Driving Change in the Auto Industry at Volkswagen Australia

The automobile—a status symbol and one of the most common forms of transportation for nearly a century—is facing headwinds around the world as new transportation options proliferate and other factors cause more and more consumers to question the value of privately owned cars. Carmakers and dealerships are facing these challenges head-on with new business models and by doubling down on delivering the right customer experience. But the question remains: What sort of impact can auto companies expect from these efforts?

Turbulent times
U.S. auto sales are expected to be about 16.9 million units in 2019, a 2.5 percent decrease from the previous year, according to business consultancies J.D. Power and LMC Automotive. Investment bank Morgan Stanley forecasts a 0.3 percent decline in global auto sales in 2019 and the Center of Automotive Management in Germany noted in a report that “the ‘fat years’ in the automotive industry are over for now…technological, economic, and political changes are now announcing difficult times for the industry.”
Meanwhile, new players are multiplying rapidly, from ride-hailing companies and subscription-based cars to electric scooters and autonomous vehicles. What’s more, fewer young people are inclined to earn a driver’s license compared to previous generations. A study shows that licensing rates for people under 25 in Victoria, one of Australia’s most densely populated states, had dropped from 77 percent in 2001 to 66 percent in 2015. Similarly, the number of young Americans acquiring driver’s licenses has been declining since the 1980s, according to research by a former professor at the University of Michigan.

Further compounding the issue is the fact that the auto industry has a notoriously long production cycle and the price tags of new models continue to rise as manufacturers add new technology and safety features. Automotive prices are breaking records while retail sales of vehicles that cost under $25,000 are expected to fall 12 percent, Thomas King, senior vice president of J.D. Power’s data and analytics division, tells CNBC.

Revitalizing a mature product
An expensive product with high maintenance costs that begins to depreciate as soon as it’s purchased is already a tough sell, and now auto companies must contend with new competitors, as well as shifts in consumer behavior and perception.

“Any one of those problems in isolation would be tough for a marketer in the auto industry to navigate and they’re happening all at once,” says Kelly Goldsmith, Ph.D., associate professor of marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, who is also a behavioral scientist. “If you think about it in kind of a classic, business school 101-sense,” Goldsmith continues, “what you’re dealing with here is what is often referred to as a ‘mature product category.’”

As a mature product, auto manufacturers and dealers have a number of options. They can try to find a way to create new markets for their products, diversify product lines, or join competitors. GM recently announced that it will produce electric vehicles; Toyota struck a partnership with Uber to develop self-driving cars, and Volkswagen teamed up with Microsoft to develop the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud to deliver digital services to drivers.

Building customer trust is another logical approach that’s sometimes overlooked, Goldsmith notes. As an example, she points to the relationship that patients have with their health provider. If people like and trust their doctor, research shows that “when people form that kind of strong relationship, they will go to great lengths in order to stay with their provider,” she says.

“And there’s no reason why you wouldn’t anticipate the same thing in auto, right? You want to buy a car from someone you trust.”

But in an industry marked by frequent recalls and scandals, it’s difficult to find a car company that hasn’t struggled to maintain customer trust at some point in its history. It’s also too early to tell whether any of these new partnerships will change brand perceptions of the auto companies and yield meaningful results.

Ultimately, Goldsmith says, a company’s success depends on whether it understands its customers’ needs and can deliver those expectations. “Number one, you’ve got to understand who your target customer is,” she says. “Number two, you need to understand how your customer thinks and what they need. Finally, know what’s changing in your space, and the evolution of your competitors.”

Volkswagen Australia Builds Trust with Chief Customer Officer
Understanding how the customer thinks and behaves is exactly what Jason Bradshaw, the first chief customer officer at Volkswagen Group Australia, has set out to do. Like other parts of the world, Australia’s auto market has been softening. As a brand, Volkswagen has also had to regain customer trust after the massive emissions scandal of September 2015.

It’s against this backdrop that Volkswagen Australia turned its attention to the customer experience. “Three years ago, we realized that if we were going to improve the experience of our customers, we had to get serious about making it a dedicated focus within the company as opposed to everyone doing their own cordoned-off bit,” Bradshaw says.

There are over 100 Volkswagen dealerships across Australia, and one of Bradshaw’s first moves was to create a systematic way for the dealerships to leverage insights from customer feedback and do something “meaningful” with it.

The company launched a CX portal that’s powered by the Qualtrics XM Platform that enables dealerships to survey customers after a service interaction or purchase and analyze the feedback to understand what its opportunities are to improve the customer experience.

The company also uses AI-based analytics tools across its social platform and other channels to better understand brand perceptions and customer satisfaction at different points in the customer journey. The company was looking for answers to both broad and granular questions such as, “What makes them [customers] say they love us?” Bradshaw says. “And is there a relationship between those things that if we don’t deliver them consistently, it affects the experience in a negative way and to what degree?”

For example, the company learned that customers who were dropping off their vehicle for servicing had certain expectations for an ideal drop-off experience in terms of wait times and other factors. The information was shared with the dealers to better tailor the experience.

These types of insights have helped Volkswagen and its dealers ensure that they’re meeting customer expectations, but it was also important for the company to measure and optimize the employee experience. “The employee experience is what ultimately drives the sustainability of any customer experience,” Bradshaw says.

EX=CX
So, in addition to surveying its customers, Volkswagen Australia created a survey program for dealership employees. About 50 percent of the survey was about the experience of being an employee of the dealership and the other half was about the experience representing the Volkswagen brand.

