AI is radically transforming the world of customer service, and at Zendesk Relate, you’ll gain insights and best practices to lead your organization through this next wave of transformation successfully and make your business ready for AI-first service.

You’ll leave with the perspective, connections, and know-how to provide more meaningful experiences, deliver automated service through next-gen digital agents that customers love, and equip your agents and admins with the knowledge to harness customer data smartly and ethically in the AI-driven future of customer service.

An unforgettable personalized experience awaits you

Expect to be wowed, moved, and inspired as our in-person event brings together thousands of senior business leaders, CX, EX, IT, and HR practitioners, Zendesk partners, analysts, and industry experts for three adrenaline-pumping days in Las Vegas.

You can expect more than 60 sessions on the hottest topics in CX today, including interactive breakout sessions, eye-opening demos, inspiring customer stories, fun evening events, exciting product launches, visionary Zendesk roadmap, exhilarating networking opportunities, and powerful keynotes from customer experience leaders. Here’s a sneak preview:

• Hear a keynote address, “Unveiling what’s next: revolutionizing service with the power of AI,” from Zendesk CEO Tom Eggemeier.
• Join Zendesk CIO Craig Flower in a Fireside Chat, “Building best-in-class IT service operations” with American Expediting CIO Kirk Serjeantson.
• Author, corporate culture expert, and Zappos Insights co-founder Robert Richman will share how a small website became a multi-million-dollar business and game-changing playbook for delivering excellent employee experiences in service of customers and the bottom line.
• We’ll also host a moderated conversation with an iconic celebrity guest (big reveal coming soon).

Click here for the full three-day schedule, where you can personalize your agenda by product spotlight, pillars, and audience.

To seize the day—and stay ahead of the curve—CX leaders must get adept at understanding and navigating both the challenges and opportunities in this brave new world of intelligent CX.

We’re facing a seismic shift in the world of customer experience with rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, data analytics, and other emerging technologies shaking the very foundations of our industry. Businesses are rethinking the structure of everything, from their tech stacks to their teams. In just a few years time, these forces will radically transform the pivotal connection between customers getting support and the organizations that provide it.

This is new terrain for all businesses, and understanding the challenges and opportunities—and planning wisely—will pay immense dividends. From greatly reduced CX costs to improved customer affinity, the era of intelligent CX will deliver a new level of connection between customers and the organizations they purchase from.

At Zendesk, we think deeply about the customer experience and how to make it better for every party involved. Now in its sixth year, our annual CX Trends report is the biggest and most important to date. We’ve identified ten distinct trends to help you navigate the road ahead. They fall into three innovation areas:

AI and intelligent experiences

The best customer experience is one with a personal touch. As 4,500 global CX leaders told Zendesk, they expect generative AI to accelerate the delivery of more humanized journeys, ones that leverage data to feel personable and interactive.

70% of CX leaders plan to integrate generative AI into many of their touchpoints in the next two years.

While CX leaders and their teams wrestle with how to effectively implement AI, they understand that if they’re successful, the rewards will be well worth the effort. They expect AI to greatly improve team efficiency, enabling agents to dedicate their time to higher-level work, with significant effects on chatbots and email communications with customers.

Meanwhile, customers are ready for this seachange: 59 percent of the 2,500 global consumers say they expect AI to completely alter how they interact with businesses.

In this first section of the 2024 CX Trends report, we also dive into how AI will turn chatbots into true digital agents, why AI transparency and decisioning are the order of the day, and the startling disconnect between CX leaders and their teams on everything related to AI, including strategy, tools, and role impact.

Data and trustworthy experiences

One of the biggest challenges companies have faced over the years is putting their mountains of customer data to effective use. Now, as we enter the era of intelligent CX, businesses are heavily focused on being able to instantly modify user experiences, putting increased pressure on leveraging data in real time.

62% of CX leaders feel they are behind in providing the more instant experiences consumers expect.

Being able to anticipate customer needs, resolve issues faster, and provide hyper-personalized experiences would have already been accomplished if it were simple to do, but this is no easy task. Getting there means pulling data together from disparate sources and quickly synthesizing it, and once again, AI is proving to be the solution.

While CX leaders increasingly feel confident that they’ll be able to modify user experiences instantly, they also face other emerging trends, such as data privacy being a non-negotiable aspect of their plans. As a result, CX leaders are requiring that robust security measures be an integral part of the customer experience.

