Happy Employees, Happy Customers: Leveraging Technology for Effortless Customer Service Journeys

CX teams commonly try moment-in-time journey mapping to support service journeys. But this approach often fails to significantly improve CX. Why?

It is:

• Static-and cannot guide interactions as they occur in real time
• Based on assumptions instead of analyses of actual customer journey interactions
• Reactive-not proactive or even preemptive

Instead, customer service leaders should employ customer journey management to enhance CX.

Customer journey management helps customers quickly achieve their goals, whether that's paying a bill, renewing a contract or applying for a loan. It combines digital communication with customer journey analytics and a decisioning engine to determine context and intent, then deliver the next best action in real time, helping customers achieve their goal (e.g., pay a bill, renew a contract or apply for a loan).

Customer journey management simplifies customer service journeys and improves EX and CX in the following ways:

Reduced contact center calls-and therefore the number of channels needed to resolve an issue. Decreasing call center volumes also reduces:

• Hold times for customers who do call
• Agent workloads and stress
• Operational costs

Lower call volumes give agents more time for deeper conversations, uncovering customer needs that guide tailored recommendations to cross-sell or upsell relevant products and services.

Proactive call deflection. The journey orchestration system anticipates customer needs and provides the right information to solve the problem, eliminating the need to call the contact center. For example, when the system detects that a customer is viewing the billing FAQ web page, the system activates a bill explanation solution or AI-powered chatbot. The system can even personalize the solution. For instance, it might send customers at high risk for delinquency a reminder text message with a link to the online billing portal.

Automated self-service. Natural language processing analyzes customer responses to interactive voice response (IVR) prompts, identifying intent and needs. The decisioning system determines the most appropriate response or action based on customer information (intent, account information and behavioral patterns) and business rules or logic. Better self-service options mean fewer calls to live agents.

Intent-based call routing. When customers call, the system determines their intent by analyzing their responses using natural language processing, then directs their call to the right agent group, reducing call transfers-and dissatisfaction. Customer satisfaction declines from 79 when an issue is resolved by the first agent (First Agent Resolution) to 45 when it takes three or more agents to resolve the problem. The journey orchestration tool provides a call transcript describing the problem to the agent during handoff, so customers don't have to repeat themselves.

Proactive agent guidance. The journey orchestration system gives agents the context and support they need to resolve problems quickly and accurately:

• Real-time call transcript (from previous conversations with other agents or the IVR)
• Critical customer information (e.g., billing/payment history, previous customer service interactions)
• Recommendations for how to help the customer based on intent, customer account information and business rules

Digital bill explanation tool.Bill confusion is a leading cause of contact center calls. Providing customers with a personalized summary of charges-and reasons for month-to-month changes in recurring bills-reduces that confusion, encouraging prompt payment. Agents can access the customer's summary to quickly answer their questions.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.