We’ve seen the pace of digital transformation accelerate dramatically over the past two years, with innovation continuing to gather pace.
This shift to digital is not only changing the way we consume products and services but how companies are rallying to meet customers’ expectations. Customers today often won’t hesitate to take their business elsewhere if their experience is less than exceptional.
This means connecting with customers via whatever channel they want – whether that’s a phone call, WhatsApp message, or via social media. Gartner estimates that today a third of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience – a preference that climbs to 44 percent for millennials.
Providing an exceptional experience therefore also includes giving customers the option to self-serve instead of having to engage with the company directly, whether that’s pre-or post-purchase queries, support or problem-solving.
“People don’t want to spend lots of time dealing with a particular issue or getting an answer to their question with an organisation,” explains Aruf Khan, Head of Presales at NICE Nexidia. “They want to find the information themselves. They want to make their lives easier and be more in control. And they want to move between the different channels as and when they need to.”
Smarter self-service
Forrester says 80 percent of companies today provide a self-service offering to customers. Yet, Gartner says only nine percent of customers report resolving their issue completely via self-serve. So while organisations recognise they need to offer self-serve options, they may not be doing it effectively to meets the needs of customers.
“Organisations should be able to use everything they know about the customer from across all their different channels – for example, seeing what a customer has done online before speaking with them,” says Khan.
This is where using artificial intelligence (AI) and data can help bridge the gaps.
Khan explains:
“AI helps organisations understand the types of interactions that people are looking for help with, but also setting up that self-service capability, and using data to drive some of those changes to ultimately improve the customer experience”
For example, NICE’s Intelligence from Enlighten AI derives insight from human conversations and chats. The platform helps companies build smarter self-service applications using automatically generated insights from human-assisted interactions.
“By taking a data-lead, AI approach, you’re able to understand, based on the conversations customers have with agents, what are the types of conversations which are primed for digital,” says Khan.
“If someone calls in who feels like they’ve been the victim of fraud they likely want to speak with an agent. However, if it’s slightly more transactional, you ideally want them to go towards self-serve. And there will be a wealth of situations in the middle.”
Simply providing customers the option to use self-service isn’t enough for firms to create happy clients, says Khan. They must use self-service in combination with analytics and AI to continuously fine tune their activities to improve user experiences.
He adds: “What’s important is having a holistic view of the customer journey, so their needs and expectations are being met on the channel of their choice.”