Next gen and immersive experiences

Consumers have been shopping online for decades now, and purchasing goods and services via the internet continues to evolve. Now, live and immersive experiences are heavily influencing the future of online shopping.

Customers expect conversational commerce and eagerly tune into live-streaming sessions to learn about—and purchase—new products. It’s not enough for transactions to be seamless. They must also be engaging and leave customers feeling informed.

Consumers report they are only able to make purchases directly within chat-based conversations with agents 34% of the time.

To provide live-streaming experiences, CX leaders must be ready to invest in the right technology and seek expertise, often through external partners. And when implementing live-streaming or conversational commerce, CX leaders need to train their teams thoroughly while simultaneously updating privacy policies to protect customers.

These next-gen experiences also encompass refinements to voice channels, which in the wake of increasingly effective AI-powered digital agents, will be used to handle more complex issues that require a human agent. And finally, predictive agent management tools will play an ever-expanding role in helping CX leaders build teams that will operate at peak efficiency.

The era of intelligent CX is here

While navigating this new era of CX might seem daunting, Zendesk is here to help CX leaders take advantage of the technology that will change customer experiences forever. Over the course of 2024 and beyond, we’ll be providing additional insights and best practices so your company can excel in this exciting new world.

During periods of economic instability and uncertainty, customer service leaders face some tough challenges. These generally fall into three main categories:

• Lowering and prioritizing costs
• Scaling for growth and finding creative ways to increase revenue
• Retaining customers, who may be facing the same challenges

Facing any of these challenges is difficult on its own and may feel insurmountable when taken on all at once. It's tempting to ride out the uncertainty without making changes–to just wait and see. But businesses that thrive take action.

Here’s what you can do today to adapt your customer service center to the current market conditions and your customers’ needs. This eBook provides actionable tips on how you can use different AI capabilities to help you find efficiencies, prioritize for scale and growth, and create experiences that customers will come back for–all backed by success stories from our customers.

Our playbook for controlling costs with AI is filled with real-world examples of how companies are using tools built for CX to achieve meaningful results. Competition is mounting, the market is changing and costs are rising – yet customer service teams are expected to deliver great experiences with less. We believe using AI built specifically for CX can lighten the burden on your service team, helping you face these challenges head-on.

With AI, certain companies have been able to:

• Reduce ticket volume by 35%
• Cut handle time by 40%
• See $1.3 million in cost savings

In this extensive playbook

In our free playbook, you will learn:

• How to reduce inbound support with AI while still maintaining excellent service
• How to increase agent productivity without increasing headcount
• How to remain agile amidst fluctuation and uncertainty

Ready to get started? Download the playbook for expert insight and best practice for controlling costs with AI. Featuring original data, eight real-world customer examples and three different use cases for AI in customer service. AI is having a major moment, but we know that not all AI is created equal. To learn more about AI built for CX and how leveraging it can help you keep costs in control, click below to get the free guide.

It’s clear that we’ve entered a new era in artificial intelligence, and companies around the world are grappling with how to respond to this constantly evolving technology. Zendesk CX Trends research indicates that AI will affect every customer touchpoint, and businesses that want to remain competitive must have a thorough understanding of what consumers want and expect from the technology.

Zendesk interviewed thousands of consumers across 20 countries to gain a better understanding of how consumers view AI—how they want it to be used and what makes them excited about the technology. What Zendesk found provides a clear roadmap for businesses of all sizes, from startups to the largest companies on the planet.

In this white paper

This white paper sheds light on:

• Why customers expect AI to upend how they interact with companies
• How consumers view AI’s effect on delivering instant personalization
• The ways customers see AI supercharging bots and voice assistants
• Generative AI’s promise to dramatically improve the depth and quality of responses
• Why AI should display empathy and sensitivity
• Why consumers believe AI will improve self-service

Ready to dive in? Download our free white paper to learn how AI will transform customer service and how your company can embrace and leverage the technology.

If there has been one constant over the past three years, it is change – how we work, live and consume have all been radically transformed. As a result, businesses have witnessed dramatic shifts in consumer expectations.

This period of widespread change has led many businesses to invest more in the customer experience, and as 2023 begins, the scope of consumer demands has come into sharper focus. Zendesk’s research has revealed that customers increasingly expect immersive experiences, and for those businesses that have responded to those demands, their strategic investments have started to pay off.

77% of business leaders have seen positive ROI on investments in immersive experiences.

