What stands in the way of successful digital engagement? What will it take to overcome these challenges? This research-driven Market Study has the answers.
Topics include:
- Which parts of the digital experience require the most customer effort?
- What is preventing companies from delivering personalized interactions in digital channels?
- With all the talk about hiring challenges, how are companies ensuring they have enough resources to thrive in digital?
Table of Contents
- Content Summary
- Introduction
- Methodology & Demographics
- About the Author
- Key Findings
- Digital Engagement: An Undeniable Priority
- Empowering Teams for the Digital Age
- Making Digital Engagement Personal – And Effortless
- THE DATA CHALLENGE
- MAKING DIGITAL EXPERIENCES EASIER
- MEASURING THE USER EXPERIENCE
- Demonstrating Brand Identity
- Automating Digital Engagement
Content Summary
Introduction
Methodology & Demographics
About the Author
Key Findings
Digital Engagement: An Undeniable Priority
Empowering Teams for the Digital Age
Making Digital Engagement Personal – And Effortless
Demonstrating Brand Identity
Automating Digital Engagement
Digital is quite simply how members of all generations, from all demographics, communicate in today’s world. As a result, it is quite simply where today’s businesses need to focus significant portions of their customer engagement investments.
Most companies accept this reality, but embracing the importance of digital is not the same as consistently delivering stellar digital experiences. Far too many brands fail to provide frictionless, let alone memorable, journeys and thus squander opportunities to gather vital customer insights, deliver cost-effective service, and maximize high-value sales and marketing conversions.
What stands in the way of successful digital engagement? What will it take to overcome these challenges? This research-driven Market Study has the answers. Topics include:
- Do companies feel their digital experiences accurately reflect brand values?
- Seamlessness is essential in the digital world, but are today’s CX teams properly aligned?
- Which parts of the digital experience require the most customer effort?
- What is preventing companies from delivering personalized interactions in digital channels?
- With all the talk about hiring challenges, how are companies ensuring they have enough resources to thrive in digital?
- What roles can AI and analytics investments play in elevating digital experiences?
Introduction
A customer engagement leader attempting to evade discussion about the “digital transformation” would be taking on the challenge of a lifetime, and with good reason. Digital is quite simply how members of all generations, from all demographics, communicate in today’s world. As a result, it is quite simply where today’s businesses need to focus significant portions of their energy and investments.
Sincerely embracing the importance of digital engagement is not, however, the same as consistently delivering stellar digital experiences. Far too many brands fail to provide frictionless, let alone memorable, experiences at their digital touch points. As a result, they squander opportunities to gather vital customer insights, deliver cost-effective service, and maximize high value sales and marketing conversions.
What stands in the way of successful digital engagement, and what will it take to overcome these enduring challenges? Driven by exclusive market research, Customer Engagement Insider’s Market Study on Digital CX & Engagement provides the answers.
Methodology & Demographics
To capture research for Digital CX & Engagement, Customer Engagement Insider conducted a survey in March 2022. The survey attracted respondents responsible for customer and user experience, marketing, sales, design, product development, business intelligence, contact centers, digital strategy, operations, and technology for companies of all sizes and most major industries.
Example respondent job titles included head of digital, vice president of marketing, director of customer success, senior vice president of CRM, director of product marketing, head of customer and people operations, director of customer experience, senior director of CX technology, director of IT, director of member advocacy, vice president of business intelligence, vice president of customer enablement, and senior director of strategic marketing.
About the Author
Brian Cantor is the principal analyst and director for CCW Digital, the global online community and research hub for customer contact professionals. In his role, Brian leads all customer experience, contact center, technology, and employee engagement research initiatives for CCW. CCW Digital’s articles, special reports, commentaries, infographics, executive interviews, webinars, and online events reach a community of over 150,000. A passionate advocate for customer centricity, Brian regularly speaks on major CX conference agendas. He also advises organizations on customer experience and business development strategies.