The purpose of the survey was to “give the people in our dealerships a voice,” understand at a granular level where improvements were needed to drive better engagement, and identify the qualities of high-performing employee advocates, Bradshaw explains. The responses were tracked across geographical areas and as far down as the sales consultant/service advisor level of each dealership. The high level of transparency and detailed data was key to making the insights actionable, according to Bradshaw. “We didn’t just collect the data and forget about it—we took the data to dealership teams where they learned things like the top factor that’s causing employee disengagement is X and more training is needed in this area, etc.”

For many dealership owners, the survey information was enlightening and nearly all the dealerships joined the program the following year. About 70 percent of the dealerships participated in the survey the first year, and 98 percent participated in the second year. But while it’s important to keep employees engaged, it’s also critical that dealerships attract and hire talented people. At a time when every car sale matters, salespeople need to connect with shoppers but, “it makes it hard for someone to relate to a salesperson when there’s a disconnect in lived experience,” Bradshaw says. “And when we connected our employee and customer data, we saw that there’s a disconnect between people who work at our dealerships and the people who are shopping at our dealerships.”

Consider the female consumer. Carsguide.com.au notes that 52 percent of drivers’ licenses in Australia are held by women and “not only are women here buying more new cars than ever before, they are doing so at a younger age and influencing more than 80 percent of overall car purchasing decisions.” One approach is to hire more female salespeople or have them on the salesfloor at strategic times. Indeed, “one of the things we’re focused on is increasing the number of women that work on our salesfloor when most people come in,” Bradshaw says.

However, instituting gender-based sales tactics is a slippery slope. Volkswagen Australia is taking the middle road by making it a point to share the same information with customers, regardless of gender. “We reckon we tailor a message to the psychographics of our audience rather than a rudimentary gender difference,” Ben Wilks, general marketing manager at Volkswagen Group Australia, tells Carsguide.com.au.

Another challenge was attracting applicants. It’s not a secret that the auto industry is undergoing immense changes that could affect job stability. To combat these factors, the company launched a new careers site, I Am Volkswagen. In an example of how the customer experience intersects the employee experience, the site is designed to get people excited about the Volkswagen brand and engage prospective employees across a wide range of career interests.

For example, to tailor the information they receive, prospects select from a menu of reasons they’re interested in learning more about a career at Volkswagen, such as, “fulfills my passion for cars,” or “lets me help others.” The careers site was launched about two years ago and Bradshaw attributes it to helping the company create a more diverse candidate pool. “Now we have people working at our dealerships who wouldn’t be considered a typical candidate but are some of the best performing employees due to their different experiences,” Bradshaw says.

Since implementing changes to the customer experience, Volkswagen Australia has seen “double-digit” improvements in the customer experience as reported by customer surveys, according to Bradshaw. And as for whether the company can attribute an increase in sales to improvements in its CX, “what I can publicly share is that those dealers that consistently meet or exceed the customer and employee experience benchmarks we set outperform their peers—in terms of profit—by double,” Bradshaw says. “That is, their profit is double that of dealer partners that don’t meet our targets. This is achieved through greater customer retention and attracting new customers as a result of the experience they deliver.”

Looking forward, the company is also planning to build online communities where customers can provide feedback beyond traditional touchpoints such as the vehicle delivery and annual service checks. “Being able to tap into a resource of customers who tell us what matters to them is vital,” Bradshaw says. Customer insights aren’t enough to bring the auto industry back to its heyday, but it could be the difference between understanding what changes are necessary to evolve versus holding on to the past.

Engaging the Modern Donor

Many charitable non-profit organizations deliver invaluable services by providing aid to those who are otherwise overlooked. But even philanthropic organizations are not immune to disruption. Demographic changes, wage stagnation, competition from new donation platforms, and other factors make it increasingly difficult for non-profit organizations to operate as usual. For many, survival depends on reinventing the donor experience.

Disruptive experiences ahead
Individuals account for about 70 percent of the $420 billion that are contributed to philanthropic non-profit organizations every year in the United States, according to GivingUSA. Industry reports estimate that about two-thirds of the U.S. population contribute to charities, but that number has been decreasing. The number of Americans engaged in charitable giving has trended downward since the beginning of the 21st century, finds a study by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

The study lists several possible contributing factors for the decline in contributions. Generation X is smaller than the baby boomers, and millennials are weighed down by college debt, which means that fewer people are approaching their prime giving years and/or have less to give compared to previous generations. The study also noted that many nonprofits have lagged in engaging donors of color at a time when the country is growing more racially diverse.

And wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer households. Though charitable donations increased by 1.6 percent between 2017 and 2018, the increase was driven mostly by donations of $1,000 or more, according to a report from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which analyzed 4,500 charities. Additionally, the number of total givers decreased, new donors dropped by 7 percent, and the overall donor retention rate was at 45.5 percent.

There is also a lot more competition for charitable contributions. About 20 years ago, there were about 630,000 registered charitable non-profit organizations in the U.S. Now there are 1.5 million, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Additionally, crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe and Indiegogo enable users to solicit funds directly from donors, further fragmenting the donor landscape. Facebook users have raised more than $1 billion for personal causes and nonprofits in the three years since the company launched the first of its fundraising features.