As a result, business leaders have begun to embrace the idea that meeting consumer demands for immersive experiences will result in tangible revenue gains. Zendesk discovered that 81% of leaders see customer experience and support as growing priorities in the coming year. While many continue to keep a close eye on uncertain economic conditions, a sense of cautious optimism prevails.

So what is immersive CX, and how can you create the kind of customer experiences that will help your business remain competitive in a rapidly changing market? Let’s take a look.

What is immersive CX?

Simply put, immersive CX means natural, fluid interactions with companies. That can range from chatbots that closely mimic real human beings to conversational experiences in which a customer can begin an interaction on one channel – say, messaging – and then switch to another mode of communication without a hitch.

Immersive CX offers something powerful to customers: the ability to be truly seen and heard, to be treated not as transactions or tickets but as the valued customers they are. As we move into this rich new territory, the benefits will be considerable: businesses that make strategic investments in immersive CX can expect to see greatly strengthened customer relationships. And considering that customers have little patience for bad experiences – 73% will leave for a competitor after multiple poor interactions, and more than half will bolt after a single bad experience – companies must recognise and respond to what consumers are telling them.

The trends driving the move towards immersive CX

Zendesk’s research – which included a global survey of nearly 3,700 consumers, another global survey of nearly 4,800 business respondents and Zendesk Benchmark product usage data from more than 99,000 opted-in companies – revealed five distinct trends driving the move toward immersive CX. The 2023 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report explores these trends in detail.

Will your business be prepared for immersive CX?

In our 2023 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, we provide actionable insights that will help your company chart a path forward during this transformative era in customer support. To learn more, download the report and take advantage of Zendesk events that will shed even more light on the rise of immersive CX.

It is go time for retailers, and no one hustles harder than small businesses to get their brand out there during the holiday season. But those on the small-but-scaling side of retail do not have to hustle on their own, especially when it comes to delivering an efficient, scalable customer experience through the high season and beyond.

According to fresh data from the 2022 Zendesk CX Accelerator report, that kind of customer experience is well within reach and well worth the investment.

The CX Accelerator report showcases insights from nearly 5,000 customer service professionals all over the world. Using a framework of CX maturity, where businesses are evaluated as Starters, Emergers, Risers or Champions, the report quantifies which companies are going above and beyond and which ones are still rising through the ranks.

Small retail, big reach

Smaller retail companies have made big names for themselves, in part for their ability to deliver a customer experience that is seamless and tailored to customer needs. Resolving to meet customers where they are, subscription beauty service Birchbox adjusted and evolved their support channel mix over time, providing chat and a robust help centre alongside phone and email support. This made customers’ initial experiences with the brand even better. For UncommonGoods, an online retailer specialising in unique gifts, the shift from email to a CX solution was the game-changer. Since implementation, they experienced a 72% reduction in email volume through smart filtering and building out their help centre. With 2,400 emails coming in peak season, a less clunky and manual CX solution was necessary to keep business moving.

On the other side of the coin, retail companies have also experienced some of the greatest volatility. The 2022 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report found a huge increase in customer engagement on retail support channels – up 38%, more than any other surveyed industry.

The most recent CX Accelerator data and insights suggest that mature, well-oiled CX machines are the solution for good problems – a growing customer base and relationships that need tending – and not-so-good ones: pandemics and supply chain issues that obstruct even the most prepared businesses.

How to uplevel your CX organisation (or help ensure you stay at the top of your game)

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Scale CX for volume and growth

The benefit of a scalable CX solution is that it can be dialled up for seasonality and dialled down for normal volume. This helps ensure small businesses can meet current needs while still having room to grow within the platform. Leaning on chatbots and AI features can be a lifesaver for small retail businesses that are scaling their customer experience. This was the case for Tile, another small company with a big name known for its slim-profile electronic trackers. After implementing an Ada chatbot within their Zendesk CX platform before the holiday season, the company reported a decrease in support volume almost immediately.

Scalable CX solutions go hand-in-hand with integrations that support the needs of the business. For retailers with small teams and less headcount, e-commerce and point-of-sale platforms like Shopify must be seamlessly integrated into the entire experience. That means that a flexible solution that plays nicely with others in the CX retailer’s toolkit can be the standout option for companies on the smaller side.

But CX scalability comes in many shapes and forms. For example, deflecting common customer inquiries with a chatbot or integrated help centre is known to free up agents’ time for more complex issues that need a 1:1 touch.