Key Findings
- Silos may be a common challenge throughout the business world, but most companies do feel their core teams are at least somewhat aligned on digital strategy.
- Granted, it helps that digital engagement is such a priority for today’s businesses. Sixty-five percent (65%) of companies say that the majority of their engagement initiatives and investments concern the digital world.
- Companies are generally content with staffing levels for digital sales and support. On the other hand, they feel they can elevate resources for user experience design and analytics.
- To address any resourcing issues, companies are prioritizing automation, full-time hiring, and cross-training.
- Most companies feel like they are offering some degree of personalization in their digital experiences. Unfortunately, the majority are relying on superficial data that limits how effectively they can tailor conversations.
- It is hard to blame them, however. Ninety percent (90%) acknowledge weaknesses in their customer intelligence programs.
- All facets of the digital journey are more difficult than they should be, with companies flagging digital agent-led engagement as particularly effort-intensive in today’s landscape.
- Although most companies recognize the importance of the user experience, not all are optimally prioritizing user experience metrics.
- Companies are generally confident that their website, e-mail, and social presences accurately reflect brand identity and values. They are comparatively less sure about branding in video chat, web chat, and messaging.
- Analytics, proactive engagement, and knowledge content represent the top digital use cases for automation.
Digital Engagement: An Undeniable Priority
Disconnect is the bane of every business unit’s existence, and it creates particular havoc in the world of customer engagement. Given the importance of creating consistent value and delivering a singular voice across all touchpoints, any strategic or systemic fragmentation will have negative consequences. It will thwart the ability to connect with customers at a time when the stakes of such engagement are higher than ever. It will also inhibit every facet of the decision-making process, from technology sourcing, to hiring, all the way to performance management.
Digital engagement is not immune to the notorious challenge of “silos,” but many companies are beginning to achieve alignment.
An impressive 67% of companies say their key customer-oriented teams are at least somewhat aligned on digital strategy. A non-trivial 37% say they are completely aligned, while only 8% feel their relevant departments are markedly misaligned.
Moving forward, customer-centric organizations will work vehemently to build on this foundation and achieve even greater coordination. It is utterly essential given the vast number of engagement opportunities that exist in the digital world.
Unification, after all, is not simply about making sure Agent A says the same thing as Agent B. It is about making sure the user experience one encounters on the mobile app demonstrates the same degree of customer centricity as the experience one encounters making a purchase on the desktop website, resetting a password in a chatbot, or enabling a live chat representative to co-browse one’s screen.
Achieving perfect digital alignment will not be an overnight task, but steady progress toward such unification should be very feasible. With 65% of companies saying that the majority of their customer experience strategies and priorities concern digital, it is clear that the marketplace is not taking the digital transformation lightly. In turn, the case for rallying all departments around frictionless, personalized, predictive, and proactive digital experiences should be a reasonably easy one to make.
To what extent are your company’s key engagement departments like customer experience, sales, marketing, service, and design teams collaborating to create a unified digital strategy?
- 36.79% All those departments are actively collaborating, experience is unified
- 30.19% All those departments occasionally collaborate
- 25.47% Some of those departments collaborate
- 7.55% Those departments rarely, if ever collaborate
Approximately what percentage of your company’s CX strategies/ initiatives/priorities specifically concern digital engagement?
- 33.02% 75-100%
- 32.08% 50-75%
- 23.58% 25-50%
- 11.32% 0-25%
Empowering Teams for the Digital Age
In general, digital channels are lower-touch than “traditional” engagement options like phone and email. In many cases, digital experiences – even support experiences – involve no conversation whatsoever.
The comparative lack of intimate, high-touch conversation does not, however, mean people are any less important in the digital realm. What happens behind-the-scenes directly impacts what happens on camera, and the teams responsible for designing and delivering experiences absolutely dictate success.
Naturally, a key first step involves making sure there is resourcing for key digital engagement functions. Many companies are still working through this introductory step.
