New Paths To Great CX

A big challenge in managing customer experience is reducing the impact of silos. Silos make things harder for customers and more expensive for companies. When systems are a mess, it's almost impossible for teams to work together to deliver a seamless customer experience. So people just focus on their little piece of the puzzle.

The problem is, this makes it really hard to see the big picture and work together to manage the entire customer journey. Or to build lasting relationships with customers over time.

Yet both are super important in modern customer experience strategy. Customers expect companies to be responsive from start to finish. Companies want customer relationships to grow and become more valuable. Getting the first part right goes a long way to achieving the second.

And don't think silos are just a big company problem. Even a small team can fall into an "us vs. them" mentality!

Think Ecosystem

To break down silos, you need a unified approach to communications, workflow, knowledge, data, and insights. Something now common at the heart of today's technology. Putting voice, text, and video into an app to enable a customer journey or team huddle is no longer a big deal.

This is because cloud services, APIs and no-code design make it easy to connect things and adapt quickly. Together, they've totally changed what we think is possible.

One dashboard instead of tab hopping. One inbox to manage work. End-to-end workflows instead of manual data entry. One source of knowledge and full access to the data needed to personalize user experiences. It's all about keeping things simple.

We can now build the kind of real-time, personalized experiences that customers and employees expect. Being able to offer these has never been more critical.

Work-life balance, generational attitude shifts, and challenges around resilience and well-being are all things employees expect organizations to recognize and address.

Same goes for customers. The rising cost of living has challenged brand loyalty. Brand values are under a microscope and directly influence purchasing decisions. People are less forgiving of poor service experiences.

In summary, employee and customer experience can make or break a company. There are deep synergies between the two.  Being an employee and being a customer are two roles of the same person. It is why they need to be planned and optimized together.

Silos are often to blame for the lack of strategy to make this happen. Separate decision-makers, priorities, and budgets have slowed the convergence of unified communications and customer contact.

But the quest to build an ecosystem-level capability is now in full swing. I see many leadership teams working hard to break down silos, enable insights and collaboration to flow freely, and encourage teams to join forces.

Enabling Agility and Customer-Centricity

This is where Nextiva comes in. By unifying communications, workflow, knowledge, data, and insights on one platform, Nextiva makes it easier for teams to collaborate and deliver seamless customer experiences.

AI adds intelligence to routing decisions that enable faster, more personalized service. Sometimes this means self-service via IVR and chatbots. Sometimes customers want to engage with agents. AI now empowers them with real-time, on-screen guidance to help navigate each customer towards their best outcome. When things turn complex, agents can easily collaborate with other teams for speedy resolution.    

AI also lifts insights to a whole new level. Powerful analytics provide visibility into the entire customer journey, so organizations can measure and optimize performance. Customizable reports and wallboards let managers track metrics across all channels for both inbound and outbound engagement.

Nextiva is on a mission to ensure this advanced level of experience management is available and on tap to any sized organization with an ambition to pull ahead of their competition.

Re-inventing The Contact Center

As customer experience has matured, it's become clear that customer contact is where the rubber meets the road. If branding makes the promise, then customer experience delivers on it.

But anyone who lives and breathes contact centers knows it's not always that simple. As the "clean-up crew" for the rest of the organization, contact centers have been stuck in reactive, "work harder" mode since day one.

Despite knowing there had to be a better way, the path wasn't clear. That is, until the value of operational data generated from customer contact was transformed by the latest generation of AI services.

Contact centers are now a key proving ground for how the power of prediction and insight can be used. Anticipating user needs instead of just reacting to them is a game-changer. Shifting everyday culture to being proactive reinvents the focus of operational management.

As customer insight becomes easier to share in real time across organisations, silos are being replaced with teamwork and a common view of day-to-day priorities. The path to becoming customer centric as the foundation of successful growth has never been easier or made more available to organizations of all sizes.

It’s time to take advantage of what’s now possible.