Home Blog Page 4

Customer intent is a treasure trove of actionable data hiding in plain sight

Customer intent is a treasure trove of actionable data hiding in plain sight

Every time customers interact with a customer service representative, do a keyword search, click through a brand’s website, or engage other touchpoints, they’re giving hints about their interests and intentions. The companies that understand customer intent—the purpose or reason behind a customer’s behavior—are better positioned to give customers want they want and outperform competitors.

Insights into what customers want and need are more important than ever as the economy and market conditions change. Businesses are eager to unlock insights that can help them adapt to change and reengage customers.
 
According to IDC analysts, businesses were estimated to have spent $215 billion in 2021 on big data and business analytics solutions, a 10% increase over 2020. By 2025, smart workflows and seamless interactions among humans and machines will be as standard as the corporate balance sheet, and most employees will use data to optimize nearly every aspect of their work, predicts McKinsey & Company. At the same time, data models for understanding customer intent and other insights are not infallible; even data-driven companies are a constant work in progress.
 
What is customer intent?
Customer intent is defined as the reason or purpose behind a customer’s actions or behavior towards a brand. It looks beyond the superficial factors such as what customers are requesting or where they are requesting it and focuses on the customers’ true goals for the interaction. Detecting and understanding customer intent can give brands clarity into what a customer is trying to do beyond what they are saying or clicking on, whether it’s an upsell opportunity, a chance to deepen the customer relationship, increase customer retention, enhance a product or service, or something else.
 
“Oftentimes, the user experience developed by a company for its customers overlooks critical components of the underlying intents the customer wants resolved through their customer experience (CX),” says Ravi Bharadwaj, executive director of corporate strategy at TTEC. “By looking at the CX lifecycle though granular intents, companies can 1) benchmark where they are strong/blemished, 2) identify where a human touch in a contact center helps/over-indexes the needs of a customer, and 3) solve for customers’ CX needs with surgical precision.”
 
For example, based on millions of customer interactions (contact center inquiries over calls, chats, bots, searches, etc.), TTEC identified the top reasons (intents) customers contact companies across different industries for customer support.
 
What the company found was that refund and replacement inquiries were most common among industries such as retail, public sector, automotive, and manufacturing. And inquiries about loyalty rewards were common across nearly all industries — retail, public sector, automotive and manufacturing, travel and tourism, insurance, finance. .
 
These insights can help companies better train their customer support teams and ensure they’re equipped with the right information to meet customer needs. Having the right information on hand also reduces wait times, costs to serve, and increases customer satisfaction.

Better insights = happy customers
Luke Lee, CEO of PalaLeather, a fashion company and retailer, agrees that customer insights are essential. “Businesses will be able to foster customer-centric innovations once they truly understand their audience’ wants and needs,” he says. “In doing so, companies must work backward to solve their customers’ pain points, then move forward with technological innovations that are in tune with the changing times.”
 
One of the ways that his company is improving its customer experience, particularly in the digital space, is by providing greater personalization through automation and marketing analytics, according to Lee. The company is “utilizing software that documents the customer or audience journey on our website and we continuously work on tweaking our processes with the help of our customers in shortening the marketing funnel and maximizing conversions,” he says. The company is also using digital marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), link building, and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing to strengthen its brand. “Businesses can capture a wider range of audiences if they work on putting a more personal touch side by side with automation and predictive analytics today,” Lee says.

The value of transparency
Numerous industries benefit from insights into customer intent and preferences. Apparel companies Stitch Fix and ThirdLove are two examples of companies that tout their use of data analytics and artificial intelligence in their services.
 
“Our business model enables unprecedented data science, not only in recommendation systems, but also in human computation, resource management, inventory management, algorithmic fashion design, and many other areas. Experimentation and algorithm development is deeply engrained in everything that Stitch Fix does,” according to the company’s website.  

ThirdLove, an intimate apparel company, makes a similar claim about using data to “inform any decisions we make, from the images we use in marketing campaigns to the colors we offer in new product lines.”
 
But even companies that develop a system for collecting, parsing, analyzing, and visualizing data, may find that the data is not enough. Before customers receive clothing from Stitch Fix, the company sends an email with a preview of the box’s contents that customers can curate. RetailDive reports that the preview email is generated by an algorithm, although customers are under the impression that the clothing was selected by human stylists. If customers complain about the selection, the stylists are directed to take the blame for the errors, according to RetailDive (Stitch Fix did not immediately respond to a request for comment).  

Even data-driven approaches have flaws and it would behoove companies to be transparent about potential shortcomings. “Data leaders appreciate that the data journey is a transformation effort that unfolds over time,” writes Randy Bean, author of “Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons in Data-Driven Leadership in an Age of Disruption, Big Data, and AI” in Harvard Business Review. “Data-driven companies recognize that success is achieved iteratively…successful organizations expect to be at this for a while.”
 
While companies face pressure from investors, customers, and other stakeholders to deliver the right product or service every time, transparency and managing expectations are important for the success of any long-term initiative.
  
A work in progress
Customers have long told businesses what they need in their actions (or inactions). Companies have an opportunity to truly listen to their customers and better engage. Understanding and leveraging customer intent is part of a data-driven culture that can foster continuous improvements to create differentiated customer and employee experiences—if companies are ready to let their customers lead. 