Small business Champions resolve 37% more of their chat enquiries without human involvement compared to Starters, according to the report. 2022 Zendesk CX Accelerator report

Enable agents to help drive the business

Agent productivity and ease of onboarding support healthy bottom lines all year round. Deflections mentioned earlier can improve productivity, but so can the agent dashboard: by providing additional customer context and reducing the need to switch between different dashboards and tools. A unified workspace also means all agents can lean in where they are needed: on a live chat window, responding to asynchronous messages on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, managing the email support queue, or resolving customer issues on the phone. According to the data, 8.1x more Champions than Starters rate their organisation’s performance as “very strong” in terms of shifting CX staff across channels to meet demand, suggesting that operational agility impacts the level of experience a company can deliver.

The possibilities open up further when the teams interacting with customers 1:1 are fully integrated into the rest of the business, including sales. Chupi, a Dublin-based jewellery company, is just one success story. With Zendesk, their customer care team was able to bring potential customers over the finish line by providing virtual consultations and post-consultation follow-up. By tracking, nurturing, and following up with potential sales leads, the company saw an impressive 300% increase in care-based sales in 2020, which translates to one million euros in sales directly from the customer care team.

Champions are 64% more likely to be well-trained to look for sales opportunities during customer interactions compared to Starters. Champions are also 1.4x more likely than Starters to have their CX engagements uncover new sales opportunities.

Do not stop at customer acquisition – let CX drive retention and loyalty

Having worked so hard to build up their customer base, small businesses know firsthand the importance of customer retention and customer loyalty. A true sign of a maturing CX operation is an organisation that resolves customer questions quickly, with a personalised touch. This is only possible when agents can access a complete history of a customer’s interactions with the company.

Corkcicle, purveyor of sustainable beverage containers, saw an impressive 10% year-over-year increase in return customers after improving the quality of their customer service. With their Zendesk CX solution, in place since 2019, the company could scale; emerging channels like chat helped customers get support quickly and easily from the website, while a help centre deflected frequently-asked questions away from the ticket queue. In Corckcicle’s case, an easy e-commerce experience paired with efficient, personalised customer service keeps customers coming back.

63% more small business Champions report being effective at keeping their online help centre up to date compared to Starters.

Deliver better results faster

Delivering a better CX quarter over quarter or year over year matters for all business sizes, but their ripple effects can be felt even more strongly in smaller outfits. The first step in understanding the impact of a CX investment is regularly analysing performance data to understand how the customer experience is resonating and supporting customers, as well as where it has room to level up. The data suggests that intentional and consistent data analysis pays off, as small business Champions are 12.3x more likely to have CX metrics reviewed by senior leadership daily compared to Starters, according to the 2022 report.

Scaling small business retail with CX

By scaling CX operations for volume and growth; enabling agents to help drive the business; letting CX drive customer retention and loyalty; and delivering better results faster; small retail companies can maximise their potential for the long haul.

Given the current volatile and uncertain market conditions, it is difficult to push for growth and investment in the customer experience (CX). The temptation to maintain the status quo is strong.

But do not do it.

The service landscape may be stark, but we cannot stop making CX a priority and investing in areas where the impact can influence business growth. This is a critical time to focus on sustaining and engaging relationship-driven conversations and continuing to build exceptional experiences.

These insights are not mine alone. They are drawn from the 2022 CX Accelerator report, which includes insights from nearly 5,000 customer service decision-makers around the world. Our survey uncovered a lot of the challenges we are all facing. It also revealed the strategies that leading CX organisations are using right now to maintain high service standards, create meaningful experiences, cultivate customer loyalty and stand apart from competitors.

Key insights

Leaders were unequivocal about the challenges we are all facing, as well as the importance of the customer service organisation:

• 64% of companies say that customer service has a direct impact on their business performance
• 60% said customer service impacts customer retention
• 49% said that customer service impacts cross-sell revenues

Survey respondents also report a real shift since 2021:

• 66% of companies reported that customers are less patient when interacting with agents or service teams
• Companies are 18% more likely to report that customer satisfaction is somewhat or significantly below expectations
• Even the category of “CX Champions” report unresolved queries are up 157% year over year

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Investing in CX is an opportunity to grow

Customer expectations continue to grow, raising the stakes for business. But this is also raising the potential rewards of ‘delivering the wow’ to create lifelong customers. While the companies we surveyed were in different maturity phases of their CX transformation and path to growth, three clear areas of investment stood out.