Although 54% of companies report sufficient resourcing for digital customer service and 53% feel confident in their sales staffing, most report weaknesses in other areas. Only 31% believe they have enough personnel for user experience design and analytics. Troublingly, over 16% feel they have no resourcing whatsoever for these functions.
With 45% confirming an adequate quantity of personnel, resourcing for marketing falls squarely in the middle. However, one can argue that the statistic is most disappointing given that “digital marketing” is arguably the most familiar of any of the major digital engagement functions. A common criticism of digital experiences, particularly those in social media, is that they prioritize marketing over (if not at the expense of) service.
Insofar as no function is perfectly staffed, and some are downright lacking from a resourcing standpoint, most companies will need to quickly increase their capacity.
For a substantial 63% of companies, automation represents a promising solution. By taking basic transactions and other simple processes off employees’ plates, these companies can maximize the productivity of their existing workforce – and perhaps minimize the number of additional hires they need to make.
Granted, additional hires will be necessary in many cases. Companies generally recognize this reality, with 50% acknowledging an emphasis on hiring more full-time staff members to support their digital functions.
Other popular resourcing options include cross-training existing staff to support digital channels (46%) and increasingly leveraging outsourcing and other external partners (32%). Reallocating staff from legacy engagement teams (26%) and using gig or other flex models (20%) are on the radar but comparatively less popular in the status quo.
All options introduce pros and cons. By empowering agents to follow customers through their journeys, cross-training opens the door to a more legitimately “omnichannel” experience. On the other hand, it may not necessarily produce the requisite increase in capacity. It also downplays the reality that some employees are bettersuited for certain channels, which could have a deleterious impact on both quality of customer engagement and level of employee satisfaction.
Outsourcing is a tried-and-true option for scaling, and it also allows businesses in the infant stages of their digital transformation to access people with vital expertise. Long-standing concerns over achieving a consistent culture and voice, however, become even more realistic as outsourcing initiatives begin to span numerous channels and engagement functions.
If digital volume is truly supplanting traditional phone communication, it makes sense to repurpose some “legacy” employees. However, it is important that companies make this decision based on customer demand and do not forcibly reduce phone volume as a short-term cost-cutting play. Digital gains more prominence with each passing second, but its rise should not come at the expense of offering great phone support for those who want it.
Always a promising idea, gig is becoming more valuable and viable as companies and employees gain comfort and familiarity with remote work best practices. On the other hand, methods of securing and training the right talent – knowing these individuals will not be all-in on a given brand – may still require ample deliberation and iteration.
When it comes to engagement in digital channels, do you have enough personnel & resourcing for the following functions?
- UX/design
- Essentially no resourcing; definitely not enough: 16.04%
- Some resourcing, but probably not enough: 50.94%
- Sufficient resourcing: 31.13%
- Too much resourcing: 1.89%
- Analytics/intelligence
- Essentially no resourcing; definitely not enough: 16.98%
- Some resourcing, but probably not enough: 47.17%
- Sufficient resourcing: 31.13%
- Too much resourcing: 4.72%
- Customer service/support
- Essentially no resourcing; definitely not enough: 3.81%
- Some resourcing, but probably not enough: 35.24%
- Sufficient resourcing: 58.10%
- Too much resourcing: 2.86%
- Sales
- Essentially no resourcing; definitely not enough: 7.55%
- Some resourcing, but probably not enough: 29.25%
- Sufficient resourcing: 52.83%
- Too much resourcing: 10.38%
- Marketing
- Essentially no resourcing; definitely not enough: 7.55%
- Some resourcing, but probably not enough: 40.57%
- Sufficient resourcing: 45.28%
- Too much resourcing: 6.60%
How have you / are you addressing staffing needs amid the digital transformation?
