experience.

At the same time, the system can provide agents with the information they need to answer a question quickly. This eliminates the need for companies to hire countless experts and constantly train them with new information and knowledge.

Finally, asynchronous communication means customers can engage with companies on their own time and schedule, without worrying about being repetitive. Conversations can happen naturally as consumers go about their daily duties. They don’t sit in line waiting for a response. They keep up their productivity.

 

Alleviate the Pains of Real-Time Communications

The Cempresso product line enables companies to take advantage of asynchronous communication without getting a headache.

At the heart of the Cempresso portfolio is a BPMN workflow engine. This enables users to create complex, automated workflows, simply by dragging and dropping. A powerful integration layer ensures that context is maintained, and information is communicated across the system, so agents can provide the best service on every channel.

Cempresso even has a form designer that allows users to create forms via workflows and display them in any interface to present to users, agents, and customers. Cempresso fits into your existing infrastructure so you can leverage your existing information and tools without breaking or replacing anything.

Contact Bulb Tech today to learn more about how you can leverage asynchronous communications to improve your customers’ and employees’ experiences while increasing your company’s efficiency.