What donors want
It’s clear that retaining donors is more important than ever. But it takes far more than conventional fundraising efforts to keep today’s donors engaged, says Don Ryan, an analytic consultant and strategist who has worked in the private, nonprofit, and government sectors. Compared to previous generations, “younger donors such as millennials and Gen Xers have different expectations of non-profit organizations and how they should interact with people,” Ryan says. For one thing, donors are more digitally oriented. And trust in the non-profit sector is falling, much like trust is falling in most major institutions, he adds. “And so non-profit organizations must do a lot more than they’ve done in the past to stand out and earn people’s trust.”

With the average donor lifespan (the average number of years donors give consecutively) lasting only about five years, it’s imperative for charitable nonprofits to focus on expanding donor lifespans. “It’s not only that if a donor stays another year, that’s another year worth of giving,” Ryan says. “What you see when you look at the donor bases for various charities is that people who are giving year over year tend to give more money year over year, either because they give more frequently or they give larger gifts. So there’s a dual effect going on when you expand someone’s lifespan as a donor within the organization.”

However, charities have a bad habit of failing to develop donor relationships. Or in many cases, they bombard donors with impersonal postcards and emails reminding them to continue donating, giving the impression that donors are akin to piggy banks. It’s not uncommon, Ryan notes, to see organizations solicit donors for additional funding anywhere from 16 to 24 times a year. A more effective approach is to focus on the factors that drive long-term relationships with donors—i.e., the donor experience.

Rather than continuously pestering first-time donors for more funds, offer other ways for donors to stay involved with the organization. Organize letter-writing campaigns, ask for help organizing local public awareness events—anything that helps donors understand and experience the impact that they’re making by being part of a charitable organization.

People who have multiple relationships with a nonprofit have shown a “50 percent to 100 percent greater likelihood of renewing year over year,” Ryan says. “That’s why the path forward for a lot of these organizations is to focus on donor experiences. Nonprofits should be asking, how can we make the donor experience easier and more satisfying, so that they lead to greater involvement and relationships with the organization?”

Personalizing the donor experience
Randal Avolio, president and CEO of SEE International, a 45-year-old global non-profit organization that provides medical and educational services to restore sight to disadvantaged individuals, looks to engage donors with more than their wallets.

“We always want to show our donors how impactful their giving is,” Avolio says. “When there are so many causes out there to support, it is important to show just how impactful each dollar can be.” The California-based nonprofit uses different forms of media—videos, photos, newsletters, blogging, and social media—to share stories about volunteers and people whose vision has been restored.

The organization also offers ideas on how to get involved, such as helping write thank you notes, distributing vouchers, internships, and being a medical volunteer. It also provides a social media kit with photos and videos of the organization’s work that donors can personalize on their own social accounts. Along with being financially responsible and transparent—SEE holds the highest level of the GuideStar Seal of Transparency—successfully working with volunteers is about “forming and maintaining a meaningful connection with these people who are making world-changing work possible,” Avolio says, “and inspiring them to stay on as part of your team.”

Using data to improve donor experiences
Nonprofits need to manage their operations and donor engagement efficiently. Helping donors and volunteers feel more appreciated and involved also requires understanding individual donors and their preferences. However, like the commercial sector, non-profit organizations struggle to connect and analyze disparate types of data, let alone act on data insights.

More than half of nonprofits (53 percent) find it easy to collect program data, but only 47 percent say it is easy to analyze that data, according to a recent Salesforce Nonprofit Trends report, which surveyed 450 non-profit leaders. And only 45 percent use data analytics tools, with an additional 30 percent planning to use such tools within two years.
In addition to investing in a data repository strategy and solution, the next step, Ryan explains, is to figure out what the optimal engagement strategy is for creating meaningful interactions with donors and volunteers. “It is a matter of understanding, at the individual level as best you can, who am I dealing with,” he says. “What types of the capacity do they have to give and how can I best interact with them to make this a good experience for both of us?”

Personalization goes a long way, notes Marissa Fayer, founder and CEO of HERHealthEQ, a three-year-old nonprofit focused on women’s health in developing countries. “For personal contacts, all communication is done one-on-one through dedicated emails from either myself or from the person who is the connection point,” Fayer says. “We feel that it is personal and more effective, especially since we are only a few years old and still have a very personal connection to the people who support us.”

HERHealthEQ has about 400 individual donors and uses data and CRM tools such as Constant Contact, YesWare, and HubSpot to manage communications and its CRM database. In terms of improving its marketing, the organization is looking to improve on targeting and tailoring its content according to different interests.

Fayer says she’s also interested in understanding what resonates with existing and potential donors. “Donor obtainment, engagement, and management is something I think about daily, if not hourly,” Fayer says. “And followers, impressions, engagement, clicks and viewership—things like that are important for us to see what resonates because we don’t ever want to be just an organization that’s asking for money to do our work. We want to also provide a service to make sure that we are giving back to the people who are supporting us and that follow us and that want to hear more from us.”

Alexa, What’s the ROI of Voice and Chat Assistants?

New research finds that customers increasingly want their voices heard by brands, literally. Capgemini Research Institute’s Smart Talk: How organizations and consumers are embracing voice and chat assistants study surveyed more than 12,000 consumers who use chat and voice assistants, as well as 1,000 executives representing top industries. The study highlighted the growing popularity of conversational assistance and the business benefits the marketplace is seeing as a result.

