This significant change in power is the reason why brands are intensely focused on customer-centricity. Customer-centricity, customer-focused, and customer-obsessed aren’t just buzz words used in customer service circles. These terms represent a new era that affects operations throughout the entire organization.

At the heart of customer-centricity is personalization. The ability to deliver an experience that feels tailored to the individual. It all starts at research, continues through purchase, and is critical upon fulfillment/delivery..

Of course, delivering a bespoke customer experience at scale isn’t happening without the help of technology. In this post, we discuss how to deliver real customer-centricity during your digital transformation by starting with the most basic and necessary functions – communicating with your customers.

Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

Consumers are the catalysts for brands undergoing digital transformations within every industry.  From catching a ride on Uber to ordering food through DoorDash, consumer’s have created the “on-demand” economy. They are also the reason companies are undergoing a digital transformation to put technology at work throughout the entire company.

Digital transformation can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. To some, it means breaking down data silos. To others it may be improving segmentation for enhanced personalization.

For your customers, it boils down to something very simple. “Quickly help me when and how I need it, in the easiest and most convenient way.”

Quite often we see companies immediately turn to the internal processes and procedures that happen away from customer-facing roles when they consider leveling up their customer-centricity. It’s assumed that customer-facing roles are already providing customer-centric support and service. It’s a mistake to dismiss the opportunities that exist right up front where your customers can see and feel the difference.

Let’s be honest, It’s unlikely that customers will applaud your efforts in using big data to predict buying patterns if they have to wait on hold for 30 minutes to get an update on their order status. It’s true, customer-centricity needs to be ingrained in the culture and reflected in both the front and the back-end of your business. However, your customers only see, understand, care about what is immediately in front of them.

Customer-Centric Digital Transformation in Practice

Take, for example, what Brinks Home Security did. This top home security company uses chatbots to bring more value to customers nearing the end of their home monitoring service contract to drive retention.

Brinks sends current customers customized offers as part of their retention program. The retention program presents an offer to reduce the customer’s current monthly rate in exchange for a contract extension. As an alternative, free products may be offered as the incentive instead of a rate reduction to extend a contract depending on where the customer is in their customer lifecycle.

The Brinks team knows customers preferred digital channels, but the team was shocked to see how many customers opted to review and accept their offer through a chatbot guided messaging conversation. Nearly 80% of their customers overwhelmingly choose to receive a text message and accept the offer through a bot versus calling in to talk to an agent or taking the time to select and fulfill the offer on a landing page.

Brinks started with what they knew their customer’s preferred. Brinks knew that customers valued their service and products, and that a rate reduction or a free product are highly motivating incentives. They also knew their customers didn’t want to play phone tag with agents to obtain this value.

It all started with the customer’s experience, engagement, and value. It didn’t start with the process, but that doesn’t mean the business didn’t change. The benefits of the chatbot resonated through the company:

• Agents didn’t have to make the manual outbound calls to present the offer to customers, which reduced costs and freed up those resources to handle other, high value interactions.
• The company was able to reach more customers and achieve a higher acceptance rate for the offer, which increased revenue and retention.
• Customers were able receive a timely, personal offer and enjoy uninterrupted service in a convenient, easy way, which increased customer satisfaction.

Brinks and many other companies are realizing the value of customer-centricity and how technology supports their efforts. In fact, CIO.com reports that 35 percent of CIOs have earmarked customer experience improvement as one of their hallmark business initiatives, the State of the CIO research found. (cio.com)

The KISS Method of Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

Customer-centricity is much more than offering good service. It is about recognizing how your customer behaves, what they want, and ensuring that every part of your company is focused on delivering value in the specific way that is meaningful to that customer.

While customer-centricity is most commonly thought of as collecting as much data as possible about customers’ wants, needs, and preferences to customize offerings, it isn’t always such a complex undertaking. Nor should it be. Many companies have found opportunities to make their customer support and service more customer-centric through the simple use of messaging and chatbots.

There is enough research out there that shows customers prefer the convenience of engaging with brands on their mobile devices. Consumers demand the ability to self-serve when they want it and to receive fast responses from agents when they need it.

This is exactly what messaging channels like live chat and SMS in conjunction with bots provide. New rich communication channels such as Apple Business Chat and Google’s Business Messages are fancier and more elegant messaging options that create personalized shopping experiences, and make the purchase process simpler and more convenient.

In addition to making the customer interactions more seamless messaging and bots  are operationally a better choice. According to a recent Forbes article, the average cost of a customer call answered by a human is $35-$50, compared to just $8-$10 for a text-enabled chatbot. (Forbes) Whether you agree with those numbers or not, it is fair to say that messaging is 1/5th the cost of phone calls, so definitely a channel to take advantage of sooner than later.

