A Sponsored Article by Aspect
The way consumers engage brands has significantly changed. Yet the majority of brands have not significantly changed the way they serve consumers. Sure, many companies have a Twitter presence and mobile apps to better connect with their consumers. It’s an excellent first step, but the real opportunity to wow consumers and drive lasting loyalty hinges on the ability to integrate every interaction point with your customer service infrastructure and ensure a consistent, continuous experience as consumers move between channels.
In many ways, “mobile” confuses and yet redefines the concept of “communication channels.” Mobile is not a channel, it’s every channel. It’s the ability to visit a website, chat with an agent, send an SMS, place a phone call and check your Facebook without changing devices—without even thinking about it. For consumers, the channels start to blend together. But that’s not always the case for businesses.
Why Context Matters
Context sets the stage for great customer experiences by eliminating common frustrations, providing faster resolutions and making customers feel like you value them and their time.
It’s all who you know.
Customers aren’t always at the same point in their journey. Their interactions are driven by unique preference and needs at a given point in time. Yet we often treat everyone the same, presenting the same self-service menus and following the same agent scripts. What if we could predict what the customer needs and dynamically personalize every engagement based on all that we know?
Tell me what you need. Now tell me again.
An Aspect study found that 89% of consumers are annoyed when they have to repeat themselves about the same customer service issue. The problem is amplified when we consider today’s customer journey is more involved than ever. Customers often start a transaction or an inquiry in one self-service channel and finish it in another. Jumping from a mobile app to a website to Twitter is no longer the exception, it has become the norm. Sometimes customers need assistance from a human. When they do, are your agents armed with the information they need to pick up the conversation where it left off?
Continuity through context provides the kind of experiences that drive loyalty and brand advocates, while lowering costs through improved routing and handle times, increased self-service containment and higher first-contact resolution.
How to Maintain Context
When it comes to the customer experience, maintaining context goes beyond “screen pops” in the contact center. It’s about using what you know—from preferences to purchases to prior conversations—to drive a better, more personalized and efficient interaction. This includes capturing important traces of information such as dropout points in an IVR, the last transaction performed in a mobile app, the last page visited on your website or recent conversations with an agent. At Aspect, we call this Experience Continuity and we do it by storing Context Cookies, or traces of information about the customer journey. Think of it like cookies maintained by a web browser, but without the creepiness. Context Cookies exist to improve customer service.
While some of this information might already be stored in a traditional CRM system, the data is not always easily accessible across channels. It may also lack the fine granularity needed to ensure truly remarkable experiences.
Context Cookies empower your agents and enable “wow” moments.
Sweet right?