According to the report, usage of virtual assistants increased from 2017 to 2019 in a number of areas, including purchases (from 35 percent to 53 percent), customer service (from 37 percent to 52 percent), and making payments (from 28 percent to 48 percent).

Much of this consumer adoption is new. The research found that 40 percent of consumers started using voice and chat assistance within the past year, compared to just 4 percent who said they’ve been using the technology for five or more years.

The survey found that customers are generally pleased with their assistant experiences. Global satisfaction ratings for voice assistance technology on smartphones and speakers ranked just over 70 percent and 60 percent, respectively.

But there’s still a shadow of mistrust for these devices. The study pointed out that over 50 percent of customers are worried about voice assistants listening to private conversations, and they still generally prefer to talk to real humans for high-involvement or complex tasks.

Virtual assistants are good for business

Consumer adoption has led to ROI, according to the research. Over three-quarters of businesses (76%) that have deployed voice and chat assistants said they have realized quantifiable benefits from voice or chat assistant initiatives, and 58 percent said that those benefits had met or exceeded their expectations. Benefits included lower customer service costs and call deflection of up to 20 percent as consumers use digital assistants to get their questions answered.

But the report also found that fewer than half of the top 100 companies in automotive, consumer products and retail, and banking and insurance have deployed voice and chat capabilities.

4 ways to amplify voice and chat assistant CX

To help organizations tactfully deploy conversational assistants, the survey outlined four recommendations:

1. Balance the human and tech: Don’t leave humans behind when customers interact with your tools. Live associates can step in to provide personalized touches alongside chatbots, or the bot can pass off the issue smoothly to an associate if it requires empathy and care. But this all rests on an organization having the data and services capable of merging these two types of services seamlessly.

2. Take the experience to the next level: Complement digital assistants with multimedia such as images and video to create a higher level of immersion and service. This is highly valuable in industries such as automotive where users may need to find certain models.

3. Have the right skills for the job: There needs to seasoned experts behind implementing conversational assistants. A good interface needs the following: experts who are versed in next-best-action and machine learning, bots designed to learn and adapt throughout their lifecycle, and strict regulations on the assistants to ensure that your reputation or customer experience isn’t damaged by faulty tech.

4. Make customers a priority: When an organization is deciding what to automate, consider how it will affect the customer experience, not just the ROI. Does it make sense or is it just plugged in for technology sake?

These recommendations echo TTEC’s focus on humanizing digital and digitally enabling humans. It’s exciting to have new technology and interaction channels to offer customers, but make sure any tech is driven by customer and business needs. When tools and technologies are user-friendly and solve customer issues, then adoption and ROI will naturally follow.

What Business Leaders Need to Know About the Evolution of Messaging and Chat

Consumers today live on their mobile devices. They are spending more time on messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and others. Naturally, companies want to be part of these conversations. And increasingly, they’re using messaging services to do it.

Messaging services like Apple Business Chat, direct SMS texts, and in-app messaging allow brands to personally engage at scale with people on the platforms where they’re already spending a lot of time. The potential for messaging to enhance customer experiences has companies betting on them as a new way of interacting with consumers.

Messaging features extend through the customer lifecycle

The initial appeal of messaging apps was that they offered people the ability to communicate via mobile for free, unlike SMS text messages that are billed per text, notes Jason I. Hong, an associate professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, who is studying human-computer interactions. Since then, messaging apps “have expanded to have a lot of cool features for connecting people,” Hong says. “These include games, animated GIFs, multimedia content, video conferencing, asynchronous voice messages, and sharing one’s current location—along with maps.” And with the launch of Apple Business Chat and other services that connect to product, payment, and customer information, it’s now possible to complete purchases, provide customer support, and pretty much manage the entire end-to-end customer experience via messaging.

“The most important driver [of messaging apps] is the ability to multitask,” says Kartik Hosanagar, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, whose research focuses on the digital economy. WeChat, a Chinese mobile messaging app, for example, makes it easy for users to manage multiple tasks besides texting. WeChat’s platform is simple enough that children can use it to communicate with their parents and adults can use it to shop online, pay bills, order a taxi, and book medical appointments, all without leaving the WeChat platform.

And in the U.S., Apple Business Chat (currently in beta) integrates Apple Maps, the Safari search engine, and iMessage on a user’s iPhone to connect consumers directly with brands like T-Mobile, Home Depot, and Hilton. Users initiate direct messages with a human brand representative via iMessage. The service can then sync with iPhone apps like Calendar and Apple Pay to schedule appointments or make purchases, which creates a holistic customer experience built on messaging.

Google is working on similar functionality with its Google My Business app for Android users. News outlets also report that it may be planning to add messaging options to search results from its search engine as well, which would open up messaging to even more consumers.

Technology meets humanity as messaging evolves

Messaging technology is innovating very rapidly. “In the next three to five years, messaging apps will rise in tandem with adjacent technologies,” according to a recent Forrester Research report titled, The Future of Messaging Apps. “Technology innovation in natural language processing, semantic search, image and voice recognition, and especially A.I. will progressively blur the lines between messaging apps, bots, and voice-based assistants,” the report states.

In other words, messaging apps will soon leverage more data sources and technologies to deliver smarter, contextually driven services on branded accounts. “I think a big one will be improving effectiveness of communication,” Hong says. “This might include using sensor data to let people know you got home OK, or that you’re driving and can’t chat right now.”

