Technology is a fundamental pillar of customer service design in today’s modern CX environment.

It’s impossible to imagine a customer service solution without technology at the core of the process. However, based on our research in partnership with industry analyst Frost & Sullivan, around 75% of organizations struggle to deploy CX technologies at scale. 

So – while those responsible for designing customer service solutions know that technology underpins modern CX, most struggle with large technology projects. 

So what can we do to improve this?

Firstly, it’s worth examining why technology has become so pervasive in CX. From the traditional post-purchase call to a customer service support line, we are now in an environment where the customer journeys must be designed to build and maintain a positive long-term relationship. Now customers are likely to engage with a brand before, during, and long after purchase. They are often not calling for help or support, they are reinforcing the relationship, and of course, there is now an expectation that every step is tailored to their unique needs. 

CX technologies create the ability to communicate more efficiently with customers, gain more valuable insight into what customers need and prefer, and dramatically improve advisors’ ability to help customers. The gamification of processes inside the contact center is one example of how service quality can be enhanced by increasing employee engagement.  

This means that design thinking needs to be applied to the modern customer journey. We should understand how the customer becomes aware of our brand, how they obtain more information, and how they gradually move towards a purchase. Technology needs to be designed to support and enable this overall journey once the design has been established. 

The changing role of technology in CX

There are several distinct areas to be considered:

  • People: technology can be used inside the contact center to help advisors. It can reduce repetitive tasks, automate processes, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to augment and support people’s roles – for example, supporting with multilingual service requests or searching for information as a conversation takes place and then advising the advisor on the next best action.  
  • Insight: you can dive into customer transaction data to create insights. What are they searching or browsing? Do their purchases correlate with certain dates, events, or weather patterns? Using data analytics to find patterns in your customer data will allow much greater personalization. 
  • Channels: customers want to engage on social channels Instagram and TikTok. They want to use asynchronous messaging tools like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Outreach to a brand may be via a personal blog, rather than a call to the customer service team. You need to be across all these channels and offer in-app service where appropriate. 
  • Infrastructure and Security: customer service processes are no longer locked down inside a contact center. You can create a secure distributed network of customer advisors that work from home. This can create the ability to hire expertise from anywhere and to build more flexibility into working hours. The infrastructure required to deliver this consistently needs to be robust, with investment cycles well planned. 

Because commuting to a contact center and then working a continuous 8-hour shift has been replaced by a more flexible hybrid approach, including working from home, workforce management (WFM) systems have also become essential to modern customer service processes. Matching your available team to peak times when most customers need help can create more flexible working hours for the advisors and allow the brand to help customers faster. 

Calabrio WFM is a highly agile and scalable workforce management platform that allows the delivery of seamless experiences for customers, advisors and contact center managers—no matter where employees are working. Webhelp works with Calabrio to gain greater visibility into employee performance metrics through personalized dashboards containing the data that can help their performance and allows them to leverage tools such as self-scheduling. 

“In today’s new reality, technology and workforce management are no longer optional. Brands aren’t able to deliver a truly seamless experience without having a seamless internal process too. Calabrio’s cloud platform is perfectly suited for dynamic global players like Webhelp, enabling them to truly understand their CX operations, no matter the set-up, whether it be on-site, virtual or hybrid,” said Magnus Geverts, VP, Product Marketing, Calabrio. 

Designing a modern customer experience is impossible without technology. Customer interactions are no longer restricted to voice calls. Customer and employee expectations have been elevated through technological advancement and the experience of more flexible work throughout the pandemic. 

Technology is now the foundation of customer experience.

It is no longer just a tool for designing a customer service solution – it defines how customer relationships are managed.  

A recent paper explains the Webhelp Anywhere methodology and the Frost & Sullivan research in more detail.