- Using more automation to improve productivity of existing staff: 63.21%
- Hiring new full-time team members: 50.00%
- Cross-training existing staff to cover multiple channels / omnichannel: 46.23%
- Relying on outsourcing/partners: 32.08%
- Re-allocating staff from phone/legacy engagement teams: 26.42%
- Using gig/flex work models to efficiently increase head count: 20.75%
Making Digital Engagement Personal – And Effortless
At its core, digital engagement hinges on the idea of convenience. It empowers customers to gather the information they want or the support they require from their fingertips, without entering the traditional “call center” system.
The importance of convenience does not, however, negate the importance of personalization. The idea of “treating customers as people not numbers” is as true in modern digital channels as it ever was in phone and in-person conversations.
If anything, personalization is even more important given the abundance of potential conversation pathways. Experiences that do not surface the right information and guidance to the right customer at the right time are destined to require undue effort and foster unfortunate frustration.
The good news is that today’s companies very much understand the importance of personalizing digital experiences. An impressive 85% of companies confirm that they offer at least some degree of personalization in their journeys.
Personalization is, of course, a rather ambiguous concept. It is therefore worth considering the specific factors companies are using when tailoring their digital experiences.
“Specific profile information” represents the top driver, with 65% of companies saying they rely on factors like past purchases and support inquiries to tailor experiences. This is an encouraging sign regarding companies’ abilities to recognize customers and their histories during interactions. It does not, however, inherently guarantee intimately unique conversations: the actual engagement or resolution process, while respecting past interactions, may remain uniform from customer to customer.
Of course, personalizing based on a customer’s specific profile is at least more valuable than personalizing based on basic information like name and account number. Just shy of 56% of companies say they personalize on such factors, meaning they are essentially patting themselves on the back just for knowing the name of the person to whom they are speaking.
Comparatively fewer companies are personalizing based on deeper factors like website or shopping behavior (42%), perceived customer sentiment (37%), or predicted customer intent (32%), but the numbers are not trivial. Clearly, many companies are working to tailor specific digital moments and conversations to the unique needs and moods of individual customers.
Which factors are you actively, consistently, and successfully using to personalize digital experiences?
- Specific profile or engagement information (past purchases, past support inquiries, which offers they responded to, etc): 65.09%
- Basic account information (name, age, location, account tier, etc): 55.66%
- Website navigation/shopping habits and behaviors: 41.51%
- Perceived customer sentiment: 36.79%
- Predicted customer intent: 32.08%
- We don’t really/successfully personalize our digital experiences: 15.09%
THE DATA CHALLENGE
Whether they are doing so successfully, however, remains a challenge. Companies openly acknowledge weaknesses in their intelligence programs.
A mere 10% of companies identify their intelligence effort as “excellent,” with the majority citing problems along the way. Fifteen percent (15%) feel like they are completely struggling, while 40% face difficulty unifying and analyzing the insights they are collecting. The remaining 35% feel like they can glean valuable insights but fail to put them into action.
Without a consistent, scalable method for gathering, unifying, analyzing, surfacing, actioning, and re-evaluating their data, companies do not have the optimal foundation for personalizing experiences. They may want to tailor every facet of their journey, but they cannot be certain their effort will be fruitful.
Although digital exponentially increases the type and scope of customer data that companies can collect and leverage, it also exacerbates any weaknesses in the process. Companies that struggle to unify and process data from one or two “traditional” channels will have little hope of successfully analyzing unstructured insights that come in a variety of formats and from a plethora of new digital channels. Worse, because the use of data is very obvious in digital environments (a customer can clearly see if a brand is tailoring a home page to their past shopping habits or aware of their past orders when they initiate a chatbot conversation), failure becomes infinitely more visible – and thus far more damaging to brand credibility.
Do you feel you are capturing, analyzing, and actioning the intelligence you need to deliver stellar digital experiences?