3 ways retailers are combatting holiday season challenges this summer

Summer may be just around the corner, but retailers are already preparing for the biggest shopping period of the year – the winter holiday season. While supply chain issues, labor shortages, inflation, and a potential COVID-19 resurgence continue to complicate operations and business decisions, companies are charging ahead with plans for a busy season. Here’s what retailers are doing to get ahead of numerous challenges and maximize the holidays.

Personalized customer support

Today’s consumers shop across a variety of channels, platforms, and devices. To stand out during the competitive holiday season, retailers must deliver tailored experiences throughout the customer journey. According to the 2022 Retail Personalization Index, 71% of consumers will shop more often with brands or retailers that personalize their communications. And while 71% of retailers think they excel in personalization, only 34% of consumers agree.

What are retailers missing? Stephen Light, co-owner and CEO of Nolah Mattress, sees an opportunity to deliver more personalized and empathetic customer support. “We’re going to see businesses taking steps to build their services to the next level in preparation for the busy holiday season as they attempt to capture as much of the market share as they can,” Light says.

Like other online mattress companies, Nolah Mattress’ customers can’t go to a physical store to try out its products. Online guides and customer care associates are key sources of information for customers seeking a mattress that meets their specific needs and preferences. “With customers demanding an increasingly personalized experience, we’re empowering our service agents through a revamped training program, better data management, new performance feedback channels, and support tools,” Light continues. The customer care team is also using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that can recognize customer emotions “through tone and content” to “help diffuse difficult situations.”

In addition to providing employees with the right training and tools to provide expert advice, communicating with customers through their preferred channel is critical, he adds, which is why his company is adding conversational apps to its marketing and customer support strategy.

Especially during a busy time like Black Friday, “customers expect quick answers through the communication channels of their choice, and with conversational apps like WhatsApp, we can connect with our customers in a way that’s most convenient for them,” Light says.

Reducing customer effort

At the onset of the pandemic, many retailers quickly shifted to accommodate customers’ new needs. Retailers embraced last-mile delivery innovations such as crowdsourcing deliveries and invested in urban warehouses to enable rapid deliveries. Buy online, pick up in-store and curbside pickup became the norm—all in the name of meeting customer expectations and reducing customer effort.

Expect to see a continued focus on reducing customer effort. “Customer effort is the strongest driver of customer loyalty — or disloyalty,” according to Gartner research. “96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience. Indicators of high-effort experiences include channel switching, repetition of information, generic service, transfers, and repeat interaction.”

Get the full story at the Customer Strategist Journal

Forrester CX conference recap: Digital-first falls flat, virtual employees cultivate culture

This year’s Forrester CX conference served as a backdrop for a deeper look at Forrester’s CX Index for 2022, which revealed that CX quality dropped for nearly 20% of brands, the highest proportion of brands to fall in one year since the survey began. Many companies are struggling to sustain growth and momentum without a clear customer and employee roadmap.

With executives searching for answers, the event focused on providing insight and tactics to help customer experience leaders understand more about what customers and employees want and how to deliver quality interactions in this unique, uncertain climate. Here are a few highlights:

Customer expectations raise the stakes for digital CX

One of the effects of the pandemic has been the consumer shift toward digital channels. From online deliveries to online banking, brands rushed to provide digital options that were adopted even by technology-averse consumers. But a just-in-time experience is one thing—consumers have higher expectations when it comes to services used over the long-term.

In a breakout session, Forrester Senior Analyst Anjali Lai and Principal Analyst Sara Watson noted that while there is much discussion about which digital behaviors will last, it’s equally important to improve the quality of these services.

“When you look deep into the data…the reality is consumers have struggled to integrate digital into their physical world,” said Lai. “Over one-fifth of consumers tried online groceries but 41% said they won’t continue with it because of frustrations with the experience. It’s the quality that will impact preference and behaviors moving forward.”

Watson agreed. Digital experiences have been “fluid in the sense that they’ve been volatile,” she said. Consumers are “looking for digital fluidity to be graceful and smooth.” Lai and Watson gave these tips for transforming ad hoc services into optimal, sustainable services:

  1. Understand the customer – Brands should use their robust customer data to build an understanding of not only what kinds of things customers expect, but also why they do what they do.
  2. Use a map – Revisit journey mapping efforts and sync them with consumer context and behavior.
  3. Dissolve unnecessary silos – Integrate digital infrastructure across the business to enable a fluid experience.

Virtual employees go the distance to cultivate culture

In her session, Forrester Principal Analyst Katy Tynan busted the myth that on-site employees create a better culture than virtual employees. She explained that every large company was already operating with a “virtual” culture before the pandemic, even if all employees were physically in the office.

When organizations grow to more than 150, it’s nearly impossible for everyone to have direct relationships and cultivate an in-person culture with everyone else. So while leaders play a critical role in setting the tone of the organization and modeling value-driven behavior for all employees, front-line managers have the biggest influence on culture because they connect with smaller teams to create their great employee experiences. And, Tynan said, most organizations are not paying enough attention to them as a lever.