Integrating messaging and bots is not a large disruptive project. In fact, Quiq has been able to get companies up and running on messaging and bots in as little as 24 hours. Our clients report seeing immediate results in the way of decreased calls, lower abandonment rates, increased agent productivity, and notably higher customer satisfaction scores.

The Key To Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

The most important thing to keep in mind during your digital transformation is to keep the customer, not the technology at the center. The technology should be a means to the end of understanding the customer at a deeper level. The more you understand your customer, the more you know how to help. The faster, more convenient help you provide a customer, the more they will value you as a brand.

Guest post written by Marciela Ross, Sr. Manager, Content Marketing Marketing at Quiq

As you set off to undertake projects with the intent of being more customer centric, think of the technology that your customers use to connect and engage with your brand. Quiq helps brands present their customers with consistently jaw-dropping customer experiences across SMS/text messaging, rich messaging, web chat, and social channels. With Quiq’s Conversational Engagement Platform, companies can easily orchestrate commerce and service conversations involving both bots and humans.

If you’re ready to get started, schedule some time with one of Quiq’s conversation experts. We welcome the opportunity to discuss how your business can use messaging and bots to provide customers with a seamless digital engagement focused on delivering a world-class customer experience.

To learn more about digital transformation go to: www.quiq.com.

The post How To Keep Customers Front And Center During Your Digital Transformation appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Self-service expansion and digital transformation are top of mind for many customer experience leaders. You are tasked with aggressive goals of minimizing costs, improving resolution rates, and reducing customer effort. Organizations are at various stages of their self-service journeys, but 2020 has accelerated this need for many.

This article is focused on chatbots, which is just one of many solutions utilized by organizations to automate portions of the sales and service journey at various touchpoints. We will review what chatbots are, current statistics and trends, examples of standout chatbots and what makes them successful, the future of chatbots, and how to ensure your own strategies are set up for success.

We are focusing on chatbots in this article because of their growth in use and sophistication, which we will address in a later section. But our own research, which you can find in the 2019 Corporate Edition of the Customer Experience Benchmark Series (CXMB), illustrates the continued focus and use of chatbots in many organizations’ self-help strategies. In fact, 84% of respondents said that of the types of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications their company was specifically interested in pursuing in the future, chatbots was of interest.

Further, as reported in this article, chatbots can reduce customer support costs by 30% and increase income by 40% while improving lead generation and customer retention.

WHAT ARE CHATBOTS?

The answer to this may be obvious, but we want to ensure we are all on the same page with how chatbots are defined for purposes of this article. Simply put, a chatbot is a software application using natural language processing and AI, designed to simulate human behavior and conversation, primarily through messaging applications or short message service (SMS). They can be programmed to answer questions in specific ways, but can also go beyond this by leveraging company resources and systems simultaneously to find the right answers quickly for customers. They are often referred to as “virtual assistants”, helping customers (or agents) solve issues consistently and quickly without human intervention.

CHATBOT STATISTICS AND TRENDS:

Chatbots are growing in use and sophistication to improve the customer experience and increase efficiencies. According to https://www.chatbotguide.org/chatbots-101, the reasons for this growth can be attributed to three main reasons:

• Rise of messaging services – Customers have become heavy users of messaging applications such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Kik. Many brands have launched or expanded messaging channels to serve customers and chatbots provide efficient ways to engage effectively with customers without proportionately adding agents.
• Rise of voice interfaces – Smartphones and home speakers enable customers to use their voice to access information and perform tasks. In fact, Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are practically members of families these days!
• Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) – As stated in the chatbot.org article, “Speech recognition technology has now reached human parity.” All major technology companies (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM) have launched bots and/or new frameworks and platforms for building bots.

So, it is fair to say that chatbots are here to stay, and are growing in sophistication and use. Below are some key statistics and trends reported and published by Revechat:

• The chatbot market size is projected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.7%. (BusinessInsider)
• Eighty percent of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot automation by 2020. (Outgrow)
• There are over 300,000 chatbots on Facebook. (Venture Beat)
• The top industries profiting from chatbots are real estate, travel, education, healthcare, and finance. (HelpLama)
• Over 50% of customers expect a business to be open 24/7. (Oracle)
• Chatbots can save up to 30% in customer support costs. (Invespcro)

Further, as we think about it from the customer’s perspective and how chatbots can improve their experience, chatbots are ideally suited for customers who expect an immediate response and around-the-clock availability for certain types of inquiries and issues. Additionally, they add flexibility and scalability for organizations needing to provide faster and better service, while minimizing costs.

