As we continue through 2024 and see 2025 on the horizon, it feels as though the COVID-19 pandemic is completely in our rear view mirror.
Many organizations have successfully embraced hybrid work; face-to-face interactions, like at conferences, are becoming once again commonplace. Meanwhile, customers are embracing in-person experiences with brands, and more.
But, even as some challenges have subsided, new ones have emerged, from inflation and the ongoing cost of living crisis to socioeconomic conflicts that have caused worldwide trepidation.
Despite these evolving challenges, one thing has remained constant: customers and employees alike have increasingly high expectations for the organizations they interact with. And if organizations don’t meet those demands, they’ll fall behind.
Understanding where and how to take action to make improvements can be hard. The CallMiner CX Landscape Report proves this.
The report looks at how organizations can best position themselves to navigate the top challenges in the market right now.
It also looks at re-evaluating how best to collect and use critical data to improve efficiencies, processes, and overall business decisions related to customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX).
...customers and employees alike have increasingly high expectations for the organizations they interact with.
Let’s dive into the findings, which I have grouped into five challenges that directly impact contact centers.
1. Staying afloat in the current macroeconomic climate.
Everyone is acutely aware of how unpredictable the economy has been. With this uncertainty, it’s not a surprise that organizations want to do more with less. This includes scrutinizing the ROI of technology investments and reducing headcount to the right size from pandemic hiring sprees.
But these macroeconomic strains aren’t just impacting organizations. Consumers are also forced to navigate these challenges, whether they’ve been a part of those headcount reductions or are struggling with increasing expenses. Many consumers are frustrated and impatient. And often, frontline and customer service agents are taking the brunt.
In fact, our research found that the top three challenges for organizations related to CX and customer service were:
- Understanding customer vulnerability due to health, caregiver, or financial reasons (39%).
- Combating agent disengagement or lack of productivity (37%).
- Increased customer impatience (32%).
Further, 45% of the responding leaders strongly agreed that they want their organization to do more with fewer resources in the current economy.
But in order to tackle these challenges – changing customer and employee expectations, alongside doing more with less – it’s critical that any dollars put into technology investments can be defendable with tangible ROI.
2. Focusing on collecting the right data, not just more of it.
For today’s organizations, the struggle with data is often not the amount of it, but rather with what data to collect and how to use it.
To start, the majority of organizations (71%) said they’re still collecting mostly solicited CX and customer satisfaction feedback. Yet collecting and analyzing solicited feedback, such as through customer surveys, alone is insufficient and paints only a partial CX picture.
Unsolicited feedback – which is collected from contact center phone calls, chats, emails, etc. – contains valuable insights as well, with unprompted insights about how your customers feel about your brand, product, services, or employees.
Yet today, only 20% of organizations are collecting an equal amount of both solicited and unsolicited feedback. It’s time to evolve beyond survey-only data to gain a deeper, more holistic understanding of customer expectations, behaviors, sentiments, and overall experience.
Even for the organizations that are collecting the right data, effectively leveraging that data isn’t easy. Over two-thirds (68%) of respondents in our research said CX data is often not harnessed to their organization’s best advantage.
If brands are going to meet the expectations of their customers and employees, they need to better tap the wealth of omnichannel data at their fingertips, from surveys and call transcripts to social media interactions and product reviews. They must build a comprehensive view of their customers, both individually and at scale.
3. Not investing in EX is negatively impacting CX.
If our survey respondents agreed on anything, it is that EX and CX are intrinsically linked, meaning they clearly understand that happy employees make happier customers.
But in a time of restricted resources, EX initiatives are often the first to get cut. We found that only around a third (35%) of organizations offer regular group training and retraining for their employees, and less than a fifth (18%) carry out tailored 1:1 coaching.
For customer service organizations in particular, this approach is shortsighted. Instead, organizations should adopt the right tools that help them identify agent performance trends for both post-interaction coaching and real-time guidance to impact customer conversations while they’re happening.
One way organizations can break down silos is by sharing CX data with teams across the enterprise...
By taking a data-driven approach to frontline agent coaching, businesses can better understand where agents are excelling or falling short, as well as better understand and meet their customers’ preferences.
It’s time to stop deprioritizing EX initiatives. We know that when employees feel supported and empowered – whether it’s an agent handling customer interactions, or agent supervisors managing training and coaching programs – they do better in their roles and provide better experiences to customers.
4. Departmental silos are alive and well...and are stunting CX progress.
Whether it’s goals, priorities, or strategy, misalignment and siloization across an organization can create enterprise-wide problems.
When it comes to CX, many departments contribute to the success of those initiatives, so effective cross-departmental communication is critical. This collaboration is how organizations successfully capture the right data, uncover insights, and use meaningful intelligence to make business improvements.
According to our research, however, half of organizations lack effective communication between departments when it comes to aligning on CX data and feedback.
Further, despite regularly sharing CX and satisfaction metrics with their boards, 84% of our survey respondents said their leadership’s use of the data should be improved.
One way organizations can break down silos is by sharing CX data with teams across the enterprise, whether that data originates in the CX or contact center departments.
Getting the right data and insights to the right stakeholders at the right time can more effectively improve CX strategies, drive product updates, enhance agent training, and more.
And as our research tells us, this cross-departmental alignment works; organizations with an independent CX department struggle the most with effective communication (51%).
When all departments are aligned on strategy, understand the technologies and methodologies that are being used to achieve goals – and continually report the right metrics to the right leaders (including the board) - they can drive effective change across their organization.
5. AI is everywhere, but it’s not a silver bullet.
With the introduction of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) has never been closer to the consumer. And the buzz around Generative AI and other innovations has led to a boom in AI investments, so it’s not surprising that nearly every organization we surveyed is planning to adopt AI in some capacity.
That said, 44% of organizations are or expect to be unsure of what type of AI technology will best meet their business needs when it comes to collecting and analyzing CX data.
What does this mean? The AI market is extremely saturated and buyer education is still in its early stages, so CX and contact center leaders are struggling to determine which tools they should invest in.
Part of the challenge comes from valid fears and uncertainty about AI. Our survey revealed that the top AI fears in relation to implementing AI for customer service and CX use cases are:
- Exposing the company to security and/or compliance risks (45%).
- Spreading misinformation (43%).
- Giving biased, discriminatory, or inappropriate responses to customers (41%).
With the crunch on resources coinciding with heightened customer expectations, organizations want to make sure the AI technology they implement will drive value for their organization. And not create a potential brand crisis.
Organizations looking to get the most out of their AI investments need to understand that Generative AI is not a silver bullet, and there are many types of AI that are best suited for specific use cases.
Working to get organizational alignment on AI goals (i.e., “What are we looking to accomplish with this technology?”), is critical to experiencing value.
And this value-based approach is working. According to the report, organizations that have already implemented AI see greater value in identifying trends/issues among consumers (34% versus 19% of those not yet using AI).
Knowing what type of trends and issues you’re looking to identify and solve for, at least to start, can help point you in the direction of the best AI for the job.
Embracing today’s opportunities for long-term CX gains
As with most challenges and opportunities in the business world, they are constantly evolving. Today’s current macroeconomic climate, combined with rising customer and employee expectations, has fueled the need for more data-driven intelligence, especially as organizations are trying to do more with less.
This is why organizations must be strategic in everything they do - from how and what data they collect and how they think about EX - to how they align cross-organizationally and what types of AI they implement for what business purposes.
Organizations that work to orient around these things, (along with having a clear view of their CX and EX goals), – will not only be uniquely positioned to face the pressing challenges facing contact centers today - but they’ll also be the ones that can truly transform their businesses and get ahead of the competition.