Immersive CX is transforming the customer service and support landscape. Today’s businesses know they must delight their customers to convert and retain them. However, accomplishing that goal isn’t easy, as customer expectations continue to evolve.
Creating an “immersive” experience could be the solution. Investing in “immersive CX” means delivering fluid, natural, and personalized interactions to customers. This could mean building a generative AI conversational chatbot to help customers troubleshoot problems and complete tasks without agent support.
It could also mean investing in a more advanced approach to omnichannel support, unifying customer service channels and AI to improve personalization, or branching out into video and XR-based services. The question is, how do you compare the solutions available and make sure you’re implementing the right strategy for 2024?
Here’s your step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Map the Customer Journey
The first step in comparing immersive CX solutions is figuring out where opportunities lie in your CX strategy to boost immersion and enhance customer experiences. The best way to do this is to comprehensively map your customer’s current journey with your business.
Identify which channels your customers use to interact with your company, and determine how their priorities and intent differ from one platform to the next. Use feedback from your customers and surveys to search for friction points in the customer journey. This will give you an insight into areas where you can use immersion to boost customer satisfaction.
For instance, swapping a traditional chatbot for a generative AI solution can allow customers to access more personalized, convenient, and conversational self-service experiences. Adding video and screen-sharing tools to your omnichannel stack or investing in extended reality can give your employees a way to help customers more effectively troubleshoot problems or implement new tools.
Step 2: Define the Core Components of Immersive CX
Many companies today associate the word “immersive” with extended reality and the metaverse. These solutions certainly have the potential to boost the “immersion” customers feel when interacting with your brand. You can use AR apps in the sales journey to let customers visualize products before they buy them or create virtual reality stores.
You can even use extended reality to help onboard and train customers, allowing them to get more value from their purchases and increasing retention rates. However, other tools can boost immersion, too. For instance, cutting-edge AI solutions and generative bots can create more natural, personalized, and human-like experiences for customers seeking self-service opportunities.
Truly aligned omnichannel contact center platforms can eliminate frictions that harm immersion by allowing employees to easily access and share data and context. Even video conferencing tools can create a more immersive, engaging customer experience.
Step 3: Prioritize True Omnichannel Alignment
As mentioned above, one of the core components of an effective immersive CX strategy is alignment between your channels, people, data, and processes. One of the core things that damages the immersion a customer feels and their experience with your brand is the need to repeat themselves or restart their journey when moving from one channel to the next.
Zendesk notes that 61% of customers believe “fluid” experiences are more immersive. When comparing CX tools, you need to think about how flexibly they can align and synchronize your customer service channels and data.
While many companies claim to offer “omnichannel” contact center solutions, studies show only around a third of contact centers are genuinely omnichannel. Ensure you can connect everything from your communication channels to your CRM data, ERP tools, and more in one ecosystem.
Step 4: Consider the Employee Experience
Upgrading customer experience starts with creating the right employee experience. If your agents can’t quickly access the data or resources they need, they can’t deliver a “fluid” experience to your customers.
When comparing immersive CX solutions, consider how you can optimize and empower your agents with the right tools. Choosing an omnichannel CCaaS platform that connects with your UCaaS ecosystem is an excellent way to boost collaboration and productivity throughout the workplace.
You can also look at using the tools and technologies you embrace for immersion, such as XR and AI, to support your employees. Generative AI virtual agents can summarize conversations for agents and give them insights into personal customer data. They can coach staff in real time and provide overviews of customer sentiment so each agent can adapt proactively.
On the other hand, extended reality tools can help teams collaborate more creatively and access immersive, simulated training sessions.
Step 5: Invest in Analytics and Reporting Tools
Finally, when implementing any new technology into your customer experience stack, ensure you can capture the right insights. Any immersive CX technology should come equipped with the proper reporting and analytical tools.
Look for solutions that track the performance of your teams and the sentiment of your customers. This will help you make intelligent business decisions over time. The more information you collect, the more you can personalize and enhance the customer journey.
Choosing tools that can also integrate with your existing reporting software can be helpful, too.
Implementing Immersive CX Technologies
Investing in Immersive CX is an incredible way to differentiate your business in today’s world. It can help you delight customers and increase retention rates. The right tools even elevate employee performance and improve business efficiency.
However, ensuring you’re implementing the right resources to guide your CX strategy in the right direction is essential. Use the steps above to find the immersive tools to drive CX success.