“Values are what we say we do. Culture is what we actually do. What’s the distance between the two,” she asked the audience. She cited Forrester research ranking the importance of three types of employee distance and their impact on positive employee engagement and culture:

  • Physical distance – This literal measure of distance is a common reference point in culture conversations, but research shows it has the least impact on key resources for organizational success. Collaborative technology, tools, and business activities designed for remote employees have evolved to break physical distance barriers to success.
  • Operational distance – How hard is it to get decisions made, get access to resources, get to people who have knowledge, etc. Think of it as the numbers of layers and levels in an organization. The more operational distance, the more organizational siloes. This leads to conflicting cultures and disparate interpretations of an organization’s values.
  • Relational distance – The concept measures how in sync employees are with one another in their beliefs. Is there a common vision? Do employees care about the same things? The further the distance, the more disjointed an organization’s culture.

Rather than try to entice employees with in-office perks or incentives to build a strong culture, Tynan gave examples of companies like IBM, Patagonia, and Buffer, which all try to decrease operational and relational distance among employees, especially new ones.

IBM uses authentic leadership and abides by a work-from-home pledge. Patagonia goes to great lengths to reinforce to employees its mission and vision, so employees know “why we’re here.”

And at productivity software firm Buffer, each new hire is paired with peers who serve as a role buddy and a culture buddy to help them navigate how to do their job and get oriented with how the job gets done. “The longer it takes to figure out culture as a new hire, the less it feels like you belong,” Tynan said. “And belonging is an important metric for [culture and] performance.”

Send-off in style

The event, held in Nashville, also served as a celebration of Forrester’s Principal Analyst and CX guru Harley Manning, who announced his retirement. We wish Harley a wonderful next chapter and thank him for all he’s done to advance CX strategy in the business world.

5 keys to putting a Total Experience into action

A woman looking at a white board with notes

This article first appeared in the Customer Strategist

There’s a fundamental shift happening when it comes to customer experience, both in expectations and capabilities, but too many brands aren’t prepared to meet the moment.

Until now, it’s been enough for brands to eliminate friction and deliver seamless customer interactions. But not anymore. To truly stand apart from competitors and be something customers want to keep coming back to, brands must embrace the Total Experience – a more holistic, unified experience for everyone who engages with a brand (employees, customers, partners, and other key stakeholders).

But many organizations have responded to changing consumer behaviors by implementing rapid, disparate, find-and-fix solutions. They may intend to improve experiences, but this approach actually has the opposite effect. It has created a set of fragmented experiences for customers that are far from the consistent, dependable, predictable, and brand-aligned characteristics representative of a true Total Experience.

Today’s consumers expect seamless, consistent, proactive, predictive, and dependable interactions – within and across every interaction channel, platform, and business function throughout the entire customer journey. They want a Total Experience, and they want it from the moment they become aware of a brand throughout their entire customer lifecycle.

So, how can brands embrace the Total Experience? Here are five ways to get started:

1. Meet people’s emotional needs

Anyone who engages with a brand wants their interactions to get the job done as efficiently and effectively as possible.  But today’s employees and customers also want an emotional connection with brands.

With so much technology at our fingertips to make processes and interactions easier, it can be easy to overlook the emotional aspects of business. But at the crux of every organization are people – the customers, employees, and partners that make it all work.

People want to engage with brands where they feel a connection. Focus on people’s emotional motivation and triggers, then balance those with their functional needs. Getting to the heart of how people feel before and when they interact with your brand will provide meaningful and actionable insights.

Total experience in action: Earlier this year, Disney earned the top ranking in MBLM’s Brand Intimacy Study, which means more consumers have a stronger emotional connection to Disney than any other brand. Consumers in general are connecting more deeply with brands since the pandemic began, and “intimate brands” outperform other companies when it comes to profits and the stock market, the report found.

2. Anticipate what customers want

Savvy brands know that being proactive is key to delivering seamless experiences. It’s not enough to respond the best way possible once a customer contacts you; companies need to be proactive, not reactive.

Invest the time and resources to design experiences that proactively move and motivate customers to the next best step by orchestrating a cohesive journey – not only within channels, but across them.

One key aspect of this is incorporating a “human” touch wherever possible. Design a Total Experience were the digital touchpoints feels like a more personal set of meaningful moments within the journey. Sophisticated automation and artificial intelligence can move the needle in this important aspect.

Total Experience in action: When a telecommunications provider wanted to reduce customer churn, proactive solutions helped. Associates quickly presented offers tailored to each customer and proactively contacted high-value and at-risk accounts before their contracts expired – leading to a 20% increase in sales win rates, and 56% of customers becoming more likely to upgrade their service at the company.
 
3. Make things personal

Use hyper-personalization to make every touchpoint more impactful. If personalization is the first step toward creating more meaningful interactions, then hyper-personalization takes it a step further by recognizing people’s unique needs and preferences – even within the smallest moments along their journey with a brand.

Don’t forget about employees when it comes to getting personal. It’s important to personalize customer experiences but equally critical to make sure employees feel like the brand truly knows them as well. Crafting an employee experience that resonates with workers on a personal level will make them more connected to their work, more loyal to their employer, and more empowered to generate strong CX.

