Orchestrate the future of your CX for long-term differentiation.

Crafting exceptional customer experiences (CX) by applying innovative technology has become a strategic differentiator in the digital era.

Businesses that have focused on making incremental improvements to experiences to drive success in every interaction with capabilities like automation, employee empowerment and digital channels have enjoyed quick wins and a competitive advantage.

But as contact centre technology continues to advance at pace, these capabilities will eventually move from differentiators to commodities.

Staying ahead of the competition requires a foundation of technology that empowers businesses to respond quickly and effectively by embracing the differentiators that will emerge over the next five to 10 years.

Future-proofed CX.

In this regard, the long game in innovation goes beyond automation. According to research conducted by Genesys, the global leader in cloud CX and contact centre solutions, there are five trends accelerating CX and employee experience (EX) transformation that will likely persist into the future.

These trends include:

1. Data at every customer touchpoint is an opportunity to shape a better journey.
2. Use artificial intelligence (AI) to get more insight and understanding of customers.
3. Blend AI technologies to become more agile.
4. Build the contact centre as a strategic hub of data insights.
5. Personalise EX with intelligent tools.

The CX challenges.

Amid these prevailing trends, delivering connected, personalised experiences has become increasingly difficult and complex, and it is becoming harder as AI extends its power to all areas in a business.

The challenge many organisations face is siloed, fragmented systems and data, while businesses that rely on a premises-based contact centre system suffer from slow, limited and inaccessible innovation. Great experiences can only happen when an experience is contextual, personal and fast.

The cloud solution.

An open cloud platform is the differentiator at the heart of experience orchestration as it offers businesses access to the capabilities needed to deliver end-to-end experiences at scale.

Realising these benefits requires full cloud enablement, which should encompass these four key areas:

1. The cloud – A single platform to support connected experiences
2. Digital – All-in-one capabilities for agents and customers
3. AI – Embedded for out-oft-the-box use cases
4. Trust and security – Proven resiliency with global coverage

1. The cloud: A single platform for endless possibilities.

Shifting systems into the cloud creates opportunities to converge different data sources to create a complete view of the customer in real time across all critical business applications, making every touchpoint an opportunity to deliver exceptional CX.

Moreover, leveraging an integrated platform creates the foundation to orchestrate better EX in real-time, while the flexibility inherent in the cloud encourages innovation by supporting a broad range of applications and services, giving operations the power to tailor applications to unique use cases.

2. Digital – All-in-one connections for voice, digital and workforce engagement.

As more consumers adopt and use digital technology, businesses need to act with urgency to ensure they can accommodate and support more channels. While this might serve an urgent need, it’s only the start of true CX transformation.

In responding to these demands, businesses must construct digital transformation strategies around a connected, consistent experience that includes digital channels, voice and better employee management that elevates customer engagement.

Connecting all experiences in the cloud also creates a single, consolidated view of customer journeys and intents, which empowers businesses do more than streamline operations and reduce costs.

These connections enable businesses to transform experiences with personalisation and optimise experiences based on contextual understanding.

Viewing everything in a single workspace empowers agents to make more impactful decisions to serve each customer with individualised and tailored experiences based on insights into their current and previous visits, with the ability to standardise service levels across digital channels like bots.

In addition, connected data and real-time activity monitoring across all channels provides insights that allow businesses to focus resources on journey optimisation for greater impact through better workflows and improved productivity.

3. AI – Embedded for out-of-the-box use cases.

AI is transforming many industries as organisations take advantage of multiple capabilities in a single cloud platform to drive the innovation agenda.

The value of AI in the contact centre lies in the wide range of capabilities it enables that support innovation, like personalisation at scale to build customer loyalty, elevating service delivery through smarter self-service and automation, and better EX to create a customer-focused workforce.

In this regard, conversational AI services with generative AI support automation with a human touch, and predictive AI equips businesses with deeper customer insights for personalisation and accurate forecasts to improve workforce planning.

When AI is embedded and ready out-of-the-box, businesses minimise costs related to expensive point solutions and empower teams with simple user interfaces. Moreover, implementation and maintenance is simplified in the cloud, reducing the overall cost and complexity.

4. Trust and transparency – The foundation of long-term relationships.

As businesses deploy AI tools, customer data and privacy become vital concerns. Establishing trust is vital to ensure customers have confidence in AI systems to operate reliably, accurately and ethically.

When customers see the benefits of sharing their data to receive more personalised experiences, it builds trust and loyalty. This also makes it unappealing for them to switch to brands that don’t use their data to personalise experiences.

Businesses must build this trust through transparency, which should include access to information about data sources and how businesses train models and check awareness of potential biases.