1. Balance your human and automation strategy

Can humans and bots work together? Absolutely, and this approach is preferred by most. A balanced support strategy places customers in control of how and when they want to interact with your business, whether it is through a conversation with a live agent or an interaction with an automated bot.

While chatbots and AI appear to be the wave of the future, our research shows that delivering on this strategy can be a challenge. Leaders need to understand the right roles for chatbots, how to collaborate with live agent support and what the ideal customer journey looks like to deliver conversational experiences.

• During the first year of the pandemic, only 52% of companies were using chatbots and human handoffs; today, that number is 64%
• 89% of service/support teams have a goal to make customer interactions feel more like a conversational experience and less like a transactional experience for customers

2. Integrate key data from critical apps

When disparate data point solutions do not play well together, silos pop up throughout the entire organisation, limiting business agility and making it difficult to create revenue-generating opportunities from support interactions.

For support, better collaboration optimises customer engagement across all touchpoints. For sales, it gives reps a new channel for discovering cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Identifying, tracking and acting on shared metrics helps the overall business keep customers happy, reduce churn and create long-lasting relationships.

3. Evolve the role of CX by investing in your agents

It is no surprise that employee churn rates are increasing and KPIs are declining: agents are overwhelmed and burdened with repetitive tasks. It has been a tough few years, and agents are often unsung heroes, trying to solve problems and make customers happier. We must have empathy towards those on the front lines with customers and provide them with the tools and training they need to perform at their best. This is absolutely critical because it reduces employee churn while leading to better support and customer retention, even expansion.

With smart automation and workflow processes in place, you give agents the power to uplevel their skill sets and solve deeper problems, which can ultimately affect the bottom line, as evidenced by our survey results:

• 83% of customer service/support employees are trained or directed to uncover sales opportunities in their course of their customer interactions
• Top cross-sell opportunities come from social messaging (41%)
• 79% increase in the amount that customers are spending over the last 6 months, an increase from 70% in 2021

Assess where you are at

The data in the CX Accelerator report is clear: the role of CX cannot be understated. Leaders need to understand not only how to prioritise these investments but to make them work for their business.

Through the work we do with our customers every day, we understand how daunting this task can be. Yet this research highlights the scale of the opportunity in getting it right, especially as the baseline for service levels from “mature” organisations rise. Take the CX Accelerator quiz to find out where your business ranks, where you risk falling behind and what you can do to make the right investments now.

Even the highest-performing service organisations need to know where they stand among their competitors and how they can continue raising the bar to retain their status as leaders.

You can find answers in the 2022 CX Accelerator report, where CX organisations are categorised according to our CX maturity model scale and rank as Starters, Emergers, Risers and CX Champions. Each group faces its own advantages, disadvantages and unique opportunities to set teams up for even greater success in the future.

Here we are focusing on CX Champions. This group has strategically invested in solutions that allow them to scale and meet critical milestones, yet Risers are nipping at their heels and quickly closing the performance gap. This year, even CX Champions report seeing an increase in resolution times and fewer one-touch tickets, leading to more effort and frustration from the customer’s perspective. There has never been a better time to harness real-time reporting and lean in hard on areas where you can deflect easier-to-resolve tickets.

Stay a step ahead: Identify areas of vulnerability

If you are at this stage in your CX maturity, then you know the value a service organisation – your service organisation – brings to the business. At this point, you have a support system that is well-integrated with other core business applications and you are harnessing customer data to everyone’s advantage.

How to stave off Risers

Not content to rest on your laurels? You can do plenty to address common challenges and keep competitors from overtaking your significant progress, especially as current economic conditions pressure teams to do more with less.

Support your customers:

• Make the most of AI and machine learning tools. Offer proactive purchase recommendations through interactions with automated bots.
• Get customers to the right place, every time. Use machine learning or AI to recognise when an interaction is sensitive or should bypass chatbot flows immediately to get the right level of service.
• Shore up your support team with tools. Leverage self-service, no-code bots, app integrations and reporting to encourage efficiency and build more robust internal support teams.
• Build stronger customer relationships. Create personalised customer experiences using past interaction history and other important contexts. Consider interactive options like in-message checkout options that prioritise convenience and keep you one step ahead of customer needs.