Total Experience in action: Wanting to deliver more meaningful customer experiences, quick-service restaurant chain Chipotle began using Microsoft Customer Insights to learn about existing and potential customers. Through merging more than 400 million records, the company projects a 34% increase in new customers and cross-sales opportunities, potentially leading to $280 million in annual sales.

4. Do an honest assessment of the customer experience operating model

Evaluate your current operating model with brutal honesty. Even if you have deep investments – monetary and otherwise – in the current way things are done, it’s crucial to take a hard look at whether the processes, technology, and people you have are what’s needed to achieve the total experience of the future.

Similarly, perform due diligence on your current technology stack. A Total Experience is impossible without the right technology, so it’s important to optimize a brand’s technology ecosystem by focusing on cross-platform integration, collaboration, utilization, and custom technology creation.
When implemented well, the right mix of technology tools, processes, and people makes it easier for companies to deliver a Total Experience across all channels.

Total Experience in action: As it moved toward a Total Experience, Schwan’s Home Delivery, a pioneer in frozen food delivery, developed a comprehensive working knowledge of the current state of its customer experience. This included journey mapping, persona development, a review of objectives and insights, and more. Visits to distribution centers, employee interviews, and ride-alongs with sales representatives were all parts of the process.

5. Align with broader goals

There are so many components to consider when it comes to the Total Experience, brands can easily get lost in the minutiae. But Total Experience won’t work if it’s not aligned with broader business objectives, so be sure to take a step back to look at the bigger picture.

Investing in best-in-class tools and people won’t help if there’s not a consistent buy-in from the top down, throughout the organization. Everyone – each team, every business unit, the IT department – needs to share the same mindset and believe in the value of a Total Experience.

When everyone shares the same vision and goal, they’ll be more inclined to adopt the potential new lexicon of terms, tools, and methods that will lead to success.

Total Experience in action: Once Schwan’s Home Delivery had a complete sense of what its customer experience was really like, it developed a detailed plan for achieving a Total Experience transformation by focusing on what was needed to reach the goal and workshopping ways to get there. All departments, including marketing, operations, e-commerce, IT, and finance were involved in the process.

The right partner can help

The benefits of a Total Experience approach are clear: increased loyalty, improved brand reputation, more engaged customers and employees, and higher revenue.

Learn more in the Total Experience Playbook, a comprehensive guide showing what a Total Experience approach means, how it benefits brands, and how to achieve it.

Happy customers are closer than they appear

Smiley face on rearview mirror

This article first appeared in the Customer Strategist

The automotive industry has been on a roller coaster ride of profit and loss in recent years. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, automotive sales tumbled in 2020 before surging demand and a global chip shortage sent prices skyrocketing in 2021. The ongoing chip shortage as well as major supply chain disruptions, however, have led to delays and inventory shortages that continue to upend new and used car markets.

There’s very little that automotive groups and dealerships can do about these global conditions. Areas that they can control are the customer experience and their brand reputation. In its latest Automotive Industry report, Reputation, an online reputation management provider, analyzed online reviews from more than 20,000 automotive bands and dealerships in the United States and Canada and 15,000 more across Europe and ranked the automotive brands, dealer groups, and dealerships based on their response rate to negative feedback, engagement scores, average scores across dealerships, and other criteria.  

For the third year in a row, Hendrick Automotive Group was the top overall ranked public or private dealer group for online reputation in addition to earning the highest sentiment and visibility score among all private and public automotive groups. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Hendrick Automotive Group represents 130 franchises across more than a dozen states and employs about 11,000 people. We spoke with Brian Johnson, vice president of marketing at Hendrick Automotive Group, about the company’s customer strategy, the evolution of how car buyers shop, and the connection between the employee and customer experience.    
 
Customer Strategist: What is Hendrick’s approach to the brand experience and customer experience and how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?

Brian Johnson: While they [our competitors] are certainly worthy competition and doing a tremendous job, we just stay focused on ourselves. We really start with our people. And that’s Mr. Hendrick’s philosophy. I know that’s a little bit of an odd approach, but it works really well. We just feel if we take care of our people, our people will take care of our customers. You can provide an excellent customer experience and be focused on that, but we choose to focus on providing an excellent experience for our teammates and when they’re happy, our customers are happy. Our approach is leaning into our culture and our core values of prioritizing people first.

Even during the pandemic, we didn’t lay anyone off. We guaranteed everyone’s salary at 80%. A lot of these folks are commission-based folks. And I think we were able to bounce back much quicker because we still had our team intact and our folks have really taken care of our customers.
 
CS: Can you give me an example of how you took care of your employees even before COVID?

BJ: Yeah, we have all kinds of tremendous programs here. We’ve got some of the best facilities in the automotive industry that our teammates get to work in. We provide free healthcare to our teammates. We provide scholarship programs. We provide onsite free training for our technicians. We offer supplemental learning classes through our partners to be able to stay up to date on your certifications.

And we do that across all departments, whether that’s marketing or technicians or sales. We also have finance classes and sales seminars to help people stay as sharp as they can on their skills. We’re constantly giving reviews, and constantly having one-on-ones with our teammates so they feel connected with their leadership and they feel connected with the organization. And it’s just a part of what we do. It’s part of what we ask our store leadership to do. So we feel pretty good about all the things we were doing even before the pandemic, and it just really reinforced that we were doing the right things to start with.
 
