Explore the ways in which you can improve your customer engagement efforts and bring them in line with modern customer expectations
It’s worth pointing out that customer expectations change alongside innovation and trends in any given industry. Thus, in today’s age of cloud-computing and SAAS platforms, the chances are that your business will need to rely on multiple platforms for adequate customer servicing. According to Adobe, 70% of customer experience (CX) leaders struggle to design meaningful projects centred on lead generation customer retention. However, two-thirds of senior CX executives stated that they have dedicated CX teams in place and constantly work on improving their business’ respective pipelines.
In the context of 2020 and an increased emphasis on eCommerce in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, such teams can benefit from internal cross-platform integration. This can dramatically increase the effectiveness of customer support teams and elevate your business’ customer experience initiatives to the next level. Let’s discuss how you can define next-level customer experiences for your stakeholders via cross-platform integration and the subsequent benefits of doing so in 2020.
1. Cross-Platform Integration in eCommerce
Whether your staff relies on Magento, Salesforce, or an equivalent eCommerce platform to service customers, it can be challenging to synchronize their cross-platform workflow. This can make using an effective integration API for eCommerce a highly beneficial addition to your customer experience maturity model. By introducing cross-platform integration into your workflow, you will enable your agents to identify and take advantage of customer interaction hot spots on your platform. Relying on such an API in customer servicing will allow for seamless data management, internal agent cooperation, and better end-user services overall.
2. Native Chatbot Integration
While chatbot integration may not be a trending topic, it is absolutely relevant to customer experience initiatives in 2020. According to Salesforce, 64% of agents with AI chatbots as backup spend time addressing complex customer issues as opposed to their hands-on colleagues. Combined with machine-learning algorithm platforms such as Kore.ai and Wit.ai, you will be able to define next level customer servicing strategies for your customers’ benefit. Likewise, you will enable your staff to monitor customers’ satisfaction more closely and with greater attention to critical issues as they come along.
3. Mobile Cross-Platform Integration
If you use a mobile app for customers’ interaction with your storefront, you should extend your customer experience initiatives to it. According to Business Insider, 45% of the total US eCommerce market is projected to shift toward mobile shopping by the end of 2020. Meet your customer base halfway and introduce cross-platform servicing capabilities to your mobile platform. Using dedicated mobile SDK support to do so will enable your CX staff to customize the ways in which customers can engage with your brand. Doing so will enable you to dynamically engage customer support tickets as they become available in a native mobile environment.
4. CMS Overview & Management
You can never anticipate the ways in which your customers will attempt to get in touch with your customer support team. Often such interaction will take place on your blog or comments section and require your staff to micromanage different platforms manually. However, integrating cross-platform support for your CMS via a dedicated API will amend for those shortcomings. Platforms such as Vivocha allow for seamless CMS integration for your staff’s benefit, which will help define next-level customer support features for your brand. The benefits for your customer experience maturity model in this instance involve faster, more efficient, and productive communication with customers via your chosen CMS.
5. Comprehensive Customer Experience Analytics
Lastly, your customer support staff should have unfiltered access to meaningful customer engagement analytics at all times. According to Business 2 Community, 42% of professionals expressed that their companies’ analytics do not meet modern needs, with only 7% doing so efficiently. Luckily, cross-platform integration with an API which allows for native chat log analytics can amend for those shortcomings. Using a platform which allows for a centralized customer experience strategy and to track relevant KPIs to do so will effectively transform your CX philosophy.
Benefits of Taking your Customer Experience Strategy to the Next Level
Now that we have a clearer idea of how cross-platform integration can help your customer experience initiatives let’s address the concrete benefits of such an approach. As we’ve mentioned before, customer expectations in regards to servicing shift gradually as new technologies become available. As such, your competition is bound to continuously work on improving their customer experience maturity model regardless of your business’ strategy in that regard. However, your company stands to gain tremendously by introducing next-level cross-platform support via dedicated APIs, including:
- Faster and more efficient customer support turnaround
- Easy and straightforward integration between platforms and services
- Quick response times and meaningful data available for post-engagement analytics
- Reduced margin for error and increased revenue generated from a satisfied customer base
In Conclusion
Explore the ways in which you can improve your customer engagement efforts and bring them in line with modern customer expectations. Enabling your staff to efficiently communicate with your customer base is the name of the game of customer experience initiatives in 2020. Gauge your customers’ engagement with new initiatives and adjust your course to match their needs. Doing it by introducing cross-platform integration can elevate your customer experience maturity model and stimulate further business development in 2020 and beyond.