- 15.09% Definitely not
- 39.62% We’re capturing data, but it’s not unified or being analyzed effectively, thus limiting actionability
- 34.91% We’re capturing and analyzing data, but it’s not being used consistently well
- 10.38% Yes, our customer intelligence program is excellent
MAKING DIGITAL EXPERIENCES EASIER
Emphasizing the need to personalize digital experiences does not require one to concede the importance of reducing effort. In fact, one of the biggest reasons to personalize experiences is to reduce the repetitive questions or impersonal interactions that notoriously add friction.
A worthwhile inquiry into the state of digital engagement, consequently, considers whether brands make it easy to access key information and complete key processes.
Although few companies believe any aspect of their digital experience is exceedingly difficult, they do not feel they are wowing customers with their simplicity. Most acknowledge moderate effort levels, in turn accepting that they have plenty of work remaining.
When it comes to today’s digital journeys, the easiest task involves finding information about the company and its products. Companies rate their effort level at 3.52 on a quantified scale of 0 to 5, with 0 representing “very difficult” and 5 representing “very easy.”
It is hardly surprising that finding information is the comparatively easiest task. Shock, instead, comes from the fact that companies rank the difficulty at 3.52 – just shy of “fairly easy.” Providing product and brand information was one of the earliest and most obvious use cases for digital channels. In most cases, websites were a place to learn about brands long before they were a destination for engaging with them. The fact that only 25% feel information gathering is “very easy,” therefore, represents a marked disappointment.
Still, it is the easiest task. Other comparatively low-effort endeavors include completing a purchase (3.49), interacting with a bot or self-service platform (3.36), and accessing or managing one’s specific account and information (3.27).
Although all three tasks are vital parts of the customer journey, none directly speaks to two-way conversations between customers and agents. Only one, moreover, even concerns the support process. Purchasing and account management are two well-known, foundational pieces of digital experiences for which any effort should come as both a surprise and disappointment.
And while the comparative ease of engaging with a selfservice platform is an encouraging sign, it may ultimately expose customers to the most frustrating part of the journey: escalating to a live agent.
Companies score the escalation process at 2.71 on the effort scale, with only 36% referring to the process as even fairly easy.
Live agent interactions, in general, represent a comparatively difficult facet of the digital experience. With a score of 2.99 (with only 43% calling it at least fairly easy), agent-led conversations are the second-most frustrating phase of the digital journey.
A key tenet of the omnichannel movement is that customers should not have to sacrifice experience quality in order to connect in their favorite environment. A key tenet of customer engagement strategy is maximizing moments of truth at every touch point.
Until companies facilitate seamless interactions with live agents, they cannot celebrate their so-called digital transformation.
When engaging with your website or mobile application, how easily can customers achieve the following?
- Find general information about company and products
- N/A: 1.89%
- Very difficult: 0.94%
- Fairly difficult: 7.55%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 24.53%
- Fairly easy: 40.57%
- Very easy: 24.53%
- Access and manage specific account/personal information
- N/A: 13.21%
- Very difficult: 1.89%
- Fairly difficult: 9.43%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 20.75%
- Fairly easy: 42.45%
- Very easy: 12.26%
- Access and take advantage of tailored/personalized products, offers, or discounts
- N/A: 18.87%
- Very difficult: 7.55%
- Fairly difficult: 16.98%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 16.98%
- Fairly easy: 32.08%
- Very easy: 7.55%
- Complete a purchase
- N/A: 26.42%
- Very difficult: 2.83%
- Fairly difficult: 5.66%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 15.09%
- Fairly easy: 30.19%
- Very easy: 19.81%
- Interact with a bot/self-service platform
- N/A: 26.67%
- Very difficult: 1.90%
- Fairly difficult: 10.48%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 14.29%
- Fairly easy: 28.57%
- Very easy: 18.10%
- Submit a support ticket/request
- N/A: 15.09%
- Very difficult: 4.72%
- Fairly difficult: 12.26%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 16.04%
- Fairly easy: 33.02%
- Very easy: 18.87%
- Connect with a live agent in digital channel (chat, messaging, etc)
- N/A: 16.98%
- Very difficult: 7.55%
- Fairly difficult: 10.38%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 21.70%
- Fairly easy: 28.30%
- Very easy: 15.09%
- Escalate from digital to a live phone agent
- N/A: 20.75%
- Very difficult: 10.38%
- Fairly difficult: 12.26%
- Neither difficult nor easy: 20.75%
- Fairly easy: 25.47%
- Very easy: 10.38%
MEASURING THE USER EXPERIENCE
The conversation about effort sheds light on another pivotal aspect of digital engagement strategy: the user experience.