CS: Let’s talk about Hendrick winning the highest sentiment and visibility score. Could you give me an example of how you did that? How did you take a customer insight from a sentiment analysis tool and act on it?

BJ: During the pandemic, if it was about a store not having masks available—we have stores in 14 different states and every regulation is different—we were always monitoring that very closely and we used those type of insights to be able to arm our stores with what our customers needed. And we still do it today.

You know, inventory availability is a big thing right now in the automotive space. We’re used to having a couple hundred vehicles to sell on average at every one of our lots. And right now, if you see five or 10 available, that’s a lot. So, we’re constantly using sentiment tools to monitor our business and see what we can improve. I don’t think there’s any secret sauce to this other than we want to pay attention and be the best.
 
CS: How often do you monitor customer sentiment and other scores?

BJ: For us, it’s a daily, weekly, monthly measurement. Some look at it every day. Our leadership looks at it every week and Mr. Hendrick looks at it once a month. It’s a core tenant of who we are, just like, did we hit our sales objectives? Did we hit our service objectives? Did we hit the manufacturer objectives? All of the different things that we measure, including these reputation scores, are a part of that.
 
CS: What types of things have you done to raise your visibility score?

BJ: The [Reputation] platform itself will give you some insights, like, “Hey, you need to focus on Google reviews or Facebook reviews or diversify on different channels, especially in the automotive space.” But again, I think it just comes back to us paying attention. If we get a negative customer review, our general managers who lead the store have to deal with it. It’s not something that just gets handed off to a marketing person or a guest services person.

And most of the time it’s just a communication error. Maybe a car part wasn’t ready, or your car took longer in service, or your sales experience took a little longer than normal. The tool gives us the insights on what to do there. But again, we deal with very few negative reviews and the ones we do get, we require our leadership to handle them, as they should.
 
CS: Would you say that the majority of your customers come to you through an online channel first?

BJ: Yeah, I mean, look that’s the world that we live in today. And I think it’s why we put a tremendous amount of focus on it. I believe that it’s a major piece of the consideration when customers are considering where they’re going to go, what dealership are they going to do business with. They look at those reviews across Google, the social channels, etc., to see what type of experience others have had.

I wouldn’t say that every customer experience starts with an online channel. You know, the touchpoints are anywhere from 30 to 50 different touchpoints before a customer even shows up at our store or contacts the store. But most of it is through an online presence to start.

The days of, let’s hop in the car on a Saturday and go visit four or five car dealerships and find the one we want, you know, those days are long past. People are looking at manufacturer websites. They’re looking at our websites, they’re looking at competitor websites, they’re looking at auto traders of the world. And then once they zero in on a car, you know, we’ve got to nail that experience and we’ve got to get it right. Because they have a lot of information at that point. They understand what it is they want, what they’re looking for, and if we can deliver on that expectation, it’ll be a world class experience. And we do that more often than not.
 
CS: What other challenges has the company had to overcome to maintain these high scores? Do you find that customers are comparing your experience to an experience they might have received from another industry?

BJ: I think every customer does that in my opinion. If you’re doing to go to a restaurant that you’ve never been to before, you’re probably going to look at the reviews and see what others have thought about it. And I think people do the same thing when they visit a car dealership.

But when you visit a dealership to purchase a car, this is something you’re doing once every three to five years. So these reviews are critically important. It is important that people see that others have had tremendously positive experiences when they’re making that decision, especially if, you know, we’re new franchise dealers. We’re selling BMWs and Chevrolets and Hondas, just like the other BMW and Chevrolet and Honda stores are. We have the same products and the manufacturers tell us what the price is going to be. So, our niche and our advantage is to provide that great experience.
 
CS: What advice do you have for other companies on how to maintain customer loyalty?

BJ: I don’t mean to sound redundant but take care of your people and they’ll take care of your customers. It’s been successful for Mr. Hendrick, so it should be successful for any industry out there.
 
CS: When it comes to taking care of your employees, are you doing anything differently? For example, are more employees asking for hybrid schedules or an opportunity to also work from home?

BJ: We have certainly adjusted our workforce to meet that when possible, but you know, our core business is retail operations, and we have to be available when the customers are available. And a lot of times, holidays are big for us. Memorial Day weekend is a big weekend for us.

Sometimes it means working the day after Christmas or on Christmas Eve. But we do try to meet our teammates’ needs wherever possible. We are in the retail business, but we have adjusted, and we will continue to look at it and do what it takes to be competitive and to keep our teammates.

Business intelligence vs. predictive analytics: Turn key differences into advantages

Employee studying data on computer screens

Think fast: What is the difference between business intelligence and predictive analytics and why does it matter? While many companies use these tools to better utilize the big data at their disposal, a quick Google search shows that these are still common questions.

Business intelligence and predictive analytics are often used interchangeably to describe tools and methods for utilizing data to make informed decisions. And in this digital age, using so many tools and techniques can be confusing. Read on for an explanation of the major differences between business intelligence and predictive analytics so that you can choose the right approach for your business needs.