But along with technology advancements, people will expect more personalization because of the one-to-one nature of messaging. “The expectation of a more personalized and more human form of interaction means brands can’t have a one-size-fits-all type of approach to messaging,” Hosanagar says.

Competition is heating up

The race is on among companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft to build more powerful messaging apps. “We think we’re on the cusp of messaging version two,” Nick Fox, who oversees communication products at Google, recently told Wired. “Messaging is going from being just about sending text to really expressing yourself much more fully, much more broadly, much more naturally. And then to getting stuff done in your chats.”

The first phase of the messaging/chat app revolution was dedicated to growth and driving adoption rates. Companies are beginning to enter the second phase, which is about building out services and monetizing a chat app’s user base. But this phase will likely be more challenging as developers try to figure out how to create the most engagement. Lead with the customer experience ahead of the technology, and adoption will follow.

Robotic Process Automation Unlocks Human Interactions

Employers can’t afford to be complacent when it comes to retaining great employees. However, certain jobs, especially routine-based jobs with few growth opportunities, have notoriously high turnover rates. Robotic process automation (RPA) technologies offer a potential solution with new opportunities for engaging and retaining talented employees through more valuable, rewarding work.

The retention challenge

A new survey from global staffing firm Robert Half shows 81 percent of employers are concerned about holding on to top talent in today’s tight employment market. Meanwhile, 57 percent of employees indicated that they do not plan to look for a new job in the next 12 months. So, are employers’ concerns overblown?

No. “In a tight employment market, workers have more options, and the grass may look greener somewhere else,” said Paul McDonald, senior executive director for Robert Half, in a statement. “Employers can help prevent turnover by learning what motivates their most valued employees and customizing their retention strategies.”

What doesn’t motivate employees? Repetitive, micro-managed tasks. In fact, a study conducted by Forrester shows that employee engagement improves when employees are freed from repetitive and mundane tasks. While it’s natural for people to lose interest when performing the same task over and over, the same doesn’t apply to robots. Or, as Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a co-author of a report about the automation of jobs, tells CNBC, “If your job is boring and repetitive, you’re probably at great risk of automation.”

Let’s be clear: repetition isn’t all bad. There’s value in repeating tasks to master a new skill, for instance, but when the tasks employees are completing don’t increase creativity or productivity, it’s time to consider better alternatives.

Increasing employee engagement with automation

What RPA can do is alleviate an employee’s workload of time-consuming and repetitive tasks and allow the employee to focus on higher quality customer interactions.

For example, consider an HR manager’s work day. Repetitive and routine tasks such as sending follow-up emails, posting jobs, and entering data quickly eat up time. With the convergence of other technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, RPA solutions can take over these tasks, freeing the manager to work on activities that a bot can’t do—such as listening to and addressing employee concerns with emotional intelligence, solving unique challenges, and developing strategies to improve employee engagement and satisfaction.

Get back to being human

The reality for many people who are tasked with repetitive manual processes is that the tedium and monotony associated with these jobs makes them feel like, well, robots. Additionally, unmotivated and bored employees are more prone to making mistakes.

RPA solutions reduce human error while enabling employees to feel more human by engaging in conversations and assignments that are more complex but could also be more rewarding. For instance, instead of having a contact center associate enter information while also speaking with a customer, an RPA solution can automatically collect, upload, or sync data into with other systems for the associate to approve while focusing on forming an emotional connection with the customer.

Onboard and train more people in less time

RPA can also facilitate and streamline employee onboarding and training. An RPA tool, for instance, can pre-populate forms with the new hire’s name, address, and other key data from the resume and job application form, saving the employee time. For training, RPA can conduct and capture data from training simulations, allowing a global organization to ensure all employees receive the same information in a customized and efficient manner.

RPA is not for every department and it’s certainly not a panacea for retention and engagement problems. But by thinking carefully about the benefits that it offers to employees, RPA can transform workflows—making employees’ jobs less robotic and more rewarding.

Check Your Priorities—Are You Really Putting the Customer First?

Business leaders have long wish lists for improving the customer experience, but competing priorities pose significant hurdles to transforming the experience, according to new research. Meanwhile, some companies are redefining what it means to prioritize the customer.

Although customer experience correlates to customer loyalty and financial results, companies still struggle to deliver excellent experiences to their customers. In fact, only 6 percent of companies have reached the two highest levels of CX maturity, while 79 percent remain in the lowest two stages, according to a new report, The State of Customer Experience Management, by the Qualtrics XM Institute.

“It’s no surprise, therefore, that companies intend to focus more on CX in the coming year than they did last year,” writes Bruce Temkin, head of the Qualtrics XM Institute and the report’s author. The report goes on to note that to improve the customer experience, business leaders expect to focus more on three core areas: employee experience, brand experience, and product experience.

Redefine priorities to change the outcome
While the customer experience is influenced by numerous factors, most CX initiatives have been dedicated to low-hanging fruit such as increasing efficiencies with an immediate impact to the bottom line. The notion that executives are beginning to connect the dots between CX and other parts of the business suggests that they can no longer ignore the need for greater change.

Other analyst reports have pointed to a broadening of efforts to transform the customer experience. As Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter, said earlier this year about why employers are beginning to prioritize the employee experience, “employees are consumers too and they have their own growing expectations. And unless the employee journey is modernized, companies will eventually fall apart.”

However, prioritizing change is a challenge in itself. Temkin’s report found that the most common obstacle organizations encounter as they try to mature their CX is other competing priorities. For some companies, the answer to juggling multiple priorities might be redefining their priorities.