Whereas the “user experience” may seem less tangible in traditional phone or in-person interactions, it plays a pivotal role in the digital experience. Instead of focusing specifically on interactions, customers will evaluate every aspect of the web or mobile experience – from the design aesthetic, to the ease of navigating, to the level of interactivity.
Indeed, CMP Research confirms that upwards of 90% of customers make brand loyalty decisions based on their experience using their websites and apps.
Companies, in turn, have every incentive to prioritize the user experience when designing their digital journeys. Most recognize this opportunity, but only some are doing everything in their power to seize it.
Although only 8% of companies say they pay no attention to user experience metrics, an underwhelming 21% view such metrics as a top priority. The rest fall into a middle ground: 31% call them a slight focus, and 41% view them as a decent focus.
One of the many benefits of digital platforms is their measurability. Modern solutions provide insight into how long customers spend on certain pages, what phrases or design elements prompt them to take certain actions, what factors cause them to seek further support, and what “pain points” drive them to leave (possibly into the arms of a competitor).
A brand that downplays or even ignores this data is one laughing in the face of customer centricity.
To what extent does your organization seriously consider USER EXPERIENCE metrics (such as website abandonment, time on page, interactions with pop-up chatbots, etc) when making decisions about digital engagement strategy?
- 7.55% Not at all
- 31.13% They’re a slight focus
- 40.57% They’re a decent focus
- 20.75% They’re an absolute priority
Demonstrating Brand Identity
Like a great experience in any channel, humanity factors heavily into the digital engagement process. Customers want to be treated as individual people, and they also want to know the specific identities of the brands they are supporting.
A successful digital engagement strategy, therefore, involves accurately and consistently communicating one’s values, identity, and commitment to customer centricity across all channels.
At present, brands are generally confident in how they present themselves in more familiar channels like websites and e-mail. Just over 81% believe they accurately communicate brand identity in values on their website, while just shy of 81% feel the same about their e-mail presence.
An accurate window into brand identity for 73% of companies, optimism also exists regarding public social feeds.
None should be surprising. Not simply the most familiar digital channels, web, e-mail, and public social feeds are arguably the most controllable. Companies have full autonomy to design websites that are faithful to their brand, and they have full control over the voice they use in public social communication. E-mail is more of a responsive, two-way channel, but insofar as response times are rarely immediate, brands have more power to control the narrative and standardize communication than they would in real-time conversations.
Lower-performing channels include video chat (just 31% feel it embodies their brand values), native web or mobile chat (51%), or messaging (51%).
On the one hand, the numbers are potentially skewed by the fact that fewer companies are measuring or even offering these channels. Based on those limitations, 41% did not feel equipped to comment on their video chat brand identity, while 30% and 29% respectively said the same of native chat and messaging.
On the other hand, that lack of visibility arguably represents a problem in its own right. An omnichannel business commits itself to delivering stellar engagement across all channels; one that is not measuring, or even offering, chat or messaging engagement is inherently failing to accommodate today’s increasingly digital-first customer.
Do you feel your company’s presence in the following digital channels adequately reflects brand identity, values, and commitment to customer centricity?
