To End Frustrating Customer Experiences, We Need a Connected Journey

Part of a Powering People First series that focuses on increasing and promoting personal well-being and building better quality connections and a more inclusive work experience for all

Every Experience with a Business Creates a Story

When I meet someone new and introduce myself as the GM of Cisco’s Contact Center business, the response is immediate – my new contact will begin telling their personal stories of frustrating customer experiences in interacting with a business.

• “I had to repeat myself 10 times to 10 different people”
• “I waited on hold for 15 minutes, only to learn that person couldn’t help me”
• “They had no understanding or history about me when I contacted them – even though I have been interacting with them for 5 years as a repeat customer”

Everyone has a bad experience story, and they’ve also probably shared it with several connections.

While there are standout organizations who are setting the standard for what customer experience should be, no single industry has mastered this across the board – there are both customer experience heroes and villains in financial services, retail, utilities, travel, and government organizations.

Changing the Paradigm to a Customer-Centric Model by Starting with Customer Experience

Organizations recognize the value of delivering great customer experiences – so what are the barriers?

First, it is imperative to recognize that a customer’s perception of their experience with a business is rarely limited to a single organizational department like the contact center or even a single communication channel.

To provide a connected customer journey, businesses need visibility into customer interactions across the business – whether from a mobile app, messaging on social media, responding to a marketing email, or talking to a contact center agent.

Businesses want to be the customer experience hero, not the villain – but the limitations of dated technology that lives on islands has blocked their growth.

Next Generation Customer-Centric Technology Changes the Entire Business to Customer Dynamic

Reinventing the customer to business interaction dynamic was the driving force behind Cisco’s recent acquisition of IMImobile. By combining IMImobile with the all new Webex Contact Center, Cisco is creating a robust customer experience as a service (CXaaS) offer, bringing together existing and new technology like artificial intelligence, experience management, collaboration tools, omnichannel capabilities and programmability for customization.

See how Cisco Webex Contact Center and IMImobile technology combine to provide a connected customer journey through all customer interactions across a business.

The goal of CXaaS is to enable an organization to understand and act on all the drivers of a customer experience – beyond the walls of the contact center. In addition to having a full understanding of that journey, the customer interaction capabilities of IMImobile will now allow the organization to act on this insight throughout the full journey and across departments within the enterprise.

The Art of the Possible: a View into Creating Raving Customer Fans by Delivering Connected Journeys

Let’s look at a concrete example of how the customer story changes when a business employs a single, integrated customer experience platform to create a connected journey.

Imagine you’ve spent hours selecting the exact new computer you’ve been eyeing for months, and when you proceed to check out, your credit card is declined. You start to step away to call the bank, beginning to be concerned…

Except this time is different. Even before you can pick up the phone to call your bank’s contact center, you receive a notification on your phone, reminding you that a recent high value transaction has maxed out your credit limit, and offering you the option to increase it to complete your purchase.

Relieved, you respond in the affirmative, and seamlessly and automatically your credit limit is increased, and your purchase completed.

Simple, painless, and reassuring – thanks to your bank’s investment in a suite of customer experience technology that gives them the tools to make this possible.

See a demo of how proactive, context-aware customer experiences are created with Customer Experience as a Service technology

Endless Possibilities with Customer Experience as a Service Technology

This is just one example of the potential of this technology – the possibilities are virtually unlimited across any consumer-focused business – just to name a few:

• Allowing retailers to communicate with customers at every step from purchase consideration to product delivery with a focus on delivering a personalized experience fueled with data, intelligence, and customer-friendly communication channels.
• Providing advance notice to utility customers who have opted in to energy cycling programs to prevent rolling brownouts, allowing customers to choose to confirm or decline participation in each cycle, followed by a mobile app push showing them the savings received and impact of their participation.
• And finally, all of us are looking forward to the freedom of travel. But we are probably not looking forward to the unavoidable flight delay. Too often this sets off a waterfall of additional inconveniences – but with customer experience as a service technology connecting enterprise business systems to customer interaction channels, the inescapable can become no more than a blip on the radar. Customer data-driven intelligence can help businesses stay one step ahead by providing proactive notification and re-booking options. This automatically triggered event flow then close the loop with a marketing SMS including the right level of complementary lounge coupon until the next flight is available.

This is the future of customer experience. An experience driven by technology and embraced by the organizations that will thrive as the customer heroes in the decades to come.

Contact us to learn more about how Webex Contact Center and the innovative technologies surrounding it can radically change your customer engagement.

Learn More

• Cisco + IMImobile: Delivering the Future of Customer Experience, Together [Blog]
• The Future of Customer Experience Begins Now [Blog]
• Webex Contact Center [Website]
• Webex Contact Center [Recorded Webinar]
• Accelerating the Next Generation Contact Center – Cisco Contact Center Executives Look at What’s Next for Contact Center Technology [White Paper]
• The Next Generation Platform Architecture Powering Webex Contact Center [Webinar]
• Link to all of Omar’s blogs