Another busy week in the CX world: the industry recognized CX Day on Tuesday and the creator of the Net Promoter Score released new standards for customer experience benchmarking (more on that later). Let’s dig in to the latest:
CX Inspiration
Even the scholars have started to dig into AI and customer experience. In a new article in Business Horizons, researchers evaluated scholarly research and discussions with leaders in the field and uncovered six paradoxes of AI-enabled customer service:
(1) connected yet isolated
(2) lower cost yet higher price
(3) higher quality yet less empathy
(4) satisfied yet frustrated
(5) personalized yet intrusive
(6) powerful yet vulnerable
Connection, empathy, and (sometimes) personalization underscore delivering a stellar customer experience. AI can help with some of those things directly - such as offering up more relevant possible upsell options for a customer - but it can inhibit others if the application misses the mark.
The researchers presented recommendations that companies can use to respond to these dynamics. What is the recurring theme? Take a human-in-the-loop approach - exactly what
Kustomer is all about. The researchers advocate for AI being a part of the brand’s strategy, supplementing and enhancing the work of human agents. This can bring about the benefits that consumers and brands both enjoy, like efficiency and speed, without sacrificing connection and empathy.
The researchers concluded: “the most effective customer service models in the future will be those that carefully balance process automation and human touch across the customer journey and channels.”
I agree - and it’s applicable to other uses of AI, as well. The CEO of a software quality assurance testing company discussed how AI should be used by human testers to improve their efficiency, not replace them - balancing the benefits of AI while being mindful about the drawbacks of
overreliance on it.
Shooting the Breeze
The study was so thought-provoking I want to dig into some of these paradoxes a bit more:
The tipping point from satisfied to frustrated with an AI driven customer service interaction
Consumers are starting to expect some sort of AI driven support conversation at first. But if the AI can’t solve the customer’s questions in a few exchanges, that’s when it’s make-or-break for the customer experience.
Businesses need to look at their average handle time metrics to pinpoint their unique tipping point so they know exactly when they need to involve a human agent - and it could be as low as two minutes.
Lower cost yet higher price: what brands should consider when bringing AI into their customer experience strategy
Brands need to be extra careful in the beginning because if you don't put those guardrails in and the AI gives the consumer answers that may not be accurate, that could hurt the brand long-term. Depending on how off the AI is, it could simply reduce the retention rate or lead to financial liability, like Air Canada which was found liable for its AI
chatbot giving incorrect information to a passenger.
For brands that do want to bring AI in to their customer service, it’s important to scale up intentionally. Choose three to five common conversations that your reps have now and automate those first and build from there.
Some consumers crave
personalization, others find it intrusive. What’s a brand to do?
I hear a lot about
personalization being an important part of CX, but brands need to take a step back. First, it’s important to have a solid foundation of high quality customer service. You don’t need to know the consumer’s buying habits (and their data) to deliver a fantastic experience.
However… based on the speed of innovation, in the next two to three years the expectations around
personalization could change. With the rise of AI bots taking over front line customer service interactions, some companies will use their freed up resources to invest in the operational systems needed to make personalization a reality. Will your business be one of them?
CX Spotlight
Metrics and benchmarks are valuable to gauge performance - AHT, CSAT, NPS - those of us in CX all know them. The big players just launched something new. Bain and Company, the creators of the NPS, along with Kantar and Qualtrics, have just created new global standards around CX.
The
CX Advance Framework is centered around three core themes: Customer Centric Culture, Customer Experience Capability, Customer Experience Execution and has 7 elements and 55 standards that all ladder up. The report details examples of what a top company on each dimension looks like, so you can compare yours.
In doing so, the creators underscore the importance of CX investments in a company’s growth, and the need for better metrics to demonstrate the impact of such initiatives.
It poses the questions: What benchmarks are you using to measure your
CX team’s impact on the business? And, when was the last time you evaluated if they are the right metrics?
Golden Nuggets
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Customers don’t want to call back — they want first-contact resolution
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Contact Center Decisions Increasingly Focus on Customer Experience, New ISG Research Finds
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Listen and learn: Why social media monitoring is critical to media and gaming CX success