Support your agents:

• Use AI to take the burden off agents. Machine learning can provide recommendations and context to agents.
• Prioritise quality over quantity. Focus on getting key apps for a complete view of customer data integrated in a single agent workspace. That means no more toggling between screens to understand exactly who a customer is and how best to serve them at that moment.
• Connect the data dots. Invest in a flexible, easy-to-use platform with integrations to fuel informed, data-driven decision-making that will boost customer acquisition, loyalty and business profitability.

Build in operational efficiencies:

• Connect agents with back-office teams. Integrate collaboration tools so teams can interact with the right people internally who can help them solve customer enquiries faster.
• Adopt agent training and incentives. Show agents you are invested in them to help them stay motivated, productive and able to provide empathetic support.
• Correlate data collected with specific interactions. Use surveys and feedback to stress test your customer experience and prepare for changes in the market. Consider apps that allow you to easily monitor customer interactions across multiple channels and generate real-time reports to easily identify areas of improvement.

If you find yourself in this category, then you already know that customers are keen to comment on the difference between automated and personalised service and that the more you know – by integrating key data across critical apps – means the more you can help customers get to the resolution they are looking for.

Delivering truly world-class customer experience is a challenge in this (and any) economic climate, where leaders must stay on top of service best practice and customer expectations to remain competitive.

To find out how CX leaders do this, Zendesk surveyed nearly 5,000 customer service decision-makers around the world and compiled the results into our 2022 CX Accelerator report. In addition to a wealth of insights and action plans, the report breaks down CX organisations into four distinct groups based on their placement in our maturity scale model: Starters, Emergers, Risers and CX Champions.

This article focuses on Risers, organisations nipping at the heels of CX Champions with KPIs that almost put them into the highest-performing zone.

Without a doubt, Risers are successful, yet success comes with a host of challenges. Unlike those who are just getting started, these organisations may have legacy tools and workflows in place, and any changes leaders want to make may require deep consideration of how to eliminate silos, streamline processes and integrate customer data to enable more personalised experiences.

Difficult? Maybe. Impossible? Not at all. Let’s look at common challenges for Risers and the actions they can take to become CX Champions.

You have almost arrived

Risers are developed service organisations that are typically beginning to bring some laser-eye focus to how to increase revenue and really harness AI and chatbots to drive efficiency and bring the most customer context into each interaction. If this feels familiar, then you are no stranger to the value that service organisations can bring to the overall business. You also have a deeper understanding of your customer base and how customers move between mobile and other devices to connect.

Become a CX Champion

Truly the margins between Risers and CX Champions are narrow and there is a good opportunity to leverage your customer experience to grab market share from your competitors. Here are some actions Risers can take to differentiate and elevate service.

Support your customers:

• Bring in automation at key touchpoints: A no-code chatbot can provide instant answers, eliminating wait times and freeing agents to manage higher-priority tickets.
• Work smarter, not harder: Let technology shoulder the load. AI and app integrations can help you improve workflow, efficiency and productivity.
• Optimise customer experiences: AI-powered tools can help you identify gaps in your help centre content and equip agents with full context and interaction history so you can offer more personalised service.

Support your agents:

• Get proactive: Incentivise your agents by tying their performance KPIs to the company’s incremental revenue growth. That can be achieved through automated bots, which can supply the customer with proactive purchase recommendations and help free up agents’ time for more hands-on interactions.
• Value quality over quantity: Bring in only the best-in-breed apps that offer a complete view of customer data in a single client workspace. Discard tools that do not use modern APIs, so your agents are not toggling between screens to serve customers.
• Prioritise agent well-being: Invest in agent training and incentives to increase job satisfaction and promote productivity. Use tools that boost efficiency and collaboration so agents can see that their time is valuable.

Build in operational efficiencies:

• Adopt agile systems and processes: Your support system should allow you to share customer knowledge across the organisation, especially with your sales team, so that data does not live in silos. This allows you to avoid an easy faux pas like attempting to sell a customer on a renewal when they have had major service issues or complaints.
• Optimise with data: Use data and feedback to get more insight into the customer experience. Consider apps that allow you to easily monitor customer interactions across multiple channels and generate real-time reports to easily identify areas for improvement.

So many leaders are being asked to step up while simultaneously tightening their purse strings; this can feel daunting, but there is still plenty of room for growth. And these strides, especially when you can strike the right balance between automation and human support, can lead to evolving the role of your support team to outperform the competition.

Eager to move up the ladder? Here is how to reach CX Champion status.