CUSTOMER

CONTACT WEEK 2023 SPECIAL REPORT SERIES

DIGITAL

CUSTOMER

Experience Management In
CONTACT WEEK
DIGITAL

An Evolving Customer Contact

Landscape
WRITTEN BY: BRIAN CANTOR

SPONSORED BY:
 SPECIAL REPORT: EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT IN AN EVOLVING CUSTOMER CONTACT LANDSCAPE

Introduction
Thought leaders have long identified operational silos as the bane of the contact center’s existence. They have long
urged brands to unify their channels, enterprise systems, and departments.

In today’s hypercompetitive customer experience landscape, achieving this form of operational alignment is no longer
the holy grail.

Make no mistake, it would still constitute an impressive feat. Given that only 20% of brands feel they can truly deliver an
omnichannel experience, operational fragmentation is still commonplace. Seamless integration of touchpoints and tools
is still rare.

But impressive is, unfortunately, not a synonym for sufficient. Today’s customers and employees are demanding more
than technological integration. They are demanding human connection. They seek cohesive journeys in which previous
interactions inform – and enhance – future ones. They seek brands that are routinely anticipating and remedying
problems, while constantly pursuing untapped opportunities for improvement.

This level of integration hinges on the adoption of a human-centric experience management framework. By unifying,
analyzing, democratizing, and actioning data from the sum of all interactions and experiences, businesses can empower
agents to deliver – and continuously grow – meaningful relationships with customers. In turn, they can transform from
a brand that sells products and answers questions into one that achieves defensible trust and loyalty in the marketplace.

As you adopt an experience management framework, it will be imperative to consider the following trends, challenges
and opportunities.

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK CCW DIGITAL | CUSTOMERCONTACTWEEKDIGITAL.COM | 2
DIGITAL

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK
DIGITAL
 SPECIAL REPORT: EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT IN AN EVOLVING CUSTOMER CONTACT LANDSCAPE

Committing to Frictionless,
Personalized, Predictive, and Proactive
Experiences
Today’s customers and employees do not want to make
compromises. They expect experiences to fire on all
cylinders.
Indeed, they seek experiences that are frictionless,
personalized, predictive, and proactive (FP3). Rather than
attempting to fight this reality or look for shortcuts that
do not exist, customer- and employee-centric brands
will embrace this vision – and build their data strategies
accordingly.
When analyzing customer and operational data, they will
work to identify overarching pain points that are directly
leading to additional effort and frustration. They will also
zero-in on specific customer and employee preferences,
profiles, behaviors, sentiments, and intentions.
With this combination of intelligence, brands can already
begin to reduce operational friction and personalize
interactions. Employees will have an easier time providing
customers with quick, relevant answers to their inquiries
and challenges.
The best brands will not, however, stop at optimizing
reactive experiences. They will also focus on predicting
customer and employee needs and then establishing
mechanisms for proactively addressing them.
Adopting a Customer Data Platform
Debates about “feedback surveys” versus “analytics
solutions” are a thing of the past. Today’s brands largely
recognize the value in both forms of intelligence. The
former helps capture the explanatory factors behind
heightened sentiment. The latter uncovers addressable
pain points and behavioral trends.
and journeys, and then surface real-time insights and
guidance to key stakeholders at moments of truth.
Focusing On Why
Contact center leaders love reviewing scores and
statistics. They love mapping trends in satisfaction and
advocacy scores, while reporting on changes in channel
utilization and containment.
Though important for setting the tone of company
meetings and retreats, these scores rarely provide the
actionable intelligence needed to refine experiences,
improve employee training, and optimize product
development.
Experience management, instead, hinges on a rigorous
attention to the question of “why.” Focusing on the root
causes and drivers behind statistics is a more productive
way to explain the numbers and identify improvement
areas. It provides the color needed to unite organizations
in pursuit of better experiences.
Consider the following example, which underscores the
need to understand the why behind a given statistic or
behavioral trend.
• A review of customer behavior shows that 90% of
customers are choosing to call for support, even
when their issues would be classified as “simple.”
The brand, in turn, concludes that its customers
dramatically prefer phone to digital conversations.
• An investigation into why reveals that customers are
not actually enamored with phone calls. Instead, they
have steadily struggled to resolve their problems in
the support chatbot. By improving the bot’s ability to
handle three key issues, the brand would drive more
self-service utilization – and lower contact center
costs.

Recognizing the importance of a comprehensive Measuring Employee Effort

approach to data does not, however, automatically put
No successful contact center leader would downplay
the right insights in the hands of the right stakeholders.
the importance of culture. No successful contact center
Brands require well-crafted feedback survey strategies
leader would dispute that better salaries and brighter
in order to capture the most relevant information from the
offices could boost employee sentiment.
greatest share of customers. They also require AI-driven
intelligence solutions to capture and analyze data from all Truly savvy ones will, however, acknowledge a quantity
customers, interactions, and touch points. that has a more direct impact on both employee
experience and operational performance: agent effort.
From there, leading brands will adopt a customer data
platform to build out ever-evolving customer profiles, The difficulty an agent faces throughout the work day
identify opportunities to enhance conversations and

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK CCW DIGITAL | CUSTOMERCONTACTWEEKDIGITAL.COM | 3
DIGITAL

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK
DIGITAL
 SPECIAL REPORT: EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT IN AN EVOLVING CUSTOMER CONTACT LANDSCAPE

be it the amount of time they spend on low-value tasks, the challenge they have accessing key enterprise systems, the
likelihood that knowledge or data they pull up will be inaccurate or irrelevant – plays an utterly pivotal role in driving
their experience. It directly impacts the time they can commit to connecting with a given customer, as well as the
sentiment they will have when attempting to cultivate that connection.