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence or BI is comprised of procedures and infrastructure for collecting, storing, analyzing, and interpreting data that is produced by a company. It encompasses data mining, data visualization, performance benchmarking, and descriptive analytics—techniques for parsing data to generate reports, performance measures and trends to reveal insights and make better business decisions.

Business intelligence answers the questions, “who are our most valuable/least valuable customers?”, “when is the best time reach out to our customers?”, “when do callers experience the longest wait times?” and much more.

What is predictive analytics?

While business intelligence focuses on what happened in the past, predictive analytics answers the question, “what is most likely to happen?” It is a form of data analytics that estimates future performance using historical and current data. Predictive analytics utilizes data modeling and statistical algorithms to determine the probability of future outcomes.

It provides forecasts based on data science and often algorithms that make use of multiple data sets. Uses of predictive analytics include workforce forecasting, sales forecasting, and brands’ suggestions for what customers may want to purchase next.

What are the benefits of business intelligence?

Virtually every area of any business would benefit from turning raw data into meaningful and useful insights. Business intelligence supports numerous functions across an organization from recruitment and hiring to training and compliance, as well as marketing and sales.

For instance, by providing faster, more accurate reporting and analysis, a BI tool could identify bottlenecks in a contact center and help refine operational processes to improve customer support. BI can also reduce costs, increase revenue, and improve employee satisfaction.

What are the benefits of predictive analytics?

Predictive analytics are particularly helpful for planning purposes. For instance, staffing contact centers with the right number of associates is difficult, especially during dynamic markets. By analyzing current call patterns, along with data from past periods and economic factors, predictive analytics can help by using regression models to predict how much call volume a contact center should expect on a particular time of day or week. This insight can help managers determine how many associates they’ll need to ramp up or down.

Regression models are also commonly used to anticipate customer buying patterns – what product a customer will buy, when, and through what channel. Marketing organizations apply these models to target the right customer at the right time with the right message.

Another type of predictive modelling—an outlier model— can identify unusual increases in customer support calls or product returns in a short period of time, as a red flag for a larger problem, such as a product failure. An outlier model can also be used to predict fraud by highlighting outliers in financial transactions or insurance claims.

A brave new data world

Meaningful insights can be found nearly anywhere—if companies know where to look. Business intelligence and predictive analytics are some of the most effective tools for optimizing and improving business operations and other functions. And understanding the nuances between these tools makes all the difference in positioning a business to succeed both now, and in the future.

Learn more about business intelligence and predictive analytics.

Three Data Innovations Changing the Pace of Business – Not only is BI technology changing rapidly, but the techniques that are used to extract value from data are evolving as well.

Intelligent Automation Tools: Optimize your Contact Center with Intelligent Automation Software – Let’s explore how intelligent automation technologies can accelerate your brand’s digital transformation.

Crystal Ball, No – Predictive Analytics, Yes – Our client was transitioning from a product-led culture to one designed around service.

Marrying Predictive Analytics with Sales for Greater ROI – sales teams need to gain a real-time understanding of the conditions driving sales data and to act on that knowledge in the most efficient way possible.

Captive contact center vs. outsourcing: The most overlooked part of retail CX

Smiling woman text messaging on smart phone. Happy female customer with curly hair is wearing casuals. She is shopping at supermarket.

Jon Stough

As retailers contend with the latest slate of challenges—inflation, snarled supply chains, the return to experience spending—there’s no overstating the importance of having a high-quality contact center. Contact centers are often where customers directly interact with a brand, and their experiences can bring swift consequences: positive experiences can lead to sales and repeat business, while negative ones can turn customers off a brand for good.

Deciding whether to manage a captive contact center or partner with a customer experience outsourcer is critical to delivering a customer experience that is aligned with a retailer’s rate of growth and meets customer expectations.

In this blog post we’ll look at the pros and cons of a captive model versus outsourcing models and explore five ways that outsourcing contact centers can provide your company an ideal approach to improve CX, empower employees, accelerate digital transformation, and improve contact center operational KPIs.

What is the difference between a captive contact center and outsourcing?

Captive centers are those that are client owned and operated and provide resources directly to their organization. The associates working in captive centers are employed by the company, not a vendor. Outsourcing, on the other hand, is a process in which an organization recruits another company to carry out tasks, handle operations, or provide service delivery.

When choosing between managing a captive contact center or entrusting tasks to a CX partner, a few things to consider include:

1. Hiring the right people

A survey by PwC found that 73% of consumers said that a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties and 52% would pay more for a speedy and efficient customer experience. These findings call attention to the fact that more is expected of service and sales associates than ever before. Today’s retail workforce must possess complex problem-solving skills, excel in people management, coordinate well with others, adapt to changing consumer demographics, and have high emotional intelligence. In an era when so many simple tasks are being handled by AI, the complex problems are left to the people – so finding the right ones is key.

Finding contact center employees with the right skillset can be difficult for brands to do efficiently. At the same time, it is important to ensure all associates remain on-brand and embrace the corporate culture. An outsource partner, which has experience and expertise in this area, can take the burden off the brand so that it can focus on its core competencies and business mission.

With the right associates, everybody wins: employees feel empowered to make decisions that benefit both customers and the company, customers have positive experiences, and companies’ bottom lines will benefit as a result.