- Website
- No： 16.04%
- Yes： 81.13%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 2.83%
- Mobile app
- No： 19.05%
- Yes： 53.33%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 27.62%
- Native web/mobile app chat
- No： 18.63%
- Yes： 50.98%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 30.39%
- Messaging (SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, etc)
- No： 20.00%
- Yes： 51.43%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 28.57%
- Video chat
- No： 27.88%
- Yes： 30.77%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 41.35%
- Helpdesk/ticketing
- No： 14.42%
- Yes： 66.35%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 19.23%
- Email
- No： 13.33%
- Yes： 80.95%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 5。71%
- Social networks (public feed)
- No： 18.10%
- Yes： 73.33%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 8.57%
- Social networks (messaging/DMs)
- No： 26.67%
- Yes： 60.95%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 12.38%
- Industry/review websites
- No： 19.23%
- Yes： 58.65%
- Don’t offer/monitor： 22.12%
Automating Digital Engagement
When it comes to popular customer experience trends and buzz phrases, talk about the impact of artificial intelligence driven automation commands the same attention as digital engagement.
Realistically, the two concepts go hand-in-hand. AI-driven automation can play a huge role in not only helping companies expand into the digital world but elevate their experiences and processes within such channels.
One particularly promising use case concerns customer intelligence. More than 61% of companies say they are prioritizing automation for customer intelligence, making it the leading focus for such investments.
The emphasis on AI for data is both unsurprising and immensely relevant. With 90% of companies acknowledging the need to improve at least some aspect of their intelligence strategy, AI represents an important pathway to more frictionless, personalized, and ultimately customer-centric digital experiences. Leading solutions are particularly useful in addressing key challenges like analyzing disparate insights at scale to uncover the most useful trends. AI tools can also surface recommended actions to key stakeholders, ensuring that the data turns into results.
Other automation focuses include proactive and outbound engagement (47%), improving digital content and knowledge (46%), chatbots (44%), and improving authentication and login efforts (43%).
When done correctly, proactive engagement represents the perfect storm of increasing personalization and reducing effort. The key, however, is to deliver the right message, to the right customer, in the right channel, at the right time. Leading automation solutions support this reality, helping to transform companies from those that spam into those that empower.
Because digital engagement does not always involve a two-way conversation between a customer and a highly trained agent, the experience is particularly reliant on the quality of content on the website and other digital channels. Automation solutions can help reconcile outof- date or inaccurate content, ensuring customers get access to the information most valuable to their needs and intentions.
When they do escalate, AI tools can also arm agents with “next-best action recommendations” for communicating the most resonant content possible.
Companies note that accessing bots and other self-service platforms is comparatively easy in today’s digital world, but additional CMP research confirms that the actual experiences within these platforms is unspectacular. By using AI to enhance the quality of bots, companies will emphasize the “service” part of self-service and ensure these options are actually useful to customers. The result will be a legitimately “on-demand experience” that lets customers get what they need, on their own terms, without ever having to wait.
Cumbersome authentication processes tend to be a significant source of frustration (few customers like having to repeatedly share their mother’s maiden name or last four digits of their social security number), but companies cannot entirely sacrifice security (or compliance) in the name of a seamless experience. Modern automation tools let them have their cake and eat it too, giving them the ability to more intelligently authenticate customers and simplify the experience for both customers and agents.
For which aspects of the digital experience are you prioritizing automation solutions/investments?
- Customer data collection and/or analysis： 61.23%
- Proactive/outbound engagement (marketing, sales outreach, etc)： 47.17%
- Digital content and knowledge： 46.23%
- Chatbots and/or conversational AI for customer support： 44.34%
- Authentication/login process： 43.40%
- Digital team workflow / process improvement： 42.45%
- UX personalization/tailoring： 34.91%
- Integrations with / presence in other web and social channels： 32.08%
- Automated offers or information pop-ups： 27.36%
- Digital team training/ coaching： 25.47%
- Real-time translation： 22.64%
- Other (please specify): 3.77%