Beyond jeopardizing customer experiences, effort-intensive work environments also thwart the business’ ability to gain
vital intelligence. If agents are too consumed by low-value work to engage in empathetic conversations with customers,
brands cannot accurately determine which agent personas and skills best resonate with specific customer personas.

These frustrated and overworked agents, moreover, lack the time and incentive to provide their own frontline feedback
to peers and supervisors.

Diving Deep Into Personas and Behaviors

There is a difference between convincing a customer to buy a product and driving them to advocate for the brand on
social media. There is a difference between frustrating a customer and truly convincing them to take their business
elsewhere. There is a difference between cultivating employees who can achieve high levels of first contact resolution
and those who can routinely generate upsell revenue.

When designing experiences, brands need to understand which actions will drive the most heightened sentiments –
and most significant behaviors. They also need to understand which customers and employees are likely to engage in
the most fruitful – or problematic – behaviors.

With this information, brands can prioritize the areas of their experience most worth improving. They can understand
which pain points could actually have an impact on customer retention, as well as which offers and make-goods will
actually generate more conversions and loyalty.

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK CCW DIGITAL | CUSTOMERCONTACTWEEKDIGITAL.COM | 4
DIGITAL

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK
DIGITAL
 SPECIAL REPORT: EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT IN AN EVOLVING CUSTOMER CONTACT LANDSCAPE

With insight into which customers complain least and buy most, they can simultaneously direct their customer
acquisition efforts toward prospects with the highest lifetime value. With knowledge about which agents perform best,
they can improve hiring practices, refine training, and introduce models for chatbots.

The concurrent ability to assess potential risks is particularly relevant right now, given that economic uncertainty could
be forcing businesses to say “no” to customers and operate with smaller agent headcounts. Knowing which types of
experiences will make customers actually switch to a competitor or which tasks will drive agents to resign is essential for
maintaining an efficient, productive, and successful operation.

Enhancing AI With Data – And Vice Versa

AI is irrefutably transforming the customer and employee experience landscape. It is empowering customers to self-
serve, while freeing agents from low-value work.

Will it also strengthen human connections? Will it make experiences more personalized?

The answer to those questions hinges on the intersection of artificial intelligence and contact center data.

To reach their fullest potential, modern AI solutions require access to robust contact center data. Such data enables
AI-driven chatbots to engage customers in highly relevant and personalized self-service interactions. It also ensures
agent assist tools will provide agents with the intelligence and knowledge they need to empathize with and successfully
resolve customer needs, challenges, and inquiries.

But AI can also play a role in cultivating the most actionable intelligence. AI-driven analytics tools can capture, process,
unify, and democratize data at scale, giving companies a robust, actionable look at customer, employee, product, and
brand challenges and opportunities.

The key, then, is to view investment into modern data platforms, knowledge bases, and AI solutions as complementary
exercises.

Democratizing Customer Centricity

Experience management is not about sharing what is happening throughout the customer journey and contact center
operation. It is about uniting the organization in an effort to improve performance – and strengthen the end-to-end
human connection.

This means that businesses cannot invest in trendy technology and expect to instantly elevate their experiences.
Instead, they have to consciously rally the organization around the idea of customer centricity.

Savvy businesses know that it takes more than rhetoric – even really inspiring rhetoric – to achieve this degree of unity.
The key to achieving buy-in is to provide a compelling answer to the all-important question of “what’s in it for me.”

More often than not, that answer involves discussing measurable outcomes that matter to different stakeholders.
When business leaders can see the tangible connection between customer experiences and their own performance
indicators and business goals, they are more likely to prioritize customer centricity. They are also more likely to
collaborate with other departments and employees, eliminating the fragments that have long thwarted customer
connections.

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK CCW DIGITAL | CUSTOMERCONTACTWEEKDIGITAL.COM | 5
DIGITAL

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK
DIGITAL
 SPECIAL REPORT: EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT IN AN EVOLVING CUSTOMER CONTACT LANDSCAPE

About the Author

Brian Cantor is the Managing Director of Customer Management
Practice’s Digital division. Driven by a passion for helping brands
better empower their employees and more meaningfully connect
with customers, Brian oversees research, product development,
editorial vision, and commercial strategy for properties like
CCW Digital and Customer Engagement Insider. Reaching a
community of almost 200,000, these digital properties offer
industry-leading commentary, research reports, and virtual event
sessions.

Far from a “boardroom manager,” Brian routinely speaks at

leading customer contact events and directly engages with
Brian Cantor global enterprises and innovative start-ups via training and
Principal Analyst & Director, CCW Digital advisory services sessions.

Meet Our Analysts:

Brooke Lynch Wandy Ortiz

Deputy Divisional Director Content Analyst
& Principal Analyst CCW Digital
CCW Digital

Get involved:

Ben McClymont Simon Copcutt

Divisional Sales Director Head of Strategic Accounts
E: ben.mcclymont@cmpteam.com E: simon.copcutt@cmpteam.com

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK CCW DIGITAL | CUSTOMERCONTACTWEEKDIGITAL.COM | 6
DIGITAL

CUSTOMER
CONTACT WEEK
DIGITAL