Technology Trends in Customer Experience 2017

The growing inclination towards customer experience (CX) has increased the need for organizations to rethink their customer management strategy. While it is not just a necessary measure of the strategic performance of a firm, CX is also turning out to be the sole competitive differentiator in the current business scenario.

Most companies are calibrating their business processes to meet the unique demands of their customers as well as the prospects to be in total control of the entire customer experience. Having arrived at the conclusion of the first quarter of the year 2017, it has become all the more important to examine the significant industry trends.

Smart Diagnostics

One of the ways to address the customers’ issues is to put technology to the right use, and Smart Diagnostics is an ideal way to do it. Product based companies, especially the once dealing in home appliances, are continually infusing innovative technology in their products in a way that could revolutionize the method of solving the customer’s issue.

For instance, a major washing machine brand is utilizing the Smart diagnostics, where the machine would be able to communicate with customer’s phone, which in turn would send out the exact issue to the support team instantaneously.

Firstly, this would eliminate the need for an engineer to visit the customer’s house just to understand the issue. It will ensure a thorough diagnosis of the product from an expert team, enabling the problem to be solved much more efficiently. Secondly, Smart Diagnostics would also bring down the overall cost of the support, as the cost of customer support could be reduced significantly.

In the prevailing scenario, this cost is usually passed over to the customers in the form of price, which if eliminated, would mean more affordable products and relatively hassle free experience for the customers. The year 2017 could see Smart diagnostics being utilized by many more product-based firms, and with much more intent, which could translate to superior CX.

Artificial Intelligence

• Intelligent Assistants: Companies are maximizing the use of Artificial Intelligence technology, which is not only helping them in optimizing their interactions with the customers but is also having a positive impact on the overall CX. The technology is being effectively in coordination with the human function, as it is being used to power the Intelligent Assistant (IA), which has shown considerable improvement in the performance of customer support personnel.
• Chatbots: Organizations are also effectively using Chatbots to initiate a useful interaction with the customers. While there has already been a considerable development of this technology, the year 2017 would see further development to the extent that it would be difficult to make out the difference between conversations involving a human and a Chatbot.
• Voice Recognition Technology (VRT): Though it is usually used interchangeably with SRT, the technology is biometric in its use, and is deployed to identify the speakers through their voice. One the other hand, SRT identifies the words in the spoken language when uttered by the speakers. VRT can reduce the lengthy process customers have to undergo to prove their identity when calling customer service centers. The process is even more stringent for banks and other financial institutions, which when eliminated, can bring down the overall call- duration, and improve the experience.
• Speech Recognition Technology (SRT): Contact center with a massive load of incoming customer calls can effectively utilize the Speech Recognition Technology to convert the speech into on-screen text. While the technology is in its nascent stage, much more advanced versions of the software would have the capability to digitize the overall process flow by converting speech to data. Analytical tools can then be applied to utilize this data to determine actionable insights while keeping the human involvement to the minimum.

Mobile

The paradigm shift in the way customers communicating with the companies after the advent of Smartphone is quite apparent. The ubiquitous accessibility to Internet has driven the customers to engage with companies in different ways such as social media and live chats. Micro-blogging channels, especially Twitter, have been extensively used by a customer to interact personally with firms, allowing the companies to deliver superior customer experience. Also, live chats are being efficiently utilized to brands to influence the buying decisions of the customers as well as to tackle the issues of the existing customers.

These improvements in technology are bound to make a huge positive impact on the quality of service offered by the companies. While it’s encouraging to see that more and more companies are already increasing their investments in technology, even the overall attitude is now turning much more customer-centric, which promises to get even better in a few years from now.