Meeting customer expectations with agile CX strategies

Today’s customers have set a high bar for the experiences they expect when engaging with a business — and these customer expectations only continue to expand. In fact, according to Zendesk, 61% of consumers would switch to a competing brand after just one bad customer experience.

Companies that remain laser-focused on customer experience (CX) also focus on flexibility, adapting continuously to meet their customers’ needs. They place their CX tools at the center of their strategic priorities, ensuring the tools they have enable this experiential agility, and measuring the capabilities of these tools as the litmus for their success.

Businesses today can emulate this behavior by changing their mindset from a focus on optimizing individual experiences, to a focus on adopting tools, processes, and operations that encourage rapid iteration and innovation. Here are three to focus on:

1. Flexible business methodology

An agile methodology will enable a continuous stream of improvements to your customer care capabilities, shortening time-to-value for emerging patterns within your customer base and allowing you to quickly respond to changing customer and employee needs. This kind of investment can really pay-off: according to PwC, 73% of customers say that a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties.

2. Cloud-based technologies

The agile and adaptive nature of cloud technology allows companies to quickly react to new demands and experiment with new cloud-based solutions. Cloud computing offers scalability, flexibility, and reduced maintenance, which frees up time and resources for the unique, higher-value needs of the business. Additionally, cloud platforms enable seamless integration of CX systems and customer data management, which are critical for providing a consistent and personalized customer experience.

3. Intelligent automation

More advanced than ever, automated technologies can learn and evolve alongside the needs of your business and customers. Investing in these flexible technologies, especially in your contact center, can help you be more adaptive and responsive to your customer’s needs on a faster timeline. And with 51% of businesses using at least eight channels to interact with their customers, intelligently applying AI-driven automation can help you reserve employee power for where it’s needed most. Doing so will not only boost your operational efficiency, but also the overall customer journey. 

Unlock future-ready customer experiences

Investing in innovations like AI, machine learning, agile methodologies, and automation will inform your decisions and power up your ability to remain adaptive. This proactive approach will allow you to exceed expectations and deliver superior outcomes in every customer interaction — even if something unexpected like a global pandemic threatens to disrupt operations.