Consider the new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” that was recently published by the Business Roundtable. Under the new statement, the chief executives of Apple, Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, and other major corporations, have affirmed that their companies have a “fundamental commitment” to deliver value to their customers, employees, suppliers, and communities—as well as shareholders.

Although it remains to be seen whether companies will actually deliver on these promises, it’s an acknowledgement that businesses have to do more than maintain the status quo. Prioritizing shareholder interests is not enough; customers, employees, and partners also demand more from businesses.

Prioritizing change
As CX strategies continue to evolve, what’s clear is that transforming the customer experience is a never-ending process. And meeting customer needs must be balanced with other business priorities. But by rallying around mutual goals and maintaining communications across the organization, leaders can bring CX transformation to every area of the company in a way that promotes progress, growth, and differentiation.

Research: The Future of Customer Service is an Adaptive Workforce

One of the hottest contact center topics in 2020 will be hybrid human and AI workforces, according to the State of Customer Service 2020 report by the Incite Group. Contact centers are increasingly applying artificial intelligence that’s merged with other technologies like machine learning to its human workforce.

The majority of customer service executives indicated that they plan to use automation for many back-end uses in the service sector, such as for gathering basic information, automating the handling of routine customer issues, case classification and routing, providing management with operations insights, and for pre-filling fields in the agent console.

With bots handling the routine tasks, humans will be free to focus on connecting with customers and delivering faster and better service, predicts Paul Coulton, customer service and operations director of Plusnet. “I think that the companies that will be the most successful in terms of moving forward will be the ones that adapt and embrace their diverse workforce the best [and] then pass that on to the customer,” Coulton stated in the report.

At the same time, there’s more room for improvement. Customer service executives’ top priorities over the next 12 months include:

Continue creating a customer-centric organization and collaborating internally (18.7 percent)
Keep scaling to keep up with evolving customer expectations (17.9 percent)
Move from reactive to proactive customer support (13.4 percent)
Synchronize channels to deliver a seamless omnichannel customer journey (13.1 percent)
Improve response time and first contact resolution (9 percent)

Channel automation and metrics

About 67 percent of the survey respondents said email remains the top support channel, followed by voice (53 percent) with virtual assistants/chatbots representing the third most-used channel (45 percent). In terms of applying artificial intelligence to the contact center, AI was noted as a top technology trend by 56 percent of those in Asia-Pacific, compared to 42 percent of North American respondents and 41 percent of European respondents. Respondents from Asia-Pacific were also more than twice as likely as those in Europe and North America to say that all tier-one support agent roles should be automated.

Customer satisfaction is by far the most common customer metric with 47 percent of respondents indicating that they measure it. Metrics that provide long-term views of the customer are also key, the report notes, as reflected by retention rates being the second most popular metric, used by 38 percent of respondents and customer lifetime value (30 percent).

Even as companies seek to automate more tasks in the contact center, human input remains a critical part of the customer experience. In fact, many AI and automation solutions in the contact center are focused on helping humans excel at their jobs, rather than replace them. And while the customer service industry is still in a state of flux, it is becoming clearer that customer interactions of the future depend on the successful intersection of humans, robots, and data.

4 Best Practices to Redefine Back Office Services

Female customer representative working in office — Smiling female customer representative wearing headphones working in office

Whether it be politics, athletics, or business, what happens in the backlines is just as important as the front. An organization’s back office services work, which includes non-customer facing transaction processing, is fundamental to any great customer experience. That’s why it’s essential to keep back-office operations running effectively. What happens behind the scenes will influence the success of customer-facing interactions.

In our experience, we’ve seen many disorganized back-office practices lead to financial losses and excessive rework, resulting in increased average handle time and other errors that directly impact efficiency and customer experience.

Therefore, organizations need to realize the value in creating a healthy and productive back-office environment. Here are four best practices around training, operations, quality assurance, and automation to create exceptional services:

1. Start with actionable and engaging training

Every great operation begins with providing interactive and responsive training. Outlining detailed workflows for each task and mapping them against areas of opportunity and error can help associates focus on the quality of their work. Use detailed work mapping to scope improvement opportunities while educating associates about different approaches they could take. These training opportunities help them understand what to be aware of during each job.

For complex back-office tasks consisting of multiple steps, we encourage “Mind Maps” — a diagram used to visually organize information. They can help associates remember steps and identify easier and more accurate decision making. Once the scope of the issue is defined, processes that don’t involve human intervention can be identified and automated to help reduce manual efforts.

It is also important to acknowledge that at times, associates may not have comprehensive training documents ready with them, creating fractured customer support service and likely leading to customers being tossed around. That’s why real-time updates to a database or knowledge library should be made to keep the information fresh, avoid ambiguity, and streamline information for the associate to access when assisting customers.

As a way to tie it all in, we’ve seen that gamified training tools such as self-help dashboards can find commonly made errors for associates as a quick reference point. Gamified training is one of the latest training methodologies adopted by organizations that involves applying video game-like designs to help career growth become interactive and entertaining.

2. Safety is the name of the game

In a world full of fraud, leaks, and malicious hackers, the need for security and secure procedures are key. There are two approaches to prevent harmful instances for your customers and organizations that we like to practice:

Maker & Checker: This review and audit mechanism approach emphasizes dual verification of transactions that are prone to financial losses, wherein a maker would input the details related to a transaction and a checker would validate if the entry made by maker is correct or not. Having an audit mechanism in place at the initial stage helps avoid huge financial losses resulting from incorrect inputs for a high value transaction.

