In a CX Effect report, industry thought-leader Martin Hill Wilson compares the current state of CX transformation – across all industries – to a long train.
“There are a few companies right up there at the front, while more are at the back,” he says. “Yet, the majority of us are trundling along in the middle, being pulled forwards by the front runners, hoping to avoid getting left behind.”
The evolution of AI-powered contact centre technologies, cloud migration, and COVID-related disruption has only increased the proportion of companies driving toward the forefront of innovation. Indeed, Deloitte research states that 85% of companies have significantly accelerated digital transformation during the crisis.
For digital transformation efforts to succeed, however, businesses need to follow a comprehensive plan that engages stakeholders from all functional areas impacted by the positive changes – as well as the challenges – that innovation brings.
Rushing through any stages of planning, designing, building, testing, or deploying processes within CX transformation can compromise the quality of innovation and deliver less-than-optimal results.
As such, companies are turning to automated quality testing and assurance technologies to speed up and safeguard their transformation efforts. Technology that focuses specifically on automated assurance for customer experience, such as Cyara, can help organisations plan, build, test, and launch CX innovations with less risk, lower cost, and greater overall speed and efficiency.
Inefficient Testing Impedes Omnichannel Development
As digital transformation accelerates, errors such as dead ends and dropouts will inevitably creep into the process, disrupting digital customer journeys and driving contact volumes. Catching these early in the transformation cycle is critical. Yet, manual testing takes time, and CX teams should not have to make a trade-off between speed and quality.
Cyara increases quality across all customer engagement channels by automating the testing process, ensuring that end-to-end journeys run seamlessly.
By testing omnichannel journeys in real-time, companies garner an outside-in view of every step of the CX journey while better understanding the drivers of pain points and inefficiency.
As Alok Kulkarni, CEO at Cyara, says in a CCW report:
You will want to test the customer’s perspective assuring that the journey as a whole works as intended, not just individual pieces. By replicating the actions of a customer trying to accomplish a specific goal, such as looking up an account balance, or checking an order status, you can test how the systems work holistically.
As a result, companies can proactively solve issues as they emerge, ensuring seamless omnichannel journeys and enabling customers to accomplish their goals more swiftly.
Use Active Monitoring to Optimise Digital Experiences
An automated CX assurance platform such as Cyara’s generates thousands of synthetic omnichannel interactions to test customer journeys from the outside-in. This process is known as “active monitoring”. From digital apps to IVR systems to agent desktops, it allows companies to pinpoint and eliminate errors.
According to Kulkarni, gaining such a perspective is crucial to optimise CX transformation projects. He says:
To keep up with the pace of changing customer expectations, businesses need to constantly change and improve their CX. Testing these changes and new capabilities is frequently a bottleneck, and development teams either slow down the process or skip testing. Test automation allows these teams to develop quickly without sacrificing quality.
In doing so, Cyara suggests that companies can innovate four times faster, significantly reducing project timelines and accelerating CX transformation success.
Furthermore, CX teams can analyse every point of interaction, paving the way for consistency in how customers transition between channels. This includes escalations from automated channels – such as online self-service portals and chatbots.
Teams should plan to conduct specific types of testing throughout the development cycle.
Cyara’s regression testing capabilities quickly ensure consistent CX despite coding changes within these applications. Additionally, its load testing functionality tracks omnichannel performance during periods of high contact volumes. Contact centres can leverage this capability at busy times to spot and instantly address issues, supporting better intraday management practices.
Such an approach to CX testing improves customer satisfaction and the experiences of agents managing the voice channel, who deal with fewer frustrated customers, angry at the shortcomings of digital-first channels. It does so by testing the IVR, routing, and audio quality.
Often, this makes all the difference in service experiences, according to research commissioned by Cyara. The study reports that 52% of consumers say a low-quality phone experience would leave them with a negative impression of the entire organisation.
By turning to the power of an automated CX assurance platform, businesses can speed up the implementation of transformation initiatives and optimise as they go.
Simplify Digital CX Testing with Cyara
Disruptive digital initiatives are gaining ground as omnichannel experiences evolve at a rate of knots. Keeping pace is crucial, but quality must not suffer as a result.
Cyara offers the ideal solution. Its platform continually assesses and optimises customer experiences across every customer engagement channel, ensuring that they are as seamless as possible.
Check out the following whitepaper to discover more: How to Analyze and Optimize the Customer Experience