2. Becoming more efficient

Business takes place in the global marketplace 24/7 these days, and customers expect to be able to access brands whenever it’s convenient for them. This means retailers must be ready to offer support at any time, on any channel, in any language. Associates who don’t meet these expectations risk a frustrating and disconnected experience.

While this can be challenging for a captive center, a benefit of process outsourcing is that an outsource partner has resources around the world – with physical space, technology, and staff at the ready for short term or long term. During periods of high volume, such as the holiday season, partner experts and delivery centers know how to act quickly and move to the next objective. Tasks get completed faster and more efficiently, which can improve KPIs and provide cost reductions.

3. Faster and more effective training

When supporting customers, speed and efficiency are the names of the game. An outsourcer can help you get there by training more contact center associates faster and more effectively and business processes and customer support. Well-versed in industry best practices, outsourcers are equipped to use the latest technology to boost productivity and bottom lines – like TTEC’s RealPlay Bot, which lets associates practice with and get real-time feedback from a bot that acts like an AI-powered customer.

An outsourcer can work to make sure retail employees are motivated and equipped with the right skills to deliver great customer service experiences during each interaction. In giving the right tools and training, they help retailers build a workforce that is competent, collaborative, and connected.

4. Tapping into expertise

Too often, customer service serves a secondary function because brands are so focused on their products and services. This doesn’t bode well for those brands since, more and more, customers are looking to customer experience as a differentiator, even ahead of products and price in some cases.

The right outsource partner, on the other hand, lives and breathes customer experience. They specialize in end-to-end CX capabilities, can leverage digital and next-gen strategies, provide operations rigor, have global depth of best practices, and hire and retain world-class associates who serve as brand ambassadors. The expertise a brand may lack in-house can be found in the right partner.

5. Optimizing digital

Not surprisingly, digital plays a growing role in retail. Another difference between captive centers versus outsourced ones is that outsourcing partners can give brands the digital edge. Customers want more digital and technology options, meaning brands must provide multiple channels of support. Not only that, but they also need to understand which channels work best for various types of interactions. An outsourcing partner has the resources and expertise to manage multiple digital channels, freeing the retailer to focus on other areas of the business.

Choose wisely

A captive center may make sense for retail organizations with low customer support volume and simple customer requests. For organizations that understand their core competency is something other than delivering great customer experience but seek to differentiate themselves with world-class customer experience, working with a CX partner is key. The right partner will bring expertise and tech know-how in digital channels, and balance people with technology in a cost-effective manner – all in a way that allows retailers to concentrate on their core business mission.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel support: key differences

Group of friends in the street with smartphone

When it comes to customer service, customers expect fast and accurate support through the channel of their choice. It’s up to businesses to figure out how to best meet those expectations. This typically means choosing between omnichannel versus multichannel support.

And while both terms are often used interchangeably, there are distinct differences to these approaches. We’ll review those key differences, how to select the right approach, and best practices for delivering customer support that results in happy customers.

What is omnichannel support?

A defining characteristic of omnichannel support is that customer support is available across all communication channels, delivering a consistent customer experience. The key to an omnichannel approach is giving the support team access to customer data and metrics across any channel. In an omnichannel contact center, associates can share notes about previous interactions with the customer across touchpoints. It also saves customers time from having to repeat their question or issue.

What are the benefits of omnichannel support?

Customers want fast and convenient service through any channel. Omnichannel support does exactly that by connecting the customer experience across channels and touchpoints, allowing brands to deliver the quick, personalized resolutions that customers crave.

Omnichannel support has also been shown to increase customer satisfaction and retention – a significant benefit to a company’s bottom line. In addition to making customers happy, an omnichannel contact center adds value by centralizing data and tools under one system, which reduces resolution time while increasing efficiency and savings.

What is multichannel support?

In contrast to omnichannel support, multichannel support means a company provides customer support through multiple channels, but those channels are not necessarily connected. In a multichannel contact center, for instance, associates would not be able to tell that a customer who reached out through live chat is the same customer who later made a phone call, since each channel accounts for different streams of conversation.

What are the benefits of multichannel support?

The benefit of a multichannel approach is that it allows brands to offer many support options without taking the time to unify them. This approach could be ideal for a new company that wants to quickly engage with customers through their preferred channel of communication. And if a company doesn’t have high customer volume yet, associates may not need to transition customers from one channel to another or track the context of previous interactions.

So, is one approach better than the other?

The bottom line is that companies must assess their needs, resources, and goals when choosing between omnichannel or multichannel support. Omnichannel support’s emphasis on interconnected channels might seem to be the better choice, but only if a company’s people, processes, and technology are appropriately aligned. It is also possible to start with a multichannel support experience before transitioning to omnichannel.

The application of a few simple best practices helps to make the process of planning, investing, and implementing a customer support approach even easier.

1. Identify and prioritize high value service experiences. Is the goal to give customers as many options as possible to engage with your company or is it to ensure that customers have a seamless service experience? Focus on the experience that would deliver the biggest payoff. For some organizations, that might mean enhancing the quality of service versus focusing on acquisition processes or vice versa.

2. Be agile. Keep track of new software developments and learnings, adopting a more iterative approach to implementation versus a one and done. Capture value immediately by embracing progress over perfection with the knowledge that the experience will be improved over time.

