Beyond Buzzwords: Unveiling the New Era of CX 

Themes like unifying the customer journey and delivering omnichannel experiences are hot topics in today’s customer experience (CX) world, but what do these buzzwords really mean, and how can you put them into practice? A recent webinar that discussed the latest trends in CX answered just that. With CSG’s SVP of Customer Experience Mark Smith leading the conversation, the speakers included:

• Adrian Swinscoe, Host of Punk CX Podcast
• Julie Rickis, Head of Customer Experience Development, MassMutual
• Sudhir Rajagopal, Research Director, Future of Customer Experience, IDC

Panelists covered what’s next for CX, best practices to capitalize on the industry’s new era and five key takeaways from the CSG State of the Customer Experience report. If you missed the webinar or want to watch it again, you can access the recording here.

Catch the recap below for expert insights and five tips on how to take your CX to the next level:

Build customer trust with forgettable experiences

It’s time for the industry to shift away from pursuing the longstanding grail of surprising and delighting customers. The new era of CX aims to deliver experiences so fundamentally sound that customers barely notice any effort required. Adrian Swinscoe, CX thought leader, said that this is not a new idea, but rather a secret hiding in plain sight that many organizations have ignored in favor of chasing shiny objects. “The best companies understand that you have to build a foundation before you actually [wow customers],” he explained. “You have to be brilliant at the basics.”

Businesses should focus less on reducing friction and more on helping customers reach their objectives with the fewest possible steps. “Customers don’t even look at their experiences as ‘this is full of friction’ or ‘this is frictionless,’” said Sudhir Rajagopal, Research Director of Customer Experience Management Strategies at IDC. “What they’re really looking for is how effectively it was delivered, how that experience made them feel, and if they reached their objective.”

In fact, certain types of friction can even improve the customer experience. Consider the furniture store IKEA: It creates intentional friction by having customers assemble their own products, which promotes a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. The key to achieving a desirable “IKEA effect” instead of frustration is to make any necessary friction purposeful enough to produce a positive emotional outcome for the customer.

Data is only half the story

Collecting copious amounts of data is a prerequisite to streamlining the customer experience at any organization. But panelists agreed: CX needs to take those investments in analytics one step further and apply them strategically to make an impact.

“You’ve got the data, but if you can’t act on it to improve your customers’ experience with your company, there’s not a lot of value in just gathering information,” cautioned Julie Rickis, Head of Market Research and CX at MassMutual. She pointed to MassMutual’s use of journey analytics as a model for taking data-driven actions that improve the customer experience. By building out these capabilities, organizations can better understand customer behavior across the digital ecosystem, allowing them to personalize the experience.

Prioritize the speed of actionable change over getting insights at speed. Emphasize applied intelligence that integrates behavioral and operational data to reach a deeper understanding of the customer by way of a continuous feedback loop—one that can ultimately lead to timely action at scale with the aid of AI.

Breaking down silos is a team effort

To achieve empathetic customer outcomes, organizations must overcome the challenge of breaking down internal silos to create a unified customer journey. How can they do that? According to panelists, collaboration is key.

“CX practitioners have a secret power, and that’s collaboration,” said Julie. She advised that one of the ways to break down silos is to create a cross-functional team that has the sole purpose of knocking down barriers.

When a legacy infrastructure leads to disconnected processes, it prevents unification. Enter: data sharing policies. “A disciplined way to [implement knowledge sharing] across the enterprise is establishing CX centers of excellence,” Sudhir suggested. “You’re taking what worked well in, say, marketing and bringing that to customer service. Closing the loop is a starting point.”

Critically, IT has a part to play in breaking down silos. CIOs are taking a more active role in bringing CX to the forefront and bridging gaps between front office engagement and back office systems, but it needs to happen in tandem with the rest of the C-suite.

“It’s everybody’s job,” affirmed Mark Smith, SVP of Customer Experience at CSG.

Prioritize channel quality over quantity

Panelists challenged the conventional CX wisdom of being available to customers on any channel, at any time.

To Adrian, it’s an urban myth that a business needs to be everywhere its customers are. “We know that we will travel for a better experience in the physical domain. Why don’t we apply that to the digital domain?” Ace CX on the channels you can support, and customers will come to you, he contended.

Simply offering more channels doesn’t translate to happier customers—delivering a quality experience rather than a high quantity of them does. If organizations add more avenues to reach customers without increasing investments commensurately, resources dwindle, and the overall customer experience suffers. “You’ve got to get it right,” Mark emphasized. “Getting it wrong in lots of places is not a good thing when it comes to CX.”

To solve for this, Sudhir reminded the audience that customers don’t think in channels, and don’t necessarily value superfluous functions. Instead, they’re motivated by achieving their desired result with the least amount of effort. “Focus on the outcome. The channels become the conduit through which you achieve it.” Organizations are better served redirecting their resources from chasing omnichannel availability to providing a superior CX on select channels.

Proving ROI starts with setting expectations

Shareholders want to see a fast, proven return on investment (ROI). How do CX teams help the business know that they’ve made a difference to the bottom line? Follow panelists’ best practices for showing CX ROI to stakeholders.

Getting on the same page with your business partners before you begin is a critical step in demonstrating value. How will you quantify the project’s impact? Are you ensuring that your KPIs will be meaningful to stakeholders? When should they expect to see results? Answer these questions upfront to better define outcomes later.

But as CX teams communicate these expectations, they need to be mindful of setting themselves up for success. At MassMutual, for instance, Julie shared that piloting projects with a “crawl-walk-run” approach to implementation has yielded favorable results. “We start small,” she said. “And the reason we do that is to really optimize our insights, our activation and our results.”

With each incremental and achievable step forward, CX teams foster trust. “The only way you build [a continuous loop of] customer loyalty is by delivering value,” asserted Sudhir. Keep experiential value parity top of mind so that you don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal in pursuit of business growth: delivering value to the customer.

Looking ahead: What’s next for CX

For a closer look at these top five takeaways and what most excites panelists about the future of customer experience, watch the full webinar: Beyond Buzzwords: Unveiling the New Era of CX. Then, download the CSG State of the Customer Experience report to learn how to apply the latest trends in CX.