How digital sensing addresses customer experience trends of 2017

By: Virender Jeet, Sr. VP Technology, Newgen Software

Customer Experience is the fundamental expectation in today’s digital world. It’s a given. However, the definition of a great customer experience is changing, and changing fast at that. The last couple of years have seen the mainstream adoption of digital. As we move into 2017, this adoption will continue to gain strength and culminate into some key visible trends that will drive customer experience.

1. From Touch Interfaces to Customer Touch Points. Touch has been a buzzwords last couple of years, as smartphones get smarter and wearables move from labs to stores. However, what organizations have started realizing is that addition of these interfaces calls for much more than optimization of device experience. What it really means is that businesses have a larger set of customer touch-points to deal with. The real customer experience requires the organizations to look at the end-to-end customer journey, and these increased touch-points require a more holistic treatment than the device level interface optimization.

2. From User Experience to Process Experience. It’s a fact that a great customer experience goes beyond a mere single transaction. It’s relatively easier for organizations to look at internal operations and optimize them for cost and efficiency. They look at departmental SLAs, and keep working almost obsessively towards incremental tune-ups. When they do that, the departmental and functional silos come to the fore and hurt the overall process experience. In 2017, we will see a bigger trust to tame those silos and connect the organizational resources better.

3. From omni-channel to infinite business. With multiple channels of communication and reach, organizations have spent energy on creating that omni-channel and cross-channel experiences. We have seen digital going mainstream and this has led to the rise of business models that go beyond the traditional value chain. People expect your organization to be able to serve them anytime anywhere by leveraging resources that contribute in the same anytime anywhere model. Business will have to act as infinite workplace where resources can operate anytime from anywhere and serve the end-customers. This is becoming a key imperative for businesses as we move into 2017.

These changes and drivers may seem prominent in effect, but the differences are very subtle and can easily miss the eye. Even if an organization realizes the need to address these, the path is not often clear.

The Need for Digital Sensing.

Let’s look at what’s behind these trends. Social and Mobility have provided voice to customers. The mainstream adoption of social and mobility has also created a complex web of conversations that organizations cannot ignore any more. Fortunately, these trends have also given a public visibility to those voices. What’s needed is to go beyond the transactional and interface level optimizations, and look at the end-goal of customer experience.

What makes it even more difficult to execute is that the window of opportunity is narrow in time. If you’re a retail banker, a person - unknown or known to you - expressing interest in a mortgage loan over social media is one such moment. there are many such opportunities to tap the customer that are buried in the haystack of all the social media noise.

In order to leverage such moments, your social media monitoring needs to be fast enough to tap it, systems need to be equipped to process it quickly with right context, your processes need to be robust as well as flexible to deal with it and orchestrate it in an automated manner, and your people need to be empowered to service it in case of exceptions. This requires a combination of technologies from data sensing, analytics, context discovery, business rules, business process management, and unified communications management.

Digital Sensing leverages these multiple technologies to provide four key capabilities that are crucial for a great customer experience today:

1. Data Sensing: Capture customer conversations, transactions and events from various channels and devices. In order to be fully effective, an automated processing of incoming inputs and events is critical, and in order to comprehend the context completely, an omni-channel capability is key.

2. Context Discovery: Context is an important element when responding to a customer. An effective context discovery can be achieved with a combination of transactional analytics, context analytics and business rules management.

3. Business Process Management / Rules Management:The biggest obstacle to an effective and timely response to customers today is the siloed and disparate nature of systems and functions. A robust business process management that automates the workflows and also allows for intelligent routing and workforce engagement is critical.

4. Digital Communication Platform: Instantly send relevant and targeted communication via multiple touch points available. A communication mechanism that taps the intelligent routing and messaging system through leverage of integrated context is what differentiates a great response from a mediocre one. Personalization and contextualization is key.

Great Customer Experience with Digital Sensing.

Let’s say, a customer posts a negative feedback on Facebook. A typical automated response today reverts to the customer with a standard “we will get in touch / provide more details” message. In Digital Sensing, an immediate personalized response is sent out through the relevant channel with specific context. While companies focus on developing the mobile and social capabilities, the real leverage comes from being able to connect systems, processes, people and things of the organization and operate in the right context. Digital Sensing makes it possible.