3. Be bold. The benchmark for reshaping the experience cannot be internally focused. Keep track of the marketplace and understand that the expectations of customers are shaped by their best experiences in any space or industry. Making investments to optimize a bad or even average experience might be worse than not investing at all.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel support in a nutshell

Selecting the right customer support can be difficult but understanding the nuances of each makes the decision easier. Both omnichannel and multichannel support enable brands to assist customers via different channels but they offer different experiences. With omnichannel support, all the support channels are interconnected, creating a seamless experience for both employee and customer. Associates can share information about customer interactions across channels.

Multichannel support doesn’t require integration processes and technology, which could appeal to new companies. The drawback is less insight into how customers interact with the company. This could potentially increase average handle times and churn due as associates repeatedly ask for information from customers. Regardless of the support option, ensuring that it meets your customer experience goals and expectations will put you on the road to success.

Intelligent automation vs. RPA: Avoid these common mistakes

Customer service is demanding. On average a contact center associate needs to handle complex applications, urgent customer needs, and all the manual inefficiencies that come with service inquiries. They need the right tools for the job.

Intelligent automation and robotic process automation (RPA) help free associates from simple, time-consuming tasks to focus on meaningful, high-tier, and often stressful customer requests. But even modern tools can be damaging for the employee and customer experience if used at the wrong place and time.

So, what’s the difference between intelligent automation versus RPA? Let’s do a deep dive into the differences between these digital tools, common mistakes to avoid, and explore how they can successfully empower associates.

What is intelligent automation?

Intelligent automation is an umbrella term for several automation capabilities working in unison to deliver improved business results. This includes, but is not limited to, business process automation, intelligent virtual assistants and, as we’ll explore further, RPA.

Intelligent automation is a proactive part of an organization’s digital transformation. Contact center leaders often use intelligent automation tools to automate processes, business operations, and manual tasks, reducing the amount of human intervention needed to complete repetitive tasks. It helps orchestrate keys areas in the customer journey to ensure the experience is the same in every channel.

Intelligent automation do’s:

Use intelligent automation to empower associates. Automation in the contact center is moving beyond cost containment and self-service, we are now looking at tools that empower associates to make better, quicker, and more impactful decisions, as well as scale up digital service knowledge capture, codification, and application, to enhance service quality over the long term by using AI to identify patterns in interactions.

Intelligent automation don’ts:

Only deploy intelligent automation capabilities where it makes sense. Customers aren’t impressed by technology alone; they are impressed by the quick and impactful help it provides.

Deploy automation technology to enable capabilities such as self-service where it makes sense in the customer journey and make it easy for customers to reach a human when needed. Overall, intelligent automation technology is built to make processes more efficient, allowing associates to focus on more meaningful tasks and delivering empathetic support.

What is RPA?

Robotic Process Automation also known as RPA, can be attended or unattended software powered by AI and machine learning that handles common, high-volume, repetitive tasks. Think bots that imitate human work, such as data entry.

RPA is quickly gaining popularity in both the front- and back-office to streamline operations and free-up customer-facing employees to focus on more meaningful customer interactions while also lowering cost to serve and improving customer satisfaction.

RPA do’s:

Apply RPA to simple workflows that can be laid out step-by-step and do not need constant human intervention such as invoice processing, claims management, and fraud detection.

Tackling time-consuming tasks reduces the physical and often mental drain on associates to focus their energy on high-tier interactions.

RPA don’ts:

Do not rush AI technology. It’s important to ease RPA capabilities into your human workforce. AI technology can make their jobs easier but it’s incredibly important to be transparent on how it’ll strengthen, not replace, their position.

Only introduce automated tools when they’ve been thoroughly tested and trained alongside your workforce. And as automation takes over the easy tasks, begin retraining your staff on the soft skills needed for an increased focus on customer centricity.

What is the key difference between intelligent automation and RPA?

In a nutshell, RPA follows a set of rules to automate work that doesn’t vary. Intelligent automation includes RPA capabilities and more. It includes capabilities that allow bots to learn and adapt in real time. Think machine learning and natural language processing.

Deploy AI technologies meaningfully

Intelligent automation and capabilities like RPA are incredibly powerful tools at your contact center’s disposal. Augmenting an employee’s everyday work schedule with automation lessens workloads, increases customer satisfaction, and could uncover new areas of interest for the employee. Especially when they are deployed strategically and with purpose.

Stay tuned as we explore more intelligent automation tools in future content.

To learn more about intelligent automation and RPA

Contact Center Automation: Tools and Trends for the Decade Ahead: In this article, we explain the most important approach to successful contact center automation.

RPA Trends Report: Read this white paper to discover research to support the positive economic impact that intelligent RPA creates for enterprises of all sizes.

Optimize your Contact Center with Intelligent Automation Software: Explore how intelligent automation technologies can accelerate your brand’s digital transformation.

RPA Gets to Work at Du Telecom: Discover how TTEC and Pega worked together to share automation expertise and enable intelligent automation for their client Du Telecom.

Accelerate Digital Transformation by Making Automation Intelligent: Here are ways that intelligently automated journey management can supercharge digital initiatives.

1...345...22Page 4 of 22

© 1to1 Media