Double key data entry approach: Similar to the Maker & Checker approach, a double key data entry approach helps detect potential errors in the early phase of the process lifecycle thus avoiding any lag in detecting an error. Two associates simultaneously enter the same input values at the same time for a transaction. If the entries match, it would go through and if there is a conflict, the system would raise a red flag.

For example, for one of our travel-hospitality clients, all new customers were required to go through a verification process before they could book their first reservation. All the profile information was double-checked – and if two associates reached different decisions, say one declined and another verified, a third more experienced associate made the final decision.

3. Make quality a priority

The back-office needs to stress thoroughness and efficiency. In industries such as banking, just one mistake can lead to huge financial loss for the institution. A method to prevent this involves performing a “100% Quality Audit” of all the critical and financially sensitive transactions.

In our experience we’ve done a 100% Quality Audit for all the transactions that are processed. For example, a quality audit for enrolling an individual in a 401(k) plan would include auditing personal information, fund allocation, vesting percent, etc. The quality audit can help ensure all such steps are followed with 100 percent accuracy. This may involve additional costs and resources, but it is worth the investment to avoid financial implications such as loss on transactions or penalties due to compliance.

Transactions with financial- and compliance-related implications need to have a stringent quality check mechanism to ensure zero tolerance for errors. We call this a Zero Tolerance QA. For quality assurance grading, any errors would result in a failed transaction score, so it becomes a 0 to 100 scoring mechanism. This is integral to transactions with huge financial implications.

4. Automate intelligently in the back office

Artificial intelligence is reinventing the workplace by freeing up associates to work on complex and meaningful tasks while automation caters to the easier work. But quickly implemented automation can lead to poor and frustrating customer experiences. It’s important to create algorithms for mistake proofing to help avoid errors.

For example, in processes such as ‘Maker & Checker’, the Maker first step can often be automated. The human Checker can then decide to complete the transaction. This can help reduce manual efforts by up to 50 percent.

Recent trends suggest that many companies have created self-help process flows on their websites or apps to enable customers to solve their concerns independently by using credential authentication and one-time password (OTP) option. The OTP option is received by the user on a registered email address or cell phone to authenticate the transaction initiated by customer for any request such as contact information change, authorizing financial charge on the card, or online payment.

With such a feature available, customers can make basic changes on their own and free up associates’ time. However, it is important to note that this will require seamless integration of various front-end and back-end systems.

Set your sights on change

In your organization, customers may not be directly interacting with back-office associates, but their work is integral to meaningful interactions such as changes, approvals, and financial verification behind the scenes. Their contributions help create a seamless flow that makes a user’s experience with a brand that much easier.

Excellent CX Eludes Most Brands

New research from Forrester finds that the quality of customer experiences is largely at a standstill.

Forrester’s 5th annual U.S. Customer Experience Index report found that the overall quality of the U.S. customer experience grew only by an anemic 0.4 points, to 70.2 from 2018 to 2019. According to the report, 81 percent of customer experience stayed the same, while only 14 percent of customer experiences improved, and 5 percent declined.

In addition, elite brands remain stuck. Eleven of the 16 frontrunners were repeats from last year.

“This year’s CX Index results clearly show that brands are on the right path but still have a long way to go,” Forrester Chief Research Officer Carrie Johnson said in a press release.

The report surveyed over 100,000 U.S. adult consumers and tested 260 U.S. brands across 16 industries.

The CX Index is divided up into five categories; very poor, poor, OK, good, and excellent, measured by consumer rankings of CX quality and customer loyalty. Most companies – 65 percent – were ranked as OK, a drop of one percent from last year. Only 17 percent were ranked as good, 16 percent as poor, and 2 percent as very poor. No companies were ranked as excellent.

According to the report, although some brands scores increased or declined, the change in points never exceeded 5 points.

Broken down by industry, health insurers went up by 1.5 points, moving from 14th place to 13th place, while direct banking, hotels, wireless service providers, mass market auto manufacturers, and multichannel retailers all increased by one point. The airline industry’s CX score dropped by one point and luxury auto manufacturers took first place from multichannel banking. According to the report, this change resulted from statistically insignificant score fluctuations, not real changes to CX quality in either industry.

Because there were no CX leaders, Forrester divided brands up into four categories: languishers, lapsers, locksteppers and laggards. Languishers were brands that rose high then stalled — 20 percent of the CX Index were considered languishers. Lapsers — brands that rose then fell back down, represented four percent of brands. Of note, 17 percent of direct brokerages were lapsers, making them the industry with the highest percentage of lapsers.

Locksteppers were brands that moved up and down in the pack — 52 percent of brands were in this category, including 70 percent of the direct banks on the list. Lastly, laggards were brands that stayed at or near the bottom, representing 24 percent of the CX Index. 73 percent of airlines and U.S. federal organizations fell into this category.

Make customers feel something about their experience

The report noted that the key to achieving CX differentiation is through customer emotions; feeling appreciated, happy, and valued boosts loyalty the most.

For elite brands, for one emotionally negative experience there was 22 positive ones, but for bottom brands, for one negative experience there were only three positive ones.

