#1: What [24]7.ai™ CX Polling Says About … Your CX Operations

We’ve been running biweekly CX polls on LinkedIn for over a year and so figured it was time to take stock and see what conclusions, if any, we could draw. We make no claim to as to our polling’s scientific or academic rigor, but each poll pulls several hundred votes from our community so we’re confident the insights detailed below are in the ballpark.

In this, the first in a series of such blogs examining our LinkedIn polling results, we consider responses related directly to how you run your CX operations.

CX Poll No. 1: Pick One CX Action

High-minded CX leaders naturally want their entire enterprise to line up behind the goal of improving customer experience—analyst research time and again clearly demonstrates that such companies significantly outperform their competitors. (Do you sense a “but” is coming?) But this is a massive undertaking requiring leadership buy-in, a top-to-bottom cultural transformation, and the extensive adoption of CX tools and processes. Turns out the single simplest and most effective CX action you can take, if you could pick only one, is to unify CX under one leader or team—the option shunned by most respondents. Read the CX Leader of the Future (2021) report.

CX Poll No. 2: Handle Huge Volumes

All smart responses. Providing automated self-help FAQs could absorb as much as 80 percent of your call volume (caveat: the system has to draw on the right data and be properly designed to accurately capture and respond to the most common user issues). Implementing IVR-to-digital handoffs, and informing customers of their online options, will also move call volume from live to virtual agents. As in No. 1, the neglected child here, “Implement async messaging,” didn’t get nearly as much love as it deserves. To find out why, read the blog by Robert Camacho, our SVP, Global Customer Success: Proven! Asynchronous Messaging Supercharges Your CX Operations.

CX Poll No. 3: Omnichannel

Bingo! Customers want to engage using their channel of choice. They want to switch from channel to channel when convenient, sometimes several times all in the same conversation. And if they do switch, they definitely don’t want to repeat information or start all over. Sit back and hear all about it in this on-demand webcast, “Optimizing the Omnichannel Customer Experience”

CX Poll No. 4: Start Fresh!

This was interesting. The leading answer recognizes there’s low-hanging fruit waiting to be plucked, which is certainly attractive. But we don’t agree that should be your top consideration: Once the bottom of the tree is bare, what next? You still don’t have a CX operation in place. Centralizing CX under one leader or team, as noted in No. 1 above, is your best single move—but only if you’ve already got an operating CX operation, not if you’re starting one from scratch. Getting the best agents and figuring out the right channels will set you up for success, but you need a bigger vision than that. Check out our end-to-end, CXaaS customer engagement solution: [24]7.ai Managed Customer Engagement.

CX Poll No. 5: Pick One Channel

Certain channels work better for some brands than others, so we won’t even pretend there’s a right or wrong answer here. We were, however, a bit surprised at email’s relatively strong showing. It’s been dwindling as a customer engagement vehicle and we expect it to continue to fade over the next several years. Most companies recognize that voice is still their most valuable channel, despite their growing dependence on chat. Social media is clearly ascendant. Learn more about the only customer engagement platform that “that integrates chat, messaging, and voice channels with virtual and live agents” and more: [24]7.ai Engagement Cloud™

Take the Next Step

Read the next blog in the series: What Our CX Polling Says About … Your Customer Service.

If you’re evaluating CX partners, you owe it to your organization to visit the Why [24]7.ai? web page.