Creating a consistently exceptional experience can be challenging, but an advanced CX platform offers many features that can help.
Customer engagement is constantly evolving. With desktop and mobile browsing, customers can access information and make purchases anytime from any device. Companies must adapt their customer experience (CX) strategies to keep up with this fast-paced engagement. Focusing on customer experience initiatives is vital for success; neglecting this can lead to falling behind competitors.
Accelerating CX Action
One simple way for brands to achieve tangible wins from their CX investments is by accelerating their CX software capabilities. With the recent boom in CX programs across virtually every industry, CX software platforms have matured considerably and now provide a variety of innovative features in feedback gathering techniques, customer verbatim sentiment analysis, and CX analytics. In addition, advancements in Closed-Loop Alerting (CLA) capabilities now enable companies to identify and follow up with dissatisfied customers in real-time, while ensuring employees comply with the CLA process through a range of communication and reporting features.
By unlocking these features and the power of today’s CX platforms, companies can now monitor and act on every customer’s experience, and in turn, develop a roadmap of customer journeys that exceed the expectations of today’s empowered customers.
Innovations in CX Platform Capabilities
Channels for Feedback Gathering
Customers now interact with companies across a variety of channels for support or sales transactions, making it crucial for CX platforms to enable customer feedback gathering across multiple mediums. Your CX platform should gather feedback via:
- IVR
- SMS
In addition, a few CX platforms offer integrated options that can gather feedback from all three sources listed above within the same survey campaign or customer base. This advanced feature extends the reach of the CX program and can often lead to higher collection rates as well as feedback from more customer segments. For instance, SkyCreek’s Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP) is a single, innovative platform for email, SMS, and IVR communications that are targeted, personalized, and relevant.
Verbatim Feedback
Advanced CX offerings integrate verbatim feedback from customers throughout the platform and offer three features that are critical to deriving value from these important customer responses:
- Categorization: Verbatim feedback is categorized by automated software or humans based on the theme or type of response. This enables companies to quickly and easily see the aspects of their services, processes, or products that are driving customer sentiment.
- Alerting: Negative verbatim are identified based on the customer’s sentiment and spoken words, and these verbatim are highlighted in the CX platform as a negative alert that is funneled to the appropriate group for follow-up and resolution. Conversely, positive verbatims can be used to provide encouragement and enhance team morale.
- Verbatim Reporting: Leading CX software now offers users diverse options for accessing verbatim feedback. The most important features include breakdowns by category (e.g., rep, appointment, or product) and theme, linking them directly to the frontline employees, which can then be aggregated by team, geographical location, or business area. This unstructured feedback can then be used for coaching and incorporated into key metrics (e.g., positive to negative ratios) that allow companies to evaluate all levels of the organization.
Closed Loop Alerting
CX programs now depend on CLA to operationalize their approach to identify and respond to dissatisfied customers; which effectively generates a tangible ROI from their CX efforts from reducing customer churn. Helping companies identify and manage their most vulnerable customer segment is critical since studies indicate that acquiring new customers can cost five times more than keeping current customers.
Leading CX platforms provide several key advancements that support companies’ CLA efforts, most notably:
- Real-Time Communication through instant alerts lets supervisors and frontline employees know about a dissatisfied customer immediately after a survey has been completed. These alerts are usually sent via email directly to the personnel responsible for following up with customers. Once alerts are received, they can quickly assess the situation, reach out to the customer for more insight, and take steps to resolve any concerns.
- CLA Workflow Engines allow managers and other personnel to view up-to-date alerts and customer information. They can also notate these alerts, track progress, and update the resolution activities effectively. This information is available to those in the service chain to make the right decisions and is also useful for the customer experience team in understanding the systemic themes driving customer dissatisfaction over time.
- Automated Reminders and Escalations that notify frontline employees and their supervisors and managers of alerts that need action or have not been acted upon within the expected compliance timeframe.
- Compliance and CLA Reporting features include dashboard views that summarize alert activity and detailed reports that highlight CLA process compliance by employees as well as performance in closing alerts and acting quickly to resolve customer issues.
CX Reporting & Analytics
The CX industry's recent expansion has led to an abundance of professional services and software entering the market. Companies now have a range of options for fulfilling their CX reporting requirements, ranging from basic in-house and third-party DIY tools to advanced analytics engines offering a multitude of reports and dashboard views. The leading CX software platforms have several common attributes though, including:
- Fully integrated reporting and feedback-gathering platforms that enable the exchange of customer feedback in real-time.
- A broad array of analytics dashboards, reports, and views that cover the customer feedback needs of frontline employees to CX stakeholders and executives. These engines provide CX trends, CX drivers, verbatim analytics, and brand-level and employee results, among many others, and usually have the ability to customize metrics, goals, and scoring algorithms according to specific company or program needs.
- Detailed reporting and features that enable closed-loop alerting and the distribution of verbatim feedback to large, geographically dispersed audiences.
Maximizing the Value of Customer Feedback
Most companies understand they need to give their customers a voice. While implementing feedback-gathering technology is a critical step, advanced CX platforms such as SkyCreek Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP) help companies maximize the value of the customer feedback they collect. Leading CX platforms can expose essential feedback themes and service trends over time. By using this intelligence, organizations can recognize areas of strength and identify improvement opportunities in their CX program at a macro- or micro-level.
As an added benefit, these platforms enable companies to gain near real-time insight into service failures—and take immediate steps to remediate concerns. This allows companies to rebuild relationships with unhappy customers—a win that can motivate long-term customer loyalty and improve the overall quality and consistency of customer experiences.