“With customers in the driver’s seat and heightened consumer interest in organizations’ corporate values when making buying decisions, how an experience makes customers feel has a bigger influence on their brand loyalty than any other factor,” said Johnson. “That’s why it’s critical to understand the intersection of in-the-moment customer feedback and which CX drivers matter most to customers and your bottom line.”

Key CX takeaways

The report sheds light on the importance of the customer experience, particularly individual moments that matter. Here are three takeaways to remember during CX transformation:

Lead with humanity. You cannot automate your way past good CX. AI is fantastic for the simple, everyday interactions, but customers are people. And people prefer to interact with humans sometimes, especially for emotional or complicated interactions.
Voice of the customer will help drive better experiences. Customers want to be heard and understood. Utilize voice analytics to explore conversations across multiple channels to provide coaching opportunities for employees and gather customer insight. Every win and loss with a customer is an opportunity to grow, if you listen closely.
Customer experience is a never-ending journey. Your organization’s work is never done. Customer expectations continuously evolve. Create a nimble organization that can adapt, react, and anticipate change in customer behavior. There are far too many examples of age-old brands that were too slow to adapt and fell to irrelevancy.

Human Resources Adapts to a Changing CX Workforce

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Anyone working in the contact center space knows that finding and engaging top-performing front-line employees is a challenge. Companies are hard pressed to attract and retain customer care workers in the midst of low unemployment rates, expanding competition, and changing expectations from potential staff about what they want in a workplace environment.

A strategic use of human resources can be the secret weapon to help a company stand out among competitors. Data-focused strategies and a commitment to new ways of engaging employees help firms get, keep, and grow the best customer support talent, which leads to the best customer experiences.

We recently interviewed TTEC human resources leaders Michael Wellman, Judith Almendra, and DJ Valente about how they are overcoming employment obstacles and cultivating great customer support talent. Below is an excerpt of the conversation, and the full interview can be found on www.theCXPod.com.

What are you seeing in the labor market today? And why is it such a challenge?
Michael Wellman: It’s become a perfect storm. There is a new competitiveness in the market as it relates to talent and skills of the workforce and a higher demand for more qualified workers. Then there are wage pressures and supply-and-demand issues in different cities. This keeps intensifying and it’s harder to attract candidates. But then when you do attract them, how do you get employees committed long term?

DJ Valente: And there are a couple of other things that are really driving it. There’s one of the lowest unemployment rates in five decades—over 3.6 percent unemployment in the U.S. There are 7 million current active job openings today in the U.S., which is the highest in basically five decades. So I think when you combine that with the wage pressures and availability of labor, it’s a perfect storm for some of these tier 1 and tier 2 skill levels.

Judith Almendra: Technology has really revolutionized the way that consumers and candidates behave, as well. In a single interaction, you can actually have a candidate apply to multiple jobs at a time, and it’s much easier for them to fill out an application today on average. So that really adds to the competitive nature of the market. Candidates are more informed than ever in terms of the salaries that they should be making, and what options are available to them.

How is this changing your approach to the job and business?
MW: Across organizations, human resources and people strategy are the differentiators more than ever before. Data is probably at the top of the list as it relates to what is the true story of your workforce and the issues that need addressing to attract and retain employees. And last but not least, it’s about having a collaborative relationship not just internally, but externally with our clients and our colleagues that support organizations and other industries.

How can HR leverage data in new ways to help spur employee success?
MW: We have some standard reports that we look at as far as applicant flow and market data as it relates to how large of a market that we have to mine from. We look at daily reports of applicant numbers and hires, but we’re also assessing once somebody goes through the interview process and is hired. We measure every step of that process, from going into that permanent role to using real-time feedback to understand and respond quickly to issues that come up. And we’re able to look at trends around the applicant experience, but also the new employee experience.

JA: There is also a very strong partnership now between human capital and our insights side of the house to start connecting those dots from all the data that Michael mentioned, from applicant to labor market data. We look at external metrics as well as internal metrics and how those connect, which allows us to make more informed decisions about the propensity of someone to leave or stay in the organization. You can take proactive actions to retain that individual and connect engagement to performance.

What about the last key differentiator you mentioned, the people strategy?
MW: We have a global people strategy that is focused on three core areas. The first being human capital delivery. We combine our expertise with tools not only for human capital leaders, but also for business leaders and people leaders to create experiences for our employees that are memorable.

Another is our total reward strategy, which combines our competitive compensation and benefits that really matter to employees, like tuition reimbursement and robust vacation time. We built a plan that’s more the voice of our employee versus being driven from the top down. And so, our employees have made it known what they would like to see us invest in as it relates to total rewards. It’s not perfect, but we’re taking those into consideration as we mold our strategy.

Last, but not least, is our talent strategy. It’s like a factory—you’re building it internally, but also having that strong external brand through social media, employee referrals, and other avenues that are focused around our image. From our leadership to our working environment, we are creating career paths and opportunities for candidates and employees that they can understand before they even join the company.

DV: The other piece that we’re really working on is that for this younger generation of employees. They want a sense of community and to see how an organization supports their communities and how it gives back to less fortunate people in these places. We’ve accelerated these efforts to become more appealing to folks.

JA: And whether it’s work-life balance, giving back to the community, career path, or continuous development, our programs are established in a way that can offer a holistic approach to an individual, to make sure that they feel they can reach their full potential within the organization. Keeping them engaged, excited and showing them what’s the current path within the company is something that is very critical to us.