CHATBOT STANDOUT EXAMPLES:

You do not have to look far to find examples of brands utilizing chatbot technology to service customers. Examples span industries and levels of sophistication. Below are just a few examples:

1) Company: Madison-Reed

• Category: Beauty
• Bot: Madi (SMS/Facebook Messenger)
• Why they stand out: On the surface, it would seem challenging to determine the right hair color from a website. Not only does Madison-Reed provide a self-guided capability on their website to find the right color (utilizing an augmented reality feature), their chatbot, affectionately named Madi, allows customers to do this in an even more engaging way. A customer simply uploads a selfie and answers a few questions. Madi then presents the customer with a personalized color match along with additional recommendations. Once a color is selected, the customer has ability to order directly from their phone.
• Stated results: +400% engagement, 21% clickthrough rate to website
• Click here for a quick video to see how Madi works.

2) Company: Bank of America

• Category: Financial Services
• Bot: Erica
• Why they stand out: Erica has received quite a few public accolades because she goes beyond basic responses and information. In addition to providing basic information like bank balance and the ability to pay bills, she also makes budgeting suggestions and ways to pay down debt. Customers can track spending trends and request payment deferrals, among other options. She also provides external resources and information based on questions asked – for example, if you ask a question about credit scores, she provides you with content and video links about budgeting.
• Stated results: According to Business Insider, Erica hit six million users in its first six months, had reached 10 million just nine months later, and during COVID-19 they have added an additional four million users.
• Click here to see Erica in action.
  

3) Company: Hello Fresh

• Category: Food and Beverage (home delivery)
• Bot: Freddy Freshbot (Facebook Messenger)
• Why they stand out: Users can type in a dish or ingredient and Freddy searches for recipes on its blog. Freddy can also send reminders when it is time to pick new meals for delivery service.
• Stated results: 47% increase in incoming messages and 76% reduction in response time
• Click here to see Freddy Freshbot.

STANDOUT CRITERIA:

These examples cross industries and illustrate different use cases. Whether you are beginning your journey with chatbots or you are taking the next step in your journey, ensure your strategy accomplishes the following:

• Solves a problem – Your chatbot should be designed to solve an actual problem faced by both customers and the business. As with most things, just because you can, does not always mean you should. Chatbots can add tremendous benefit, but first define the problem that a chatbot can solve for you and ensure it does just that.
• Is conversational – The leading chatbots are becoming more and more conversational, and less robotic in nature. Many are still button and keyword-based, but conversational bots that sound more human, have a sense of humor, and can understand typos/jargon are leading the pack.
• Easy to use – Chatbots need to be easy to find, easy to use, and easy to download/install. Remember, one of the objectives of leveraging chatbots is to improve the customer experience and reduce overall effort.
• Builds upon your brand – Your chatbot is an extension of your brand and your people. Giving your bots a personality that reflects your brand can go a long way. Those featured in this article are examples of that, as are widely known bots such as Siri (Apple) and Alexa (Amazon).
• Offers a path to a human – With any self-help technology, users need to have a clear path to a human for resolution should they not find the answer they need.

THE FUTURE OF CHATBOTS:

As with any emerging technology, chatbot capabilities are rapidly evolving. As brands re-imagine their workforce and customer experience (CX) strategies to meet current and future challenges, chatbots are certain to be a key component of those strategies. Instead of looking at it as a ‘nice to have’ or a ‘cost reduction’ strategy, it can become a differentiator if executed well. On an ongoing basis, brands should consistently be investigating which functions/processes/interactions can be served by a chatbot and how to make that come to life. As you continue down this path, the following is where you can expect the future to go:

• More human and conversational – Chatbots will continue to be more human and more conversational in nature, becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between a bot and a human.
• Sentiment analysis – Sentiment analysis will be integral, enabling bots to understand customer experience and respond or route accordingly.
• Growth of messaging platforms – Messaging platforms continue to be a growth driver and chatbots are often integral to this channel strategy.
• Voice recognition chatbot technology – According to this article, 110 million Americans use voice assistants at least once a month, driving adoption of voice-powered platforms versus text.
• Smarter bots – Scripted and rules-based bots are still prevalent, but by using AI-powered bots, customers can receive more personalized service and recommendations, in addition to less-scripted interactions.
• Data analysis – In addition to providing service and support, the data that can be gathered and analyzed from chatbot interaction with customers provides valuable insights not available via other channels.
• Chatbot use in contact centers – Contact centers can use chatbot technology and the data received to route customers to the most qualified agents, reducing wait times and customer effort, while increasing issue resolution.
• Brand-building – As stated earlier, a chatbot has the capability of giving your brand an even stronger personality, thus improving engagement with your customers. Bots that have a human element, a personality (perhaps with a sense of humor), and are in tune with your customers will drive loyalty and revenue.

CHATBOTS ARE HERE TO STAY:

All of us have likely interacted with a chatbot, whether we realize it or not, and customer expectations for faster and easier service continues to grow. As leaders, we are tasked to meet this challenge, especially as we move into the rest of 2020 and beyond. As with any self-help technology, we must continuously evaluate our customers’ journeys and identify opportunities to simplify resolution, while leveraging our most precious asset, our people, where customers need them most.

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