In the first two articles of this series, we focused on how to foster a customer-centric culture and the setting of customer experience (CX) goals and strategies. This article will discuss how to harness technological innovations and the power data brings to your company.
In a recent conversation with a software company, we discussed the transformative potential of technology and the value of data for sustainable growth. While the founder acknowledged the company’s innovative ideas, there was a gap in fully leveraging data for strategic decision-making. We examined successes of similar organizations from different industries and established companies that integrated data-driven strategies and their impact. Then we discussed practical steps to transition toward a data-centric approach, including investing in the infrastructure and leading a culture of data-driven decision-making. This process designed a path toward enhanced competitiveness and innovation, supporting their plan for growth, which is applicable to multiple industries.
Maximize the Use of CRM Systems
The CX success of your company depends on your ability to track customer data effectively, share information internally, and foster improved customer relationships. By maximizing the use of customer relationship management (CRM) systems, organizations can centralize customer data, streamline communication channels, and gain valuable insights into customer behaviors and preferences. This enables businesses to deliver personalized experiences, anticipate customer needs, and enhance overall business performance. To maximize the use of CRM systems:
- Centralize all customer data, including purchase history and interaction history.
- Ensure accessibility for all relevant departments within your organization.
- Offer scalability to accommodate business growth, ensuring it can handle increased data and user demands effectively.
Leverage Customer Service Platforms
Providing exceptional customer service requires seamless communication across multiple channels. Your company can employ customer-service platforms to centralize communication channels, automate workflows, and provide tools for tracking, prioritizing, and resolving customer inquiries. By streamlining communication processes, organizations can enhance efficiency, improve response times, and deliver a seamless customer experience. To leverage your customer-service platform:
- Integrate your platform with phone and email management tools, customer satisfaction surveying tools, CRM platform, business intelligence tool, ticketing system, live chat tool, and social media platforms.
- Implement your platform throughout its ticketing system, live chat and phone call management tools, considering factors like automations, call routing and interactive voice response (IVR) structure.
- Equip the platform with a well-structured knowledge base accessible from your website, featuring consistent content formatting and multimedia tutorials, including an FAQ section, and facilitating customer feedback.
Efficiently Use Cloud-Based Platforms
The CX function can efficiently use cloud-based platforms for documenting operational procedures in an organized and structured manner. By leveraging cloud-based solutions, organizations can ensure that managing operational processes is accessible, scalable, and flexible. This enables teams to collaborate effectively, access information remotely, and streamline operations for enhanced efficiency and productivity. To efficiently use a cloud-based documentation platform:
- Ensure the content is well-structured with consistent formatting.
- Populate the platform with internally created quality-assured content documented on a cloud-based solution like Google Drive or Notion.
- Safeguard its content by exercising caution in granting user access.
Use Business Intelligence Tools
Your CX function can leverage business intelligence tools to generate CX dashboards, supporting comprehensive data analysis and performance tracking. By harnessing the power of data insights, organizations can gain a deeper understanding of customer preferences, behaviors, and pain points. This enables them to make informed decisions, identify areas for improvement, and drive meaningful enhancements in the customer experience. To maximize the use of your business intelligence tool develop a dashboard that contains different tabs dedicated to these features:
- Customer satisfaction metrics
- Customer contact reasons, call metrics, ticket status metrics and ticket fluctuation metrics
- Performance metrics broken down by departmental, team and individual levels
Recognizing that change takes time, we helped the software company prioritize upgrading their use of technology by first focusing on maximizing the use of their CRM system to centralize communications, so every function, department, and person is aligned around the needs and feedback of the customer. This required buy-in and understanding for the value of making change, which led to embracing the necessary advanced training.
From this we can see that, embracing innovations in technology and leveraging the power of data offer remarkable prospects for businesses to elevate the customer experience and increase profitability. By embracing the strategies outlined – optimizing CRM systems, leveraging customer-service platforms, efficiently using cloud-based platforms, and leveraging business intelligence tools – organizations can unlock greater efficiency, agility and customer-centricity. Through these actions, they position themselves for sustained growth and success.
Enhance your customer experience journey by completing our complimentary CX Function Index Survey. Upon completion, connect with us to receive a comprehensive evaluation of your CX function’s performance, including individual scores for the five strategic dimensions of world-class CX function.
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