Delivering great customer experiences is key to the success of any business. That’s a fact. Modern businesses utilize technology to personalize communications, products and services to match the individual needs of customers with the goal of better understanding them. Knowing their customer base well is what helps a business become consistent at every touchpoint, which subsequently helps with the retention rate.
It sounds wonderful to deliver a truly unified omnichannel customer service. But that situation is rosy compared to what a Sprinklr study recently revealed, in partnership with Customer Contact Week Digital.
The survey found significant challenges throughout the customer service journey, from impersonal interactions to deploying advanced solutions like AI. But before diving into the nitty-gritty of AI, let’s explore impersonal interactions and how that leads to insufficient insights.
According to the study, 11% of respondents admitted that they make no effort whatsoever to personalize interactions. Another 36% limit personalization efforts to referencing “basic profile details” in some or all communication. The remaining 53% are making strides toward personalization, but only 12% of all respondents are predicting customers’ needs and proactively tailoring interactions based on specific intentions or sentiments.
It’s troubling to see nearly half of the respondents in the study not make personalization efforts a priority. (They must not be aware of the benefits it can bring.) Personalized interactions provide an opportunity for businesses to build real relationships with customers. From there, they can gain insights into their customers' preferences, needs and wants. Nobody’s saying it’ll move mountains, but a personal touch can really make all the difference in creating a memorable experience.
However, gaining sufficient insights is difficult to obtain without such personal interactions. A little more than half of the respondents struggle to capture meaningful data, and almost two-thirds report challenges using data to improve customer experience operations, according to the study.
So, why is it important for brands to not only gain meaningful insights but also to properly analyze and utilize it? Well, brands learn exactly who their customers are. They then can improve products and services as well as find ways to make customers feel valued, which leads to increased sales.
“The challenges uncovered go beyond customer experience and contact center teams. Insufficient intelligence hurts the entire business,” said Ragy Thomas, founder and CEO, Sprinklr. “Unified insight about what customers need and how they behave, can dramatically improve how every customer-facing function – from service to sales and marketing to product development operates. We’d like to help brands deliver the kind of customer experiences we all deserve.”
Sprinklr offering help is because of another challenge revealed in the study: 62% of brands acknowledge inconsistencies in their digital customer communication, and 60% struggle with ineffective AI solutions. AI solutions do help businesses provide faster, more personalized and more efficient customer service. However, it's important to balance AI tools with opportunities for personal interaction, as customers still value human connection and empathy.
Look at Sprinklr's unified customer experience management platform as an example. Unified-CXM helps brands understand customer signals by connecting data across channels and organizational silos. It seeks out and spotlights the ways customer experiences continue to evolve and prepares teams to meet next-gen customer needs with strategy, process and collaboration. At the same time, Unified-CXM delivers the metrics and analytics brands need to measure performance and ROI.
Providing digital, personalized service is essential for companies to meet consumer expectations and to succeed. With the study, Sprinklr is more aware of the assistance needed within the customer contact function.
Edited by